I have gotten bored rather quickly with LOTRO, in my early thirties (the usual ‘been there done that’ feeling, ‘WoW with a worse combat system’, and blah-blah-blah). People are telling me that the game’s strong point is the story, and that I have completely missed it. Maybe.

I remember there was some kind of a story that started in the first instances. At low levels I was usually outlevelling the Chapter instances so I was able to solo them. I could take time to properly read the quest/story text and get into it. For the later main story and multi-step quests, those that required to group with guild mates or PUGs in a dungeon or instance, all of this got lost. There was always someone in the group (or all of them) who had already done the quest/dungeon/chapter, so we were unwillingly being rushed through the content. It’s not like they were the proverbial loot kiddies either, I was in an old-timers’ guild, some even knew the names of the five mages of whatever from the original.

Then you know, there is something like an important scripted event happening, like an NPC who starting to morph and telling you why and what you should do next, and /groupsay is all about a groupmate’s new graphics card :). Then again, if for instance the guild only has a couple tanks or healers, you can’t expect them to remain interested in the story for their n-th run through the same instance.

Who knows, if I could have performed these steps solo (at an appropriate level, mind you), at my own pace, properly read and get into the story, maybe I would be still playing and paying :).

As for STO, regardless of how well the story is written nine times out of ten our chat tab will look like:

Spock: “You saved our people. Live long and prosper!”
DaKilla says to group: “fag lol”
Spoque says to guild: “who watched the game yesterday night?”
Ipwnjoo shouts in global: “WTS red shrit +3 faling on bridge lol”

So why bother? ;)

Babs — it can’t hurt :) I’m sure there’s a lot that your designers can do without spending a whole lot more time than they have available. Interesting characters that we care about, that’d go a huge way… (not that I’ve seen that in pretty much any MMO…)

Tzing: yeah, you’re right. The more well-defined the story property is, the less the designers should have to work. If they go too far, then they’ll just mess things up! But they still need to be entertaining!

As a gamer (and an armchar designer in my own mind) I get frustrated with the lack of story in most MMOs today. It really does seem hard to have a decent game and a good story. It sucks when a game modeled after a movie can’t get a good story, you know, because there’s already a prequel. I do feel for story writers for MMOs that create their own worlds, that’s got to be much more difficult when you don’t already have characters and a sense of their personality.