One of the fundamental problems with storytelling in an MMORPG is that the game provides two basic types of experience: gaming and social. There needs to be a well defined balance between the game's story (meta) and the character's story (micro), but also some consideration must be given to the player as well, and the fact that their interraction with the world is but one facet of the game.
The World of Warcraft approach to questing and game story has been to focus on the meta story - the world in peril, pushing back the never ending assault of the burning legion on the world of Azeroth. The micro story of each character suffers as a result. Though each character grows in strength and level, there is not much in terms of "character" development. You never "mature" from one class into another, and though you may attain titles and honors, there are no real "ceremonies" or acklowledgement within the game, aside from the odd congratulatory mail from NPCs. In this regard, WoW plays emphasizes the MMO aspect while minimizing the RPG - it sacrifices the small scale narrative and character growth of an RPG for the meta story and social gameplay. The real accomplishments of the game are collective: success in the PvP arena or Battleground system, or success with the 10-20-25-40 player raiding content.
There are small nods to a micro story - opening the dungeon Ahn Quiraj required the completion of a massive quest chain, at the end of which one character on each realm was able to finally break the seal and open the instance. In this instance, individual players were able to impact the world and interract on a "personal" level with the meta story. Other such quests have been since added in small quantity, most notably the zone-wide quest chain in Dragonblight for the Horde (there's some sort of Alliance counterpart, I'm sure) that culminates in the death of an Alliance and Horde Hero, the overthow of Sylvannas Windrunner, and the retaking of the Undercity. Even so, these quests that attempt to draw the player into the meta storyline do little beyond make the player feel like a witness to great events - not a participant. The gameplay video was a nice touch, as with the short one you encounter before Brutallus in the Sunwell. These small moments help to draw the character, and the player, into the world. Ultimately they fall flat due, in my opinion, to their infrequency - they tell little stories but ones that are largely unrelated and don't build on any sort of narrative or momentum.
It's no secret to anyone who has heard me talk at length about my feelings about WoW that I believe Blizzard blew a golden opportunity. Before the release of Burning Crusade, the game did make small efforts to develop characters. They were simplistic, but they did exist: class quests as you leveled, or epic weapon quests for some classes allowed the player to participate in a narrative that was specifically for them. With the release of Wrath of the Lich King, a move was made back in this direction for the Death Knight class. NPCs treat Death Knights with disgust, as does the general population before each individual character is accepted as a member of their faction. In this sense, the DK earns its place as a fighter of the Alliance or Horde. This type of character accomplishment has a strong role playing aspect to it, and manages to draw the character into the story. The starter DK quests are also well designed, taking the character through a number of linked objectives to prove their worth, though they ultimately reject domination by the Lich King and defect to their faction instead.
This type of interraction and questing could have made WoW into a truly phenomenal game. Unfortunately, the choice was made to bog the game down under hundreds and hundreds of quests unrelated to any greater objectives or to develop the feel of the world. "Go fetch" and "go kill" quests are just vehicles for free money and experiencem not storytelling. Players were resigned to grinding out these quests for miscelaneous rewards to gain wealth, rather than move a story point forward. The balance between narrative and practical advancement was lost. WotLK seems to attempt to right this imbalance, but the formula was already set. The excellent quest lines and the ability for quest completion to literally redesign the world (absolutely brilliant) become burried under all the bloated extra quests that simply exist to grant xp and useless items, guide players through each zone from quest hub to quest hub, and occupy player time. Every thing the game does right is countered by something the game does wrong, leaving it at a net standstill.
It's because of this "overburdening" of quests in WoW that I was nervous to hear that NCSoft had implemented a large number of quests in their forthcoming "Aion: The Tower of Eternity" MMORPG. Having experienced NCSoft's idea of quests in Lineage II, I was greatly alarmed. Quests in Lineage II were generally not story telling devices - instead, they were ways to maximize your use of time. Since you were going out to hunt anyway to regain experience you'd lost, or build up some materials and wealth to craft some new gear, you simply accepted a quest that would take you days or weeks to complete that you could inch forward on simultaneously.
There were also "character narrative" quest lines at level 20, 35, 37, and 39 that allowed you to develop your character into a more advanced and specialized class. At level 75 you completed an even more complex and complicated quest line to gain access to a new set of abilities. Beyond that there were additional complex questlines for becoming a noble character, a ranking that came with numerous privledges and special qualities. These types of quests were frustrating but made the player the agent of their character's development. They also punctuated the character's lifespan well, giving the players a feeling that their character was truly advancing periodically. The game did not have many quests, but still managed to draw the player/character into the world by the development of the character through the levels and - most notably - through server reputation. Being a game that focused almost entirely on world pvp and wars between individual players, each person was deeply tied to the other players through social and political actions.
The open pvp system forced players to constantly watch their backs, protect their friends, and build the strength of their clans, alliances, and relationships with other individual players and groups. This social/political structure was incredibly immersive and addictive, drawing players into server drama and making each person an integral part of the server. The "meta story" of Lineage 2 was not a world of NPCs in peril - it was a world entirely populated by players. The void of content actually served to increase the immersive qualities of the game. Player choices - alliances, wars, castle sieges - these drove the story of the world forward and each server was unique and told a different "story". There were servers on which people generally cooperated and worked together, sharing castles and collaborating to defeat the most difficult world spawn raid bosses. Then there were servers like mine (Kain) where massive wars were formed on a server-wide scale with kill zones, territorial lockdowns, and constant raids of the "enemy" territory. As a casual virtual social anthropologist it was an incredibly fascinating experiment in human nature. Given a blank slate, people responded with a terrific breadth of actions, from incredibly collaborative and supportive to aggressive, violent, or manipulative.
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