While this is a real jewel of a game I’m playing from it’s release… It’s a real shame that my personal story is not a personal story at all. While I do enjoy saving the world once or twice when I create a new character, it’s just sad that I can’t go the other way in my personal story. Sometimes I don’t want to be the hero, I don’t want to be the guy who’s praised by all those common people and peasants, Maybe I would like my necromancer to join the Elder Dragon in one way or the other. I can even Imagine some dynamic events starting not because random npc’s are starting to get nasty, but because of Players who are starting it from the evil side. That would create fun events for the players helping to clear the mess on the good side.
Why should we be stuck in the “Nice guy who likes flowers” personality? That should be my choice instead of the game forcing me into it. No matter what profession, what race, what path of the story I pick, even if I’m just roaming around the world, I always have to be the helpful guy with a good heart who can’t avoid being the hero in every situation.
I can imagine an antagonist storyline, but not just that. Those hearts on the map symbolize the good deeds you can do to help the ones in need. There could be another type of sign aswell where if you are attending you are actually doing the opposite. Like Helping the evil guys, or raising the dead who will occupy outposts and so on. This would create even more dynamic events branching from the players actions.
Guilds could also join one side or the other thus creating the prelude of the Guild Wars!
This was actually always the strong side of the mmorpgs. The difference between factions, paths and people who were introducing themselves as different personalities in a living world.
Well ideally we’d have ultimate freedom. However that’s not possible, a game by it’s very nature restricts and prevents (even a game of hopscotch limits you to only certain action). This is usually referred to as mechanics but in terms of narrative the same concept applies. There isn’t enough man power to produce enough content to do so. So it’s not an inherently bad thing that we don’t have more narrative freedom (a focus on a single plotline allows for more polish).
However what we do lack is expressiveness. Think about Mass Effect (which get’s brought up very often…) you’re always doing the same thing you just have the options to swing Paragon or Renegade while doing so and practically all that means is different dialog options. The ability to express differing opinions goes a long way in not limiting us to the: “Nice guy who likes flowers”-thing even if the dialog in the bigger scope doesn’t change anything.
Go to the mists. That’s where you are the bad guy who can steal the keeps from the good guys, if you want to see it that way.
If you want a detailed storyline with many actions and consequences then don’t play a PvE MMO. MMOs are about repeatability and shared environments. Repeated consequences are a bit contradictory and although every player wants their personal impact upon a shared environment it is hard to deliver.
Well ideally we’d have ultimate freedom. However that’s not possible, a game by it’s very nature restricts and prevents (even a game of hopscotch limits you to only certain action). This is usually referred to as mechanics but in terms of narrative the same concept applies. There isn’t enough man power to produce enough content to do so. So it’s not an inherently bad thing that we don’t have more narrative freedom (a focus on a single plotline allows for more polish).
However what we do lack is expressiveness. Think about Mass Effect (which get’s brought up very often…) you’re always doing the same thing you just have the options to swing Paragon or Renegade while doing so and practically all that means is different dialog options. The ability to express differing opinions goes a long way in not limiting us to the: “Nice guy who likes flowers”-thing even if the dialog in the bigger scope doesn’t change anything.
Well basically content is really created here at a good pace, just it’s not something that adds more variety, new contents so far are just expanding the same. While that’s a good thing, it’s just like adding new towers to the same castle instead of building new buildings. If they have the manpower creating the towers they could also focus to variety here.
You have a good point with Mass Effect there, but we’re looking at a MMO where the promise was: “This is your story”.
Go to the mists. That’s where you are the bad guy who can steal the keeps from the good guys, if you want to see it that way.
If you want a detailed storyline with many actions and consequences then don’t play a PvE MMO. MMOs are about repeatability and shared environments. Repeated consequences are a bit contradictory and although every player wants their personal impact upon a shared environment it is hard to deliver.
I am not thinking about satisfying every taste here, but you can really see that this adventure is one sided, with no real meaning of choice. As for the Mists…. ahh give me a better CPU already)
What I really want to say that even if there are no good or evil sides, we saw the struggle between Luxons and Kurzicks in GW 1. This didn’t really put players in good or evil side, however gave more variety in the personality of the story and PVP
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