The lore in this game is just bad.

[BillyBones]

If you compare it to Age of Conan or WoW you will know what I mean. Okay, AoC is a huge franchise with lots of books about it. So maybe its not the best example. I know that people here probably associate WoW with casuals, kids and imbeciles. But let's be honest about it - WoW had great lore. Heck, even Arthas' sword had a longer and much more interesting story to it than than anything in FF14.

Sure, FF14 does have a storyline and it IS actually nice. But it's extremely linear. It only touches the recent events and those from 5 years ago. I don't feel and depth to it.

[BillyBones]

Dungeons
If you went to a dungeon in AoC or WoW there would be a huge story about it. They would tell you all backgrounds about it, all about its inhabitants and its history.
Okay, I admit that I haven't seen the endgame yet. I'm only lvl40, but all dungeons I've seen so far didn't have a story at all. Few examples: Haukke manor - some noblewoman went insane after losing her beauty. Go kill her.
Or even better - Brayfox. I need goblin cheese. Go get some. Temple of Quan? Same BS. The only lore to the dungeons is summed up in the quest description.

Characters
Some WoW characters were really deep and interesting. What do we have here?
The 3 GC leaders without any kind of depth to them or biography. A little sultana that was shown only once. Why not tell more about them?

[BillyBones]

The races
Apart from their appearence and accents they are basically the same. They don't have any cultural difference whatsoever. The 3 cities are a huge cultural melting pot.

The world in this game is extremely beautiful and detailed. But it feels extremely shallow to me. Agree/disagree?

[Malrend]

Well, World of Warcraft built on already existing characters from games and even books, the lore of Warcraft had around 10 years of evolution prior to WoW's release (let us not talk about how World of Warcraft completely destroyed the Warcraft lore, through significant retcons, for the sake of the MMO's continuum).

Final Fantasy XIV on the other hand, was around for roughly two years prior to the shut down of the 1.0 servers, the story remnants are there for you to find if you wish to find them, and it'll expand upon your knowledge of characters such as Kan-E-Senna, Raubahn, and Admiral Merlwyb, as well as the individual Scions, should you look it up. With A Realm Reborn, the team has made quite the effort to make new players feel like they're entering a new world, rather than simply continuing what was already there.

To really find the lore, to know the history and the characters, you have dig into the game, rather than go through external sources.

[TessaJalloh]

Billy, your examples are all terrible. Just the quest text for Haukke manor alone tells you more of the history of the property and the lamentable situation the lady of the manor is now in having been transformed into an undead creature by the Ascians.

Stop and read, and the lore presents itself. Speak to npcs, explore, interact. There's a huge wealth of lore to be discovered that you're simply glossing. For instance, did you know the darklight gear was actually that of a mercenary group known as the darklight raiders, whom met a grizzly end in the aurum vale, where they were killed by a manticore and the only survivor was a cowardly highlander whom hid under their corpses in order to survive, and is now haunted by this ordeal and can't even brave the depths to place flowers at his comrade's graves in memorium?

[Anonymoose]

The lore is there, you just need to look for and read it. It comes not only from cutscenes and quest descriptions, but from levequest flavor text, item flavor text, NPC small talk... To save time, I'll address as the example which you say contains only the lore of "get me a cheese."

Brayfox's Longstop
When goblins speak in the common tongue, they often forego learning large, complex, specific terms in favor of inventing new ones that are comprised of two smaller, simpler, more general words. A "long stop" would be a place you stop for a while - a settlement. In the wake of the calamity, Brayflox Alltalks established a longstop in Raincatcher Gulley in an attempt to become a powerful businessman - one of the most prestigious things a member of the tinkerer race can become. Unfortunately, the place he decided to build his longstop was an ideal location for the dragon Aiatar, who has overtaken the goblins with a legion of puk and drakes. One who has paid attention to the storyline might infer that these scalekin hail from Dravania, whose dragons seem to have pushed much deeper into Eorzea after stretching the resources of Ishgard to the brink of collapse. Unable to contend with this threat to his fledgling enterprise, Brayflox has put his trading on hold to deal with the situation the best way goblins know how - strategically applied explosives. This plan only gets them so far, as Aiatar is much larger and has established an aery within which he remains untouchable. Only with the assistance of adventurers can the goblins re-take their settlement.

I'd say that's pretty well-integrated into history, geography, current events, etc. for a four man EXP dungeon.

Your comment about the races / cities being shallow is especially incorrect. With combined information from character creation, NPC smalltalk, the Waning of the Sixth Sun bluray, quests, etc. etc. you can find in what years they arrived, how they lived back then, why they came here, how they interacted with the other inhabitants, why they diverged into different clans, which races and clans dominated which cityscapes originally, why some grew and others fell...

I mean, Qarn is a temple of worship from the lost city of Belah'dia, which divided into Ul'dah and Sil'dih after the plainsfolk lalafell (presumably similar to their ancestors from the southern islands) and dunesfolk lalafell (presumably adapted to the harsh Thanalan deserts) went to war. The dunesfolk won, Sil'dih and the remnants of Belah'dia were destroyed, and the plainsfolk relocated to La Noscea (where you can now see a proportionately large number of Plainsfolk NPCS).

People who don't like to read a lot don't like a bunch of needlessness shoved down their throats. There's a thread in this very forum complaining that there's too much reading now. If you like to read and like to immerse yourself in the world, stop and talk to the people in it. You'll be pleasantly surprised. Moreover, give them some time. ARR is a base expansion and 1.0's storylines were mostly eradicated to build an accessible-to-new-players game from scratch. As we get content patches you can bet a lot of it's coming back and a lot more is coming with it.

[Yoohre_WildRiver]

some npcs are just standing around and if you mouseover them a chat bubble appears some say trivial things.. others are rich in lore.

yea wow has awesome lore... it also had since the mid 90s to develop is world.

also some lore is given in class/job quest. i read somewhere there is tonberry lore in the SCH quest line.. i wasnt planning to even bother about SCH.. but now that i know this, and tonberries are one of my favorite mobs in the FF series(PLEASE SE MAKE A TONBERRY DUNGEON AND A TONBERRY CHEF KNIFE DROP FOR MY CULINARIAN!!!) i will do the questline just for lore.

[DragonSlayer45]

I disagree. The lore in this game is well written in flavor texts like Final Fantasy XII or Dark Souls, and its not all up in your face like Final Fantasy XIII.

[Artamie]

some npcs are just standing around and if you mouseover them a chat bubble appears some say trivial things.. others are rich in lore.

yea wow has awesome lore... it also had since the mid 90s to develop is world.

also some lore is given in class/job quest. i read somewhere there is tonberry lore in the SCH quest line.. i wasnt planning to even bother about SCH.. but now that i know this, and tonberries are one of my favorite mobs in the FF series(PLEASE SE MAKE A TONBERRY DUNGEON AND A TONBERRY CHEF KNIFE DROP FOR MY CULINARIAN!!!) i will do the questline just for lore.

I second this idea, Tonberry Chef Knife would be really neat though I'm sure some will worry about the hygienics involved!

[Arbiter]

(PLEASE SE MAKE A TONBERRY DUNGEON AND A TONBERRY CHEF KNIFE DROP FOR MY CULINARIAN!!!) i will do the questline just for lore.

The Wanderer's Palace. Level 50 dungeon. It's all tonberries.