Story: Or, where can I get me some of that...

[Hellinar]

This could be an entire discussion unto itself, because the whole point of this thread is to highlight that a good story does get in the way of gameplay. Maybe then we could go from needing to continually attract more Achiever archetypes to getting the millions of others who like RPGs, or GTA, and so on.

You would need a story based game to really make a dynamic sharded world work. If you measure your progress by unlimited experience/loot accumulation, people are just going to move to the shard with the optimal history. Soft cap the loot and experience gain, so people can fairly easily do “enough” on any shard to reach the max loot and experience gain. Then the game becomes not about how much you have, but about the story of how you got it.

A story based game would maintain a lot of server history about each character’s adventures. Which would be the basic gameplay, rather than acquisition. Making the max character power pretty easy to obtain would remove one area of complexity from the developers plate. Perhaps leaving enough resources to deal with tracking the varied histories of each server. I’d like to see someone try it at least. Maybe something like it has been done in the text MUDs?

[Venkman]

Absolutely. But here again is a whole new topic.

To me, you can't have compelling story in a game built on DIKU loot game. The game mechanic is fundamentally at odds with narrative as long as the only method of character growth is killing stuff. I long for the days when letting something escape (Ultima IV) was a good thing.

This is why I rather like LoTRO's Deeds (and EQ2's Collection Quests). These are ways to advance a character without having to kill stuff dead all the time. You can't rely on them exclusively for advancement, but it's a start.

All in all though, thinking about a narrative-based MMO is most important because it's thinking differently at all. There are so many different ways to give both short and long term goals to players while wrapping them in an immersive 3D environment. It seems so few with the cash are willing to take the chance to design it.

And yes, I know why. But I can still dream :)

[Stephen Zepp]

Late to the thread, but wanted to interject a couple of comments:

The main reason this type of dynamic state to the world has been avoided by so many has been stated by a couple of folks, but the most important one is market perception of being cheated. SoE proved this with the whole Waking the Sleeper deal making a permanent change to the game world--endless amounts of follow-on players complained bitterly that "we didn't get to see that content that we paid for!"...and I'm not sure the market has matured enough yet (in fact, I think it's gone the opposite direction with the mass of WoW MMO noobs in the market now). Hell, I believe that being denied content and the endless complaints is what brought around the whole concept of instances--the anger over uberguilds clearing all the boss mobs on servers was endless and profound, and instances helped to resolve those complaints.

That being said, I still strongly believe it can be done, and should be done. I still lay claim to the whole concept of "faction" in the first place--I was a beta tester on TES:Arena and part of the community design team for TES:Daggerfall--and Daggerfall was one of the first games where you had reputations that defined how the NPC's interacted with you--and that was my idea.

In my mind the problem is however that this hasn't ever gone past the "personal" (or single player) stage as folks have mentioned above--faction is only persistent for you as a single player, and ultimately there is no change to the game world.

Someone above mentioned it somewhat--but to me the perfect MMO has no developer created content at all. When a server starts up, it's geography, raw materials and resources, some npc breeder AI's that start to form NPC communities, and underlying mechanics for player and NPC's building villages, towns, then cities.

If an NPC city is overwhelmed by players (or other NPC's) it is gone, and the area changes--either becomes fallow, or the winners take over.

Mobs don't spawn repeatedly--NPC "communities" breed up, level up,and when they die, they are gone.

I fully admit there are some huge systems and technology issues to overcome before this becomes reality, but it's not as difficult as it sounds--hell, I coded breeder mobs and self-terraforming terrain for my DIKU mud (ACK!Mud 3.0 and beyond for anyone interested) back in 97-98.

There are challenges with players over-killing areas, but that's what GM events are for (invasions, etc). There are issues with lots of things honestly, but man would it be a fun game...

[Merusk]

See, I don't think that 'breeding NPCs' will ever work until NPCs are equal in power and most intelligence to PCs.  Using breeding you're going to wipe lots of places clean - particularly on the server's first day - unless you greatly accelerate that 'breeding'  to the point that it's just "Random Spawning" like in current Dikus.  UO tried this and proved how badly lesser-powered NPCs got slaughtered, right?

To protect themselves, NPCs would also have to eliminate this pattern: "Hey Why's Thogg chasing human? Me stand here until me know more or Thogg call for help.  Hey sound like Thogg dead, wow suck for Thogg.... AGGH. I get you humanz!"    No.. you're going to penetrate the heavily-populated fortress, you're going to have to fight a fortress of mobs at once, not 2, 3 or even 5.   

But that doesn't fit into the Hero model of games.  That is the ultimate problem.  Even though you know subconsciously that there's thousands of other folks doing the same quest, saving the same lost NPC, it's still about your character the Hero.  Make players a cog in the wheel, just an average joe, and what's the turnout going to be?

[Bunk]

This thread is really making me miss my early AC days. Two things about it stand out for me in relation. There was an event regarding the waking of "the Big Bad Evil Twinkie Eater".

Basically, certain goals in a new dungeon had to be achieved before he was released. So they put it in place and said "If anyone were foolish enough to go in this dungeon and break the big crystal, a terrible evil will awaken. Therefore everyone should make sure noone ever does this." So, naturally, half the server decided to try to free the bad guy. If I remember right, they even made the dungeon itself pvp+ on the non-pvp shards, and it took weeks of battling before the bad guy was released on every shard. They even put a monument in game commemorating the attempted defence of the dungeon, but only on the shard that held out the longest.

The other thing this thread reminded me of was brought up by Slayerik - the control of towns. We had that in Darktide, with litterally no ingame mechanics being involved. Since there were no town guards, everywhere was pvp+. Territory was based on where your character's lifestone was - that was your respawn point. If you held the lifestone outside a town, you held that town. It led to a situation where large guilds controlled very specific regions for long periods of time. What made it work though, was that there were in game advantages. Some towns had vendors with better rates, some were closer to good hunting areas, some had unique NPCs required for certain big quests. Therefore, guilds fought over them. Since you needed numbers to win, there were constant shifts in alliances and such, and you ended up with a very dynamic political situation.

It really was a unique and amazing situation. I admit, being in a game where you could be ganked every waking second wasn't everyones cup of tea - but it was definitely interesting. I think the biggest thing that hurt it in the long run was the good old Diku level system. In the early days, level differences weren't enough to prevent people from competing. Eventually though, the veterens grinded there way to the point that new characters couldn't affect things anymore, and the whole dynamic started to unravel somewhat. Was really fun while it lasted though.

[Stephen Zepp]

See, I don't think that 'breeding NPCs' will ever work until NPCs are equal in power and most intelligence to PCs.  Using breeding you're going to wipe lots of places clean - particularly on the server's first day - unless you greatly accelerate that 'breeding'  to the point that it's just "Random Spawning" like in current Dikus.  UO tried this and proved how badly lesser-powered NPCs got slaughtered, right?

To protect themselves, NPCs would also have to eliminate this pattern: "Hey Why's Thogg chasing human? Me stand here until me know more or Thogg call for help.  Hey sound like Thogg dead, wow suck for Thogg.... AGGH. I get you humanz!"    No.. you're going to penetrate the heavily-populated fortress, you're going to have to fight a fortress of mobs at once, not 2, 3 or even 5.   

But that doesn't fit into the Hero model of games.  That is the ultimate problem.  Even though you know subconsciously that there's thousands of other folks doing the same quest, saving the same lost NPC, it's still about your character the Hero.  Make players a cog in the wheel, just an average joe, and what's the turnout going to be?

I can't argue against any of your points, except that I'm not aimed at your standard MMORPG style fighting, levelling, or anything. Instancing may somehow fit into this as well, although I really am still against the whole idea due to break in immersion, maybe it's feasible with the proper background story (the world is multi-dimensional and exists on many co-existing planes for example?)

I just know at a deep level that until the re-spawn on a timer mechanism goes away, and real concept of NPCS and immersion is broken deeply.

[cmlancas]

I can't argue against any of your points, except that I'm not aimed at your standard MMORPG style fighting, levelling, or anything. Instancing may somehow fit into this as well, although I really am still against the whole idea due to break in immersion, maybe it's feasible with the proper background story (the world is multi-dimensional and exists on many co-existing planes for example?)

I just know at a deep level that until the re-spawn on a timer mechanism goes away, and real concept of NPCS and immersion is broken deeply.

So what is the answer? I very much think that the "hero" aspect of the genre is very much linked to the human element that John Vorhaus describes as "each of us is the center of our own universe." When you save random_npc01 from scary_dragon02, obviously you have exhausted the content, but to exhaust the content permanently from other players does not seem feasible. How does Random_Hero06 know that you have completed the quest already while he saves random_npc01?

On another note, what if you created a game that rivaled the market penetration of World of Warcraft? (Sure, this is a long shot, but roll with me here on this one.) I think that, from a dev perspective, one will run into problems creating alternate rolling spawns on different shards, creating alternate rolling spawns for 'content hogs' (intense players), and keeping the content updated when content is exhausted. Does the idea of the same content being played on different servers elicit the same response from you as a re-spawn timer on a single server? Each server has essentially the same game, and multiple people are playing the same experience.

Personally, I think the future of MMORPGS is somewhere in between a good game of Second Life (or whatever virtual world that is mostly PC oriented) and Defense of the Ancients. A good backstory plus engaging gameplay that has the "ease of entry but difficultly to master" equals a winner. There is something to be said about why PVP is so popular in World of Warcraft when compared to other games that have instituted it. By moving the focus from NPCs to PCs, I think that we, as an MMO community, move away from the respawn-timer culture.

[Vinadil]

The issue with WoW PvP, though, is that it is completely separate from the "world", except for the Loot you need to glean from it... in the instances that allow you to completely skip any other actual human players.  So, basically you have a part of the game where you never see other players (to get loot), and then a part of the game that is ouside the real world where you interact with them.

Don't get me wrong, I spent months and months enjoying myself with guildies in BGs and Arenas, and 2-man arena fights were some of the most fun I had in an MMO in a long while.

But, I just feel like they are missing out on some other fun things.  For example:

Imagine they had "resource instances" similar to a 20-man dungeon.  When they are first released the instance IS a 20-man dungeon, and the first guild to beat it would Own it.  Depending on the zone they would get some flower/alchemy/metal/whatever resource per Day.  But, every day at XX time they would then have to defend it just like a BG against all others.  Perhaps the window would stay open for 2 hours or so.  If they lost they would not lose anything except future gains, but it would be a way for guilds to "harvest" resources for Raids and such without flying around the world looking for random spawns.

It would also give players a way to make a mark on the game map.

I really don't think a player-driven world is all that difficult, especially given developers can always "repeat" content by just sending in another Invasion or some sort and having the player base rise up to beat yet Another evil ruler.

Maybe this style of play only interests a small part of the MMO market, but I think even that small part would be profitable for a company that could pull it off.

[cmlancas]

I think that that might be easier if you broke players into teams moreso than giving instances out on a first come, first served basis. I can -easily- see that being exploitable or gamebreaking. If you haven't seen good drama, go check out the EVE boards. It's worth it. Really.

[Samwise]

Does anyone else remember all the dynamic story stuff that the Seed team talked about before it turned out that they didn't know how to code and the game went up in smoke?  Different NPCs with changing agendas using players as pawns, that sort of thing.  If any of it had actually panned out I think it would've been much more interesting than the "player event" type things that we generally associate with story in today's MMOs.

[Raguel]

Does anyone else remember all the dynamic story stuff that the Seed team talked about before it turned out that they didn't know how to code and the game went up in smoke?  Different NPCs with changing agendas using players as pawns, that sort of thing.  If any of it had actually panned out I think it would've been much more interesting than the "player event" type things that we generally associate with story in today's MMOs.

Seed was the mmo I was really looking forward to the most. Now there's just EQ clones as far as the eye can see. :( Well, not exactly but close enough that I'm not particularly interested in any of them.

[Slayerik]

Does anyone else remember all the dynamic story stuff that the Seed team talked about before it turned out that they didn't know how to code and the game went up in smoke?  Different NPCs with changing agendas using players as pawns, that sort of thing.  If any of it had actually panned out I think it would've been much more interesting than the "player event" type things that we generally associate with story in today's MMOs.

Seed was the mmo I was really looking forward to the most. Now there's just EQ clones as far as the eye can see. :( Well, not exactly but close enough that I'm not particularly interested in any of them.

Seed was perma-vaporware. Neat ideas ... but I'm pretty sure everyone knew that game wasn't going to be made.


PVP is cool when you give a shit about something. In Wow, its getting 'teh shiny' (like everything else in the game) and/or your title. In UO, it was your own survival / reputation / enemies loot / the IDOC loot / etc. In Shadowbane it was your city / rep / loot. In AO it was your title.

When designing your game, you need to know what you are aiming for your player to give a shit about. If you go...'hey, we have a pretty good PvE game we might as well tack on some PVP' ... it will be underwhelming to say the least. Give me something to fight for...be it survival, towns, resources, or reputation/points.

[Sairon]

A lot of what has been discussed seems like ways to force story on to the player, as has been shown in the past people generally don't give a shit and simply go for the road that gives you the best pay offs. Take a look at WoW, there's loads of quest lines that are small storylines in themselves, but how many actually reads them? It would be cool if Blizzard did a survey on how many people simply skip to the bottom for the objectives or simply tab out to thottbot. I'm fairly certain the majority simply see quests as a way to earn xp.

I believe the root of the problem is that MMORPGs have a totally diffrent sets of motivators than normal RPGs. MMORPGs are much more achievement based, people accept a rougher leveling curve and a slower rate of content digestion in MMORPGs than in normal RPGs. This can be for numerous reasons, but I think it's a lot because achievements feels more rewarding since you can show of the epeen to others. When you sit down with a Final Fantasy game you easily get immersed and sucked in for several reasons. A very large reason for this is because you don't get interupted and constantly reminded of the presence of other real world player through for example chatting. Also, you don't feel like you're competing with other players.

Of course there's a niche within the MMO playerbase which I think would partake in an ongoing storyline of free will and not because of the rewards, and that's of course the RP playerbase.

In the end I think there might be a way to create a story which could add value to some customers, but I think the resources you need to spend to create it is way to large for the pay off, better to just focus that cash on making a better game.

[Vinadil]

The thing is... Achievement and Immersion do not have to be mutually exclusive.  I remember one time in SB (eeaarrly days) when we dwarves were on a small Ice island doing our normal thing and some GM/God/Dog thing entered the world.  We spent the next hour + chasing him down and killing him at which time our Guildleader was awarded a few trinkets to hand out as he would.

We enjoyed it, would have enjoyed more of it, but it was just impractical.  I don't know if THAT type of story event would ever be practical in an MMO because it would take teams of Live people to perform them as well as all of the "why them and not me" issues.

But, I don't think that it is fair to say: "Because people do not read the text in a quest they are not interested in a story."

Quests are NOT stories, at least not in any recognizable way.  A story is a re-telling of a linear set of events that either has happened or Is happening.  Once you read it, it is done.  When you get to the end... you have the end.  Quests are merely a collection of tasks/tests that random NPCs assign to us in order to see if we have what it takes to earn some XP and cash/loot.  Then when we level we move on to the next Taskmasters.  There is no other logical way to see them, and given enough time I think you will find the majority of people end up realizing this.

It is not a fault of the player, nor is it fair to say that "Players don't like stories".  I think it is more accurate to say that players like GOOD stories that Actually matter.  One of the things that will allow games like AC and Shadowbane (and EVE though it is still actually profitable as well) to live on for yeeaaars after they are actually played is the Stories that those games wrote.  Any given night I could start a conversation by just saying in Vent, "Hey, remember such and such time on this server when that happened?"  The story lives on because people like stories.  Even people who missed ONE event in the story got to see it unfold and be a part because it took Months to be written.  WoW just does not hit THAT spot, for me at least.  "Hey remember that one Kharazan run where this happened to soandso?"... "Oh you mean THIS time?"... "No, no, it was, you know THIS one."... "Hmm, you mean when we did that one boss?"

You get the point... the repetition of it all just drowns out any potential for a real or meaningful story.

[Sairon]

I agree with that. However those stories are created without the devs presenting the players with a story. They're created by the players interaction with other players and the world.

Achivement and immersion doesn't have to be mutually exclusive, but when something is very achivement driven players often ignore the story and focus on what actions gives the best pay offs. That is if we're talking about dev created stories.

[Merusk]

If there is achievement, then immersion will always be secondary.  Always.  It's the way folks are wired. You're not actually that little avatar on the screen, and you know that in the back of your head, even if you're pretending to be it.  However, the achievement is real and yours far more than it is the avatars.  As such, it becomes your primary motivator.

I say this as someone who DOES read quest text.

See, I don't think that 'breeding NPCs' will ever work until NPCs are equal in power and most intelligence to PCs.  Using breeding you're going to wipe lots of places clean - particularly on the server's first day - unless you greatly accelerate that 'breeding'  to the point that it's just "Random Spawning" like in current Dikus.  UO tried this and proved how badly lesser-powered NPCs got slaughtered, right?

To protect themselves, NPCs would also have to eliminate this pattern: "Hey Why's Thogg chasing human? Me stand here until me know more or Thogg call for help.  Hey sound like Thogg dead, wow suck for Thogg.... AGGH. I get you humanz!"    No.. you're going to penetrate the heavily-populated fortress, you're going to have to fight a fortress of mobs at once, not 2, 3 or even 5.  

But that doesn't fit into the Hero model of games.  That is the ultimate problem.  Even though you know subconsciously that there's thousands of other folks doing the same quest, saving the same lost NPC, it's still about your character the Hero.  Make players a cog in the wheel, just an average joe, and what's the turnout going to be?

I can't argue against any of your points, except that I'm not aimed at your standard MMORPG style fighting, levelling, or anything. Instancing may somehow fit into this as well, although I really am still against the whole idea due to break in immersion, maybe it's feasible with the proper background story (the world is multi-dimensional and exists on many co-existing planes for example?)

I just know at a deep level that until the re-spawn on a timer mechanism goes away, and real concept of NPCS and immersion is broken deeply.

I wasn't arguing exclusively around your standard MMOs.  I was arguing in terms of broad design ideas.  Even if there's no leveling, diku-fighting, or any of that.. you'll still see that same stupid AI.  The same patterns of Mob behavior. Why? Because if mobs were 'smart' people would lose, or they wouldn't be able to solo.  Both are relative no-nos these days. 

As I see it, folks want single player games in a multiplayer space.  That's the 'I'm the hero' idea.  In a game that offers any kind of immersion, story or sweeping dynamic changes, you're going to need plebians who are the pawns and foot soldiers dying for the glory of the hero.  The nameless masses are what drive things in any story, you just don't pay attention to them because they're nameless.

  In a 24/7/365 live MMO those plebians are going to be those of us talking here, because we can't put in the time to become those heros.  Simple fact.  That's also why I'm fine with the current state of things.

[Stephen Zepp]

[snip]


I wasn't arguing exclusively around your standard MMOs.  I was arguing in terms of broad design ideas.  Even if there's no leveling, diku-fighting, or any of that.. you'll still see that same stupid AI.  The same patterns of Mob behavior. Why? Because if mobs were 'smart' people would lose, or they wouldn't be able to solo.  Both are relative no-nos these days. 

As I see it, folks want single player games in a multiplayer space.  That's the 'I'm the hero' idea.  In a game that offers any kind of immersion, story or sweeping dynamic changes, you're going to need plebians who are the pawns and foot soldiers dying for the glory of the hero.  The nameless masses are what drive things in any story, you just don't pay attention to them because they're nameless.

  In a 24/7/365 live MMO those plebians are going to be those of us talking here, because we can't put in the time to become those heros.  Simple fact.  That's also why I'm fine with the current state of things.

Which is why I'm leaning more and more to the "humans" being heros, and the "fodder" being npc's lead by the humans...helps to bridge that gap, even if it does include a semi-forced game mechanic (almost like everyone being a pet caster I guess, although of course the interface would be quite a bit more powerful and complex).

I do think it may be an endless loop though--people won't be satisfied with being a platoon captain, they would want to be the general. And they wouldn't be satisfied with running a village, they would have to be the capital.

Never said this was easy ;)

[Merusk]

Which is why I'm leaning more and more to the "humans" being heros, and the "fodder" being npc's lead by the humans...helps to bridge that gap, even if it does include a semi-forced game mechanic (almost like everyone being a pet caster I guess, although of course the interface would be quite a bit more powerful and complex).

I do think it may be an endless loop though--people won't be satisfied with being a platoon captain, they would want to be the general. And they wouldn't be satisfied with running a village, they would have to be the capital.

Yep, exactly, everyone wants to be the 'big hero.'  Whatever that highest tier is, folks want to hit it. (Being willing to put the 'work' in to hit  that tier is another matter..)

I've been thinking about the NPC-as-fodder idea for a while now.  I'd love to see a game take that a bit farther, and start to introduce permadeath that way.  There you are, running around manuvering your party of vets when 'stalker' gets taken-out by an ambush.  AARG!  But that's the part of me that also misses X-com.

[pxib]

Heroes' stories end.

They are called upon to do great deeds and then either die gloriously or fade into an often bland retirement. The original Dungeons and Dragons only went up to level five because characters were expected to die or be retired before they got past that. The higher levels were added on as it was discovered that players come to love their characters and want to see them go on to become demigods and world rulers who still have time to hang out in bars with their friends and go on quests to kill gods and unnameable beings and save the world. Again.

Play D&D with a bunch of teenagers... the characters never die, and by the time the campaign has gone on for a few months they're all immortal anyway. These are superheroes, the sort we find in classic comics and Saturday Morning cartoons... not the mythic heroes of ancient lore. Superheros created, and that still exist, primarily to sell additional episodes... and although in the hands of a great writer they can be twisted to express mythic and eternal themes, they do not naturally lend themselves to literature. Their lives may be more exciting then ours, but only because somebody cranked up the dial on their reality to eleven. The jaded reader yawns when he sees yet another volatile supernatural madman just like the jaded trekkie yawns at just another time-space anomaly.

Just like we jaded MMOGers yawn at just another run through the epic "trash mobs" in the epic dungeon so we can please get our epic fucking gear this time goddammit.

It doesn't matter if we're controlling individual adventurers, commanding armies, or acting as gods to ecosystems that may one day spawn an interplanetary race of superbeings... until the story ends, the game is unfinished. "I got bored and stopped playing," is no more heroic an ending than, "I got tired of Spiderman and stopped reading." Either makes more financial sense than "and so we stopped making money because the story was over!"

Money vs. Myth is a pretty one-sided fight.

[Tairnyn]

I've been thinking about the NPC-as-fodder idea for a while now.  I'd love to see a game take that a bit farther, and start to introduce permadeath that way.  There you are, running around manuvering your party of vets when 'stalker' gets taken-out by an ambush.  AARG!  But that's the part of me that also misses X-com.

I'm yearned for a game to give perma-death a shot, but I find it difficult to imagine anyone taking that risk with the amount of investment (both software and hardware) it requires to make a MMO. I've always felt that perma-death would not only increase the excitement a game provides on a daily basis ("No way in hell I'm going in there! You're crazy to try it!") and begin to remove many players from the cycle of progression and more into the day-to-day fun that real risk can provide. There would need to exist a robust set of 'barely risky' activities for the peaceful types to co-exist with the risk-takers and some sort of mechanic to provide the player with some sort of reward (maybe in the form of starting bonuses) for the players that have succeeded in a past life.

On the contrary, there's many issues that I'm sure have been beaten to death somewhere on this forum. I expect there would be a psychological revolt against the concept, with many players leaving in disgust after losing their persona in an unfortunate accident or due to the stupidity of another player. Plus, the inevitable technical glitches (getting bugged and falling down a cliff repeatedly into a campfire is an example from a recent game that comes to mind) would need to be addresses without giving players a get-out-of-death free card at every turn. Not to mention that many players have become lazy due to the forgiving death mechanics of recent games (both online and the save mechanics of offline gameplay) and just can't muster the focus to maintain the vigilance required to keep themselves alive.

[Kail]

Achivement and immersion doesn't have to be mutually exclusive, but when something is very achivement driven players often ignore the story and focus on what actions gives the best pay offs. That is if we're talking about dev created stories.

The problem with a lot of modern MMOs is that the "immersion" in most dev created stories is imaginary, even within the context of the game being set in an imaginary world.  They expect people to play along for nothing but the sheer joy of playing along.  And some people do.  But most people are going to think (correctly, in most cases) that the "immersion" is just text, and nothing else.  It has no meaning aside from whatever meaning you personally choose to impart on it, because that's generally the extent of the impact.  If you complete the quest or not, it's not going to change the world.  If you kill the dragon, he'll be right back there the next day.  You can pretend you're a noble knight or a sinister brigand, but to anyone not intimately up-to-date on your character's backstory, the difference is not really noticeable.  This is why role playing in most MMOs is the digital equivalent of LARPing; you're basically running around pretending that you're rescuing princesses or whatever, but you're not really doing anything, aside from maybe attracting a few odd looks.

I do think that a dev who wants to write a compelling story for their MMO needs to include a lot of achievement as motivation for the heroes.  Either in the form of huge rewards (e.g. granting access to a rich zone or phat l3wt), or to protect themselves from huge losses (e.g. the town with all our stuff in it got burned down), but you really ought to give players some kind of incentive other than "isn't everything else in this game more boring than this?".  The number of epic dramas where the heroes main motivation is "I was bored and didn't have anything better to do that day" is pretty small.

[pxib]

Even the window dressing that CoH gave by having chatty civilians talk about you was enough to make me smile. I actually got the biggest kick out of hearing -other- superheroes names mentioned because it let me know that other people were hearing about me. Hear that, mom? Some NPC thinks I'm something special!

That and the random folks on streets who'd come back and thank you after you "saved" them from the local thugs.

Little details, big payoff in immersion terms.

I was out leveling in Bricktown with a roleplaying technology blaster named The Last Desperobo. We saved a woman from some Freakshow thugs and she runs back to him and says "I hope my kid grows up to be just like you."

"YES MA'AM. ONE DAY YOUR SON'LL BE A GUN TOTING ROBOT. YEE-HAW."

..and she runs off. I lol'd.

[Sairon]

I do think that a dev who wants to write a compelling story for their MMO needs to include a lot of achievement as motivation for the heroes.  Either in the form of huge rewards (e.g. granting access to a rich zone or phat l3wt), or to protect themselves from huge losses (e.g. the town with all our stuff in it got burned down), but you really ought to give players some kind of incentive other than "isn't everything else in this game more boring than this?".  The number of epic dramas where the heroes main motivation is "I was bored and didn't have anything better to do that day" is pretty small.

The players would certainly do the storylines in that case, but I still don't think they would actually give a shit about the story. I think people would just go to their thottbot equivalent and take a look at the walkthrough. I don't think you can force the story on to the playerbase. The story must be intresting and feel meaningful to advance from a story pov, not because there's some carrot at the end of it. And I think that's the reason for why it won't work very well in a MMO environment.