MSQ

[Kaethra]

Warcraft probably has the most richest lore and story content than any other MMORPG out there. However it's not its main selling point.

I'm going to argue that FFXIV's selling point was not its story. I've got the original box and there's nothing about the story on there outside of the world's name. Everquest did this too. But here's where the games differ:

EQ like WoW has a much much more indepth set of lore and power players than FFXIV. Sorry to say but FFXIV took the singleplayer route with story telling and went for a quick thrill. They have a broken history listed in eras. While EQ literally has history that goes back decades, you pick a year and get some lore about what happened nearly on that specific year give or take 10 years.

Lets compare a bit further.. In both games you pick a deity. Religion in EQ and Guardian in FFXIV. So.. Halone the Fury, what do we know about her? Patron goddess of Ishgard and aspect of Ice and Glaciers. A goddess of war, a few places named for her and there's a flower she likes. Now compare that to Mithaniel Marr the Truthbringer, the ultimate paladin. The son of Tarew Marr the liquid aspect of water in the Triumvirate. Brother to Erolisi Mar the goddess of love. The god of Valor commands the Plane of Valor as his realm where those who fall in battle for justice and righteousness go before his Halls of Valor (think Valhala, but more Paladiny). With the help of his sister he created the race of northmen called the Barbarians. And through Valor and Love him and his sister caused a spark of intellect to go through them and they became the modern day Human race of Norrath. Further along he enlightened a group of Frogloks who quickly evolve and take over their swamp in a war with the Trolls. Mithaniel is the enemy of Innoruuk, Cazic-Thule, Bertoxxulous, and Rallos Zek. He is allies with Rodcet Nife, Erolisi, and has a friendly rivalry with Solesuk Ro. Needless to say he's pretty well fleshed out (I've only touched on the basics and the tip of the iceberg) and you can even interact with him directly several times throughout the different expansions.

And of course the lore doesn't stop there. Pretty much every city, every major character has some in-depth history behind them and lore you can read on. None of which is required to experience as you work your way through the game in question. Its either little bits when you talk to random NPCs, read books or journals, or the old school tried and true method of reading the physical game manual. Because it desiminates the lore over a broader area of the game it causes two things. First one is it allows for greater lore to be told. In FFXIV we only get what is pressing to the MSQ at the given time. But they've neglected to insert more lore into random conversation with even quest NPCs, but EQ also did it through non-quest NPCs. And the second thing this causes is you need player to player interaction. You see we all experience the MSQ the same way. But in EQ we experience the lore at different rates, at different times, and different pieces. Then we cobble together what we learn and discuss it. Write it down, interpret it almost like real life historians. And this causes people to gravitate towards factions they enjoy.

I mentioned before that the god Mithaniel Marr is the enemy of Innoruuk and others. There are many players who take an interest in some of those enemies over the god of Valor. So they tend to have lore that is a bit.. biased. As sometimes lore will contradict depending on its source. And it allows players to have rivalries in that sense. Imagine Horde versus Alliance in WoW, except there's a dozen different facets instead of just two.

To put this all shortly, you can experience all of the story in one go with the MSQ from 2.0 to 5.0, a MSQ that with some effort can be cleaned through in about a week. Whereas in WoW or EQ. It could take months or years to get much of the story, and even then you'd still have stuff to learn. We don't have that in FFXIV. The story, the hooks, and the twists are all given to us in one questline.