Dynamic Story

[Betelgeuzah]

They have something Campaign-style planned.

I'd like there to be three kinds of stories in this game at the end of the day.

The major stories with their own cutscenes and encounters alá FFXI missions and quests. Every class has their own storyline as well as a major storyline that advances the expansion/vanilla. However, with less restrictions so that we can follow many storylines at once. Then, sidequests are text-only and flesh out the lore in more detail, while the major stories only use lore as the background and context for the events to unfold.

The second kind of story is one that happens more dynamically and is related to the current major events in the game, like what they're doing here and what they did with Besieged and Campaign. If possible have more dynamic environments as well as other sort of changes that can take place (ex. more, harder monsters in areas in enemy control, different weather, bonuses or debuffs depending on the situation). XI did the latter quite well, but did not excel at the former. Hopefully they can change that in the future. This type of story is a never-ending one or shifts in a way that does not affect the events as whole (you'd still be in conflict).

Third type of story is the story you create yourself, by allying with other people, making rivalries, and so on. The content has to encourage this sort of behavior and its quite hard to pull off, but by no means impossible. Companies may be the first step in bringing something like this to the game. Strengthen the community and expand it beyond friends and single linkshells to larger companies and the server as a whole. These stories are all unique and the developers only need to give us the tools.

With all three, considering how well the lore in this game is laid out, if not presented (yet), when everything is fleshed out this game can stand out from the rest easily. There's so many interesting aspects about it that make me want to find out more: Archons, the Empire, Wyrmking's horde, Ishgard, the Primals, Companies, the 7th Umbral era, the corse-monsters seen in few cs's so far, the events 15 (and 1500) years ago, and the list goes on. Make us care about what's happening, like you have done with this event, (and bring the game itself up to par), and the game will end up being, if not universal, at least my personal success.

I mean, even if the lore is not well presented, it tells you a lot when they can make us hyped about a patch with lore alone considering there is so little representation of it in-game. They truly have something special here. I don't want it to go to waste.