Does an MMO need a story? [MMOPINION]

While I was playing FF14, I realized something. If you do the Warring Triad quest series and each of the role quests from Shadowbringers, you get an exclusive quest that follows up on all of these, and that blew my mind. That gave me the idea for a game where the entire thing is nothing but what are essentially “side quests”, but they all connect to other side quests. If you finish quests 1, 2, and 3 (in any order), you can do quest 4. If you do quests 5 and 6, you can do quest 7. If you do quests 4 and 7, you can do quest 8. That sort of thing. That way, the world continually grows alongside your progress, but without a main story, so it’s all at your whim and where you decide to go next. As you go through it, each quest becomes a payoff of a previous quest. This can also bring together many different characters you’ve interacted with that all remember how you helped them, and you can watch their stories continue to play out together. Additionally, it becomes a nice surprise when you see two quest lines you really liked have merged together to give you a new quest that follows off of both of them. Looking at the different examples Josh illustrated, I suppose mine would be maybe a hybrid of examples 2 and 3, but with the potential of all the quests connecting to each other at some point.

A good story and characters makes me care about the world.

This is my problem with every Survival MMO. They just leave you alone to explore, but without a story or point to your existence in this world it just feels empty.

Swtor's story put story considerations on the map in my mind. It wasn't something that I was considering in MMOs before that.

Story matters a lot, but if you're going to forgo a "main story" the game needs to have EXCEPTIONALLY robust systems to allow players to create their own meaningful stories. and unfortunately I think it's just too expensive for most companies to invest in a game that much.

2 and 3 are definitely my preferred structures. A pet peeve of mine is when an mmo starts with our character getting a tutorial from some other character that is really important in the setting. Like in Star Wars Galaxies, they changed the intro so that Han Solo saves our character from the empire. I keep thinking that it's really weird how Han Solo personally saved every single player from the Empire, he can't have enough time in the day for that. Whereas with the old intro, our character was saved from pirates by the Empire. Like maybe you could say it is a little weird that every player was saved from pirates, but I can believe that a lot of people in the Star Wars setting have had some kind of run in with pirates, and that the nearest equivalent of the police do their job and save civilians from criminals on a regular basis. It obviously just comes down to personal preference but I generally like when the story of an mmo is written with the mmo aspect in mind, so that the fact that a lot of player characters are coexisting and more than likely interacting makes at least some sense. Like if two players were to role play and tell each other about their journeys, it's nice if they can at least make it sound like they've been on two separate journeys, instead of both players doing the exact same story. So like if two heroes in City of Heroes say they've talked to the same contact, it's not crazy that they both talked to that contact and received similar missions to stop random criminals, because if a city had an army of heroes they likely would talk to the same, relatively few contacts and fight the same gangs, just based on proximity.

I find a split into chapters valuable for this video: 0:00 Opening 1:33 The MMO story types 2:06 1) No Story 5:16 2) Optional Stories, but not the focus 7:27 3) Story Focused, but each story is independant and concurrent. They all have an ending 10:03 4) Stand-Alone Stories. Linear Progression from Story to Story 12:54 5) Multi-Year Main Story Focused 16:53 Summary

I was also intimidated by the scale of the FF14 story but as I got into it, it really became my favourite model for a story. I play extremely casually and in a sense, playing FF14 is like reading an very long novel with a great narrative. Although, unlike many of my friends, I actually enjoyed the base game a lot but, without any spoilers, the events between the base game and heavensward had some of the best story telling I've ever seen and the expansion somehow lived up to that standard through and through. So to me this is perfect. I work hard all day and play about an hour every evening and a bit more in the weekend and watch the story unfold over time.

Typically, if I am going to devote a large amount of time to an MMO, something I'll play for years, I like a narrative story to be building to something. I don't like too many isolated stories, because it feels like there's no real canon between them sometimes, your accomplishments exist only within the very local area they happen in. But I do like the idea of an open world existing for me to explore and having the choice of whether to pursue that narrative, rather than being explicitly locked into it.

It actually was the USP for me back when SWTOR got released. 8 different story lines in which some classes had amazingly told storys... and it was at the early days of swtor, before they made it much easier. So you still had to group up for H2 quests and even some bosses in class quests where brutaly hard.

I definitely fall into the #5 camp. I play RPG's strictly to be invested in a world and its inhabitants and includes MMO's. I can find a games systems and customization to be absolutely amazing but if I don't have any attachment to the world and its characters I'm likely to play a long seesion or two and forget it exists.

Personally I’m a fan of smaller interconnected stories that allow me to experience the world without needing to be a part of some great quest. While it’s great to feel like the main character, sometimes I want to feel like an Average adventurer trying to help people the best I can. An overarching story is still a great addition but the quiet quests in between are for some reason just as enjoyable for me if not more. Maybe that’s why I’ve stuck with RuneScape for a lot longer then I should have.

I don't need a story in an MMO, but it's a good bonus and I like a main story that isn't about saving the world, but a story about the people of the world, their strives, interests and conflicts, along with multiple secondary stories/questlines for each zone. Otherwise, the quests just need to be fun. Have a sequence of good combinations of interesting enemies to fight, or platforming, puzzles or racing to somewhere, or escorting even, everything can be made fun with good execution and good enough challenge.

I would strongly argue against ESO being part of the fifth example with the story being linear from start to finish. It plays far more like example three, with self-contained stories approachable in any order. There is technically a chronology but it really doesn't matter, and different DLCs do not lead on from one another.

That’s a great question, I love Ankama games, Dofus/ Wakfu and more recently Waven, the team has structured each games as a sequel in the narrative to the previous one, the world building is incredible and each quest has impact on how you play and there’s no « filler » content, the stories are well written and I love to create new characters to reimmerse myself in their stories

I play Lord of the Rings Online, and following a specific ark of the main story questline was so immersive and engaging that I consider it one of the best gaming expiriences of my life. It was like reading a very good book, but actually actively participating in it's events

I always liked how City Of Heroes handled it. There are stories which your character can take part in or not and there are through-lines that can connect those stories but its more used as a backdrop to write your own character's narrative. And then they added the mission builder feature where you could create your own stories which was awesome.

Another one in the FFXIV #5 camp. Though I will say I very much appreciate how they've been gradually shifting their major patches to be more into the branching arcs as opposed to keeping them very much focused on just the MSQ like was the case in ARR and HW. The patch MSQ generally gets a good bit shorter as expansions go on, but the side story chains got more robust and longer. So at this point while everyone does the MSQ, a lot of other major mass appeal stories open up as well. Generally speaking the Raid Series, the Alliance Raid Series, a Trial Series, the Relic Line, 3 Tribal Line, all pop up and have varying levels of interaction with the main story and other side stories. I especially like how the Tribal Lines have been unlocked by experiencing the core stories of their given zones in recent years, while it makes them harder to unlock quickly, it does make them feel more integral to their zone, rather than just a quest hub. Now I can say, I don't mind having the Main Story be less of a focus than FFXIV, but when that center mast tentpole is missing altogether I have a hard time getting into it, and I generally find the gameplay's flaws stand out way more. GW2 falls into this space for me, since the central story exists, but isn't very constricting, it's poor management has made it vey disorienting to playthrough w/o a guide, and then it's more gameplay centered flaws reveal itself and false potholes get stepped into because you can very easily skip over important points. The farther you get away from a cohesive experience, the stronger external resources become in comparison to the game, and when I feel like the Wiki is more important than the game, my investment diminishes or fails to hold. I find this to end up being very commonly true for games as they lean more heavily into the sandbox side of the line.

I really love the way runescape stories and quests feel, that world has so much life without the need for a main story and it's fantastic. Have you ever thought about doing a video on combat in MMOs? Action combat vs tab target vs hybrid, with good and bad examples of each. I love action combat but it's so difficult to find good MMOs that also have good action combat. I used to play tab target MMOs but I just can't get invested in them anymore. (if you already have a video on this topic I may have missed it)

One issue I have with the vast majority of MMO stories is how single player focused they are. rarely, if ever have I played an MMORPG story that took the MMO part into consideration. you are the one and only chosen one who can save the world, except so is everyone else in my guild