Otherland spans 4 thick volumes and yet ultimately touches only a handful of characters in a universe over a few years. Plenty of room to expand just using the rest of the lives of the characters directly or indirectly referenced in the novel.

Conversely, while not nearly as long, House of Suns tells the story of an entire civilization of millions of years. Plenty of room there to go more indepth, branch off and detail important (and even not so important events).

Humans have been creating stories for as long as we’ve been communicating.

I’ve never got why MMO storylines aren’t much more player driven. Neocron was a good (or bad, depending on how you look at it) example of this:

They would hold some great events, yet ultimately if the side they wanted to win was losing, they’d spawn npcs to help that side to ensure a certain outcome (and not even trying to play out any kind of storyline – just “oh look – sudden reinforcements!” and bam! Many generic guard mobs.

Similarly, the multi-shard system failed them because at one point on the server I was on, while the official storyline said that 2 factions were at war, in-game they were co-operating like the best of allies.

In another instance, they killed the leader of one of the factions, then rather than do something interesting like introduce a new leadership, with which they could have taken the story in new and interesting directions, they simply said “oh wait, that was faked, he’s still alive”

Then there’s some games (Face of Mankind tried this route) who just go “here’s your backstory, here’s your world. Now the players are the entire population of the world”. I don’t think this route will ever really work either – the players need to feel a reaction to their actions, not simply be allowed to do anything.

Pen and paper RPG game masters have been writing multiple storyline paths and rewriting storylines because their players did something unexpected for as long as there have been pen and paper RPGs. Why is it so hard for MMO developers to do the same?

With the odd exception, the developers don’t need to react to every little thing, but claiming 2 allies are at war is just silly. And spawning obvious mobs to ensure outcomes gets equally silly.

A developer could try to make a story more visible or important by tying it directly to the player’s progression of the game. Without meeting certain conditions, portions of the world would be locked out or even character progression can be locked.

There’s far more at play in an MMO that prevents us from becoming immersed in the story. There are so many immersion-breakers in MMOs, not the least of which are all the quest database websites and raid strat sites that compromise any need to think about how to play the game.

You don’t conquer the immersion issues by having better story–look at LotRO for an example of how well-written quest text and a great underlying story are still largely ignored in favor of playing the game. You conquer immersion issues by addressing those issues directly through improving mechanics and building the story into the game design.

How many single player RPGs have us enthralled like a good novel? I can name a few that pulled me in. I cared about the story, not finishing the game as fast as possible. Everyone assumes it can’t be done in an MMO but nobody as really tried.

I think TOR will be the first real attempt.

No. If there were better stories, we’d still ignore them so long as the story isn’t necessary to progress our characters. If the player has no reason to become engaged in the narrative, he’ll do the simplest, easiest, and quickest actions to aid in his character’s progression: ignoring the story all together and treating the game as a set of mechanics to be exploited or overcome.

The story needs to be built into the mechanics of the game–the mechanics have to go back to their D&D roots as conflict resolution methods to keep the story going.

The Legend of the Five Rings CCG did an interesting thing years ago by letting their players change the game’s lore and storyline. The devs took tournament results (especially regarding certain “hook” cards designed to tempt players) and turned the story “told” by player actions into the backstory for the next expansion’s lore. (Players registered to tournaments under certain houses, and their actions in the tournament reflected on their sword house.) It was a fascinating case study in game design, and taught me that while story is important, if we’re not really using the interactivity of our medium (games), evizaer is right, we may as well be making movies or writing novels.

Games are unique in their storytelling potential, but very few games have even started to tap that potential. Even the much-vaunted SWTOR is more likely to go the “barely interactive movie” route in its storytelling. Sure, there will be choices like the KOTOR games, but the interaction a player will have with the *world* of the MMO will likely be minimized. MMOs just aren’t the place for strong storytelling from a dev’s narrative, and until we can keep internet idiots down, they won’t be all that strong from a “let the players tell the story” either.

Story *is* important, but the story in an MMO will almost always be weaker than a story in a novel, a movie or even a single player game. It’s just a limitation of the genre and the anonymity (and idiocy) of the player base. (Which isn’t to say that everyone is an idiot, just that giving storytelling power to everyone will inevitably invite abuse, so most devs just don’t bother with it.)

As far as deriding quest text I think I’m being fair. A lot of it is meaningless filler and those who write it know that. When you write a one of quest to go kill pigs in a garden that isn’t really a quest. It is just a task.

I understand your point that the stories of these games we can’t participate in but at the same time our actions allow us to progress through them. We might not change what occurs but with each motion and effort we learn more. That, to me, seems very different from a book.

Every smuggler will experience the same story in TOR but that doesn’t cheapen it if the story was great. That is similar to saying that reading Dragon Lance is pointless because my roommate has read it. We take different things from it and an MMO can do that as well.

Essentially if there were better stories in these games I think they would draw us in more. If the lore was so rich and exciting we might forget those statistics for a minute and just read what the NPC is saying. I do that a lot after I’ve maxed one character.

Not at all. Playing Guitar Hero is not the same as playing a guitar. Playing music is different from hitting buttons when lights flash on a screen (no different if you add in the strumming element of the game). But reading static text on a computer screen that relays a story is the same as reading static text in a book that relays a story. The similarity is that neither story changes depending on what you do. The game lets you have an avatar to mess around with some unimportant facets of that world, but that has no effect on the story. After your character’s actions in the game world, nothing changes.

I’m not saying that story hurts MMOs, I’m saying that it fails in MMOs the way it’s done now. Story is trivial and useless to the player unless the player feels like reading static text for their own self-indulgence. The stories that MMOs offer players, even when players WANT to self-indulge, is often far worse than the story a good book offers.

A story-driven game is a game where the story is important to gameplay. If the player doesn’t understand the story, he can’t progress in such a game. MMOs are completely the opposite. You don’t need to know anything about the story in order to do anything in the game. I don’t see how you suggest designers change this–can you give a concrete example of the kind of design that would make a good story-driven MMO tick?

I’m making the suggestion that we allow players to make the game’s story happen through their actions.

“I’d rather try to find a good way to implement story element than just throw it all away.”

I never suggested we throw it away. I’m suggesting that we do it right and do it well instead of treating MMOs like glorified single-player games. I’d like to harness the power of MMOs to tell stories as well as provide platforms for challenging gameplay. Currently MMOs do neither of these well.