Blizzards next MMO is........

[Simond]

The WoW timeline is centred around the player-characters, not the world itself. You finish up the Defias quests (for example) and, from a lore point of view, that's it - you killed the 'bad' guy, saved the kingdom, etc etc. Time to move on to the next challenge (haunted woods, savage jungles, daughter of Deathwing secretly running Stormwind, and so on).

All the content you've done is still there, of course...but from the storyline POV, you're done with it.

[Tmon]

Otherwise, we're stuck with the same lore-issue SWG has

WoW has lore?

[Simond]

As much as any other MMOG.

[Tarami]

Stuff.

Pretty much what I meant, Darniaq. I've been away and unable to reply, new year and everything.

There's no "worldly" progression in WoW, it's just spoonfed old lore. We get some old snippet of lore, chew it and spit it out. All these powers of awesomeness that -are- there, in the lore, do -nothing-. Why aren't we chasing them around the landscape, trying to pin them down under struggle, rather than just walk into their homes and choke them with pillows? Outlands right now is just yet another dead end, all the primeval evils are dead (they're in the game as raid bosses which in the extension means that they're dead, lorewise) and there's no "next step" to go from there. The Outlands are realised old lore, it's an illustration. It's like making a comic book out of Lord of the Rings.

What if Illidan tore a whole in the universe and escaped somewhere else, and we had to follow him there, just like he did once before? What if the Draenei fixed their ship and took their newfound allies with them to hunt down some remnants of the Burning Legion? What if the Blood Elves duped -their- newfound allies to go to the same place, in search for the Most Addictive Stuff Since Heroine™? Anything would work. Creating lore to introduce new races isn't "expanding lore", it's "covering your ass" (with bundles of $100 bills). The lore should bring an in-character incentive to go somewhere, even if it's just to relieve the world of one epic at a time, not merely an incentive to design avatars with a D-size cups.

Except, of course, nobody gives a shit

I do care a major shit. 

[Venkman]

The lore should bring an in-character incentive to go somewhere, even if it's just to relieve the world of one epic at a time, not merely an incentive to design avatars with a D-size cups.

I agree. But it's the classic problem. What if you spent a bunch of development time on a story nobody reads? For example:

Otherwise, we're stuck with the same lore-issue SWG has

WoW has lore?

Yes. WoW is just a snapshot of a number of different ongoing storylines. There's pretty much a tale behind every major encounter and character. Some of it is told in the quest text nobody reads. Some of it is told on the website lore page that nobody visits. And the rest is told (or expanded) in the books nobody buys

[Simond]

Hey Tarami - can you explain to me the fundamental difference between your 'new' approach of "Illidan fakes his own death and the players have to hunt him down and finish him off" and the (pending) Sunwell lore of "Kael'Thas fakes his own death and the players have to hunt him down and finish him off", please? I mean, to my eyes you're saying that WoW just spoonfeeds the lore to the players with no real input, then suggesting that Blizzard...spoonfeeds the lore to the players with no real input.  

I mean, the Burning Crusade storyline goes something like:
* The Burning Legion reopens the Dark Portal to invade Azeroth from Outland. (TBC launch)
* The Alliance & the Horde counterattack, establish a beachhead each, and start figuring out what's going on/where this new Fel Horde is coming from (Hellfire Peninsula quests/storyline)
* The good guys, investigating further, try to figure out what is going on in Zangermarsh, leading to the discovery that Lash Vash'j is trying to create a new Well of Eternity using the water & mana from the marsh and a vial of Magic Water from Illidan.
* The good guys try to figure out what's going on in Terrokar, leading to the discovery that Kael'Thas is planning to use magic nukes on his enemies (plus the Twliight Cult have managed to summon the Elemental Lord of Sound...and lost control over it)
* Nagrand is one big orc lore thing (and answers the "What beasts did orcs use before they found the kodos in the Barrens" question), with a side order of "What happens when an archangel-analogue dies?" and an introduction to the Sons of Gruul.
* Blade's Edge is Mok'nathal central with more ogre stuff, and we find out what happened to Deathwing's hidden egg caches.
* Netherstorm is "Why draining mana out of the land is a Bad Thing", some goblin & ethereal wackines, plus Kael'Thas working for the Burning Legion/semi-closure of the Blood Elf arc.
* Shadowmoon Valley is Illidan being loopy/Akama being smart/the return of Maiev/closure of the Illidan arc.

This could translate pretty easily into a WC3 campaign, imo - just strip out the sidequest stuff (ogres, bone wastes, ethereals, etc) and there you go - mission one: defend the Blasted Lands then sieze the portal. Mission two: Siege Hellfire citadel, kill the leaders, kill the pit lord. Etc, etc.

[Tmon]

Yes. WoW is just a snapshot of a number of different ongoing storylines. There's pretty much a tale behind every major encounter and character. Some of it is told in the quest text nobody reads. Some of it is told on the website lore page that nobody visits. And the rest is told (or expanded) in the books nobody buys

Probably should have made my lore comment in green.  From my perspective no MMO has had lore that matters enough to me to bother to read it in game or out.  In UO and SWG the back story didn't matter because I was off doing what I wanted to and knowing or not knowing the lore didn't make any difference.  In the DIKU games I've played, lore just makes getting to the accept button on a quest screen take longer.  Even when I bother to read quest text I generally don't read it as much as skim it looking for the clue that will let me finish the quest.  I understand that the lore gives the devs something to hang the quests and stuff off but in my case the intricate back stories that exist are pretty much complete wastes of time. 

[Kirth]

If we are going to talk about WoW lore snafus, Mount Hyjal comes to mind. Here we have the build up of the Infinite dragon flight attempting to change the past with relation to the orc's rise to power in WC3 and the original Invasion in WC1, Leaveing clues that they are doing something big with the Battle of Mount Hyjal. Once you reach the mount you find that not only are the IDF not present you are proceeding thru history as if nothing has changed, in a sense its just a huge playground with no rhyme or reason for it.

[Ratman_tf]

Yes. WoW is just a snapshot of a number of different ongoing storylines. There's pretty much a tale behind every major encounter and character. Some of it is told in the quest text nobody reads. Some of it is told on the website lore page that nobody visits. And the rest is told (or expanded) in the books nobody buys

Probably should have made my lore comment in green.  From my perspective no MMO has had lore that matters enough to me to bother to read it in game or out.  In UO and SWG the back story didn't matter because I was off doing what I wanted to and knowing or not knowing the lore didn't make any difference.  In the DIKU games I've played, lore just makes getting to the accept button on a quest screen take longer.  Even when I bother to read quest text I generally don't read it as much as skim it looking for the clue that will let me finish the quest.  I understand that the lore gives the devs something to hang the quests and stuff off but in my case the intricate back stories that exist are pretty much complete wastes of time. 

I literally skipped all the quest text and cutscenes in Hellgate: London. I've read and done every damn type of quest known to man at this point, and all I need is the quest tracking summary and some zombies to shoot.

[Tarami]

Hey Tarami - can you explain to me the fundamental difference between your 'new' approach of "Illidan fakes his own death and the players have to hunt him down and finish him off" and the (pending) Sunwell lore of "Kael'Thas fakes his own death and the players have to hunt him down and finish him off", please?

The changes are not of the fundamental nor revolving nature, it's about presentation. Saying "Oh my! He's alive! Again! Foiled by our amazing writing skills!" is vastly different to "Oh my! He escaped... forever? Will he turn up again? W00t?" The former is just a shitty Eddings'esque version of the latter. Anyone can resurrect a leading villain again and again, but it takes some creativity to stage a believable/sensible escape (not saying my example was a good one, it was mere illustration of the point) for one of the greatest bad guys Warcraft has. Especially when it's about reappearing around the next corner. I am aware that he "resurrects" as it is today, which makes it slightly less tacked on, but, seriously, recycling nemesises is never a good practice.

Alien was a good movie, Aliens was also good and Alien 3 was a good enough ending. Do I need to say that the whole "Surprise! They survived, with help from far-fetched technology!" twist of the fourth movie is/was revolting, perhaps why it tanked in so many ways? They're shooting aliens with machine guns, should be just as good as the second movie? Why isn't it? So with Kael'thas, when we kill him in the Sunwell, is he gone then, or will he resurrect in a twist of fate just in time for the next instance? They're just showing how little they care for writing something for the long term. Cheap, vulgar and right now, is the way they do it.

I mean, the Burning Crusade storyline goes something like: <bullet list>

That's a nice list, but that's more of a "why is zone Z in way Y" than a storyline. Well, call me picky, but "investigating further" is not a good plot. I'm not even sure it is a plot device. And that's not a snipe at you in person.

[Venkman]

Probably should have made my lore comment in green
...
From my perspective no MMO has had lore that matters enough to me to bother to read it in game or out. 

I originally had the first sentence say "Not sure if that's green text, so I'll take it seriously"

Otherwise, yes. There's no longer really any element of choice in modern MMOs, so no reason to read anything except the quest objectives. And even then it's getting to the point where the game tells you exactly what to get and where to get it, so all you need is a rolling Task List.

For Lore to be read by players, it first needs to matter to the game.
And for Lore to matter, there needs to be an element of choice.
And for there to be choice, there needs to be some measured accountability, which generally means some amount of content blocked from players who didn't choose certain things.

I'm all for that. Yes, it means something less than 100% of the players visiting 100% of the content. But devs make these choices already anyway. My Human Mage is never going to do Orc quests. WoW finally put in some real factions (Scryer vs Aldor). There needs to be more, and there needs to be more micro-decisions that can push you one way or the other (KOTOR style) rather than this all-or-nothing decided-before-informed nonsense that "makes the game more casual" (it doesn't).

[Miasma]

I never understood the whole Kael thing, wouldn't the rest of the horde get kind of upset that he is off doing is his own thing and partially helping the burning legion?  Or is Kael not really in charge of the blood elves anymore, just that reagent guy in Silvermoon?  Maybe despite all the statues and propaganda Kael is unwelcome there but the new leaders are too frightened to tell the truth to the citizens.  I didn't get very far into the endgame and am wondering if this was explained somewhere.

And I think overall the lore is pretty good for a freaking video game, I mean it shouldn't really be compared to literature or even movies, this is a sliding scale.  Allthough I think the entire outland invasion is a fiasco when everyone knows Arthus is up there building an army of annihilation on our very own planet.

And I don't care how much you like the WoW lore (which I do as well) the LOL spaceships reference is valid.

[ajax34i]

I do read quest text, and am interested in the lore, but the trick is that what I read/see has to be good.  You notice how every now and then threads pop up about the most hilarious quests or NPC quotes?  Yes, people notice those.  I guess the problem is that most quests are bland, and you guys are complaining that you're bored because of that.

In WoW I liked the (alliance) Onyxia key quest chain, esp. the parts happening in Stormwind, the whole Deadmines line, the Thrall quests, the ogre stuff in Nagrand...  and I thought that the story behind how the player gets the key to Karazhan was cute (the NPC says "Wow, we sent you to just find some intel, and you came back with a key to this place!  How the hell did you do that?").  It's actually almost a form of fiction in WoW, it's not a novel, but you do get a bunch of quests leading up to some story arc involving each dungeon in the game.  How else are they supposed to let you "participate" in a story?  You do a bunch of tasks, some are menial then most are not, and there's some sort of closure or end once you kill the final boss.

It's unfortunate that MMOG force you to repeat quests and dungeons over and over again, and that's like reading a novel over and over again "for xp", but the lore is there, and sometimes it's decent.

Darniaq, I don't think the lore has to matter, it just has to be well-written and interesting.  That's enough for RP'ers.

[Venkman]

But if the lore doesn't matter to the game play, you get what we currently have: a few interesting story arcs in a game that has thousands of quests. It's a double-edged sword. Most people don't care about quests because they aren't well written. Most quests aren't well written because most people don't care about quests.

This is how we have quantity over interesting. It's difficult to justify development time on words you can only hope 15% of the players actually read. And that's not going to change until someone turns the current lack of interesting quests into some way of making a better game.

[Tannhauser]

I don't know, I think LOTRO does a good job with the lore/quests.  Most seem to mirror Tolkien's writing somewhat and there are stories in there.  Probably the best written quests in the business. 

I love WoW lore and read each and every quest, but not so much with PoTHBS.

[tazelbain]

I play "evil" characters in EQ2.  But if you look at my quest list, I am one helpful SOB.  If I was playing my char I would ignore 90% of all quests.  It is actually quite shocking when I run into quests that actually have me doing evil things.

[SurfD]

I never understood the whole Kael thing, wouldn't the rest of the horde get kind of upset that he is off doing is his own thing and partially helping the burning legion?  Or is Kael not really in charge of the blood elves anymore, just that reagent guy in Silvermoon?  Maybe despite all the statues and propaganda Kael is unwelcome there but the new leaders are too frightened to tell the truth to the citizens.  I didn't get very far into the endgame and am wondering if this was explained somewhere.

Not 100% sure, but going by what lore we DO have available for the Blood Elf story progression we get something like this:

WC3:
- Scourge lay waste to Silvermoon, destroy sunwell
- Kael'thas rallies people of Silvermoon, renames his people from High Elves to Blood elves (in honor of those lost in the defense of Silvermoon)
- Kael sets off with large army to see what he can do about stopping scourge after Silvermoon is somewhat recovered.
- Kael gets mixed up with a contingent of humans, lead by an incredibly bigoted / xenophobic human commander, who tries to use the BE army as cannon fodder
- Kael tells Human commander to shove it, human commander goes "fucking elves, lock em up for disobeying orders, then execute them"
- Kael and his army are rescued with assistance of Illadin / Lady V, and escape to outlands, where Kael has adventures with Illadin
- Kael and his armies are now actively in a land that is INFUSED with demonic energies, and their magic addiction kicks into overdrive

Most of the above lore, i think, can also be inferred from a lot of books / quests in and around silvermoon from the starting Blood Elf quests.

WoW:
* note, you are NOT one of Kael'thas' blood elves, but are a Silvermoon Blood elf.
- Up untill level 60, you are primarily concerned with dealing with the after effects of the Scourge invasion, the uprising of the Zul'Aman trolls, new programs for feeding the cravings left behind by the destruction of the sunwell, Joining the Horde (and helping with their problems) and lastly, the ongoing effort to re-establish contact with lost Kael in outland.

Once you finally GET to outland, then you start to get the big picture of what happened to kael.
The BE lore in Outlands takes place mostly in: 3 zones and Shattrath city.
- In HFP, you get groups of elves, who are on some kind of pilgrimage (unclear if they are looking for Kael, or some kind of magical promised land)
- you also get your first introduction to Palatheon the Calculator (Mechanar boss) in HFP.
- Next stop is Shattrath, where you are introduced to the Scryers.  These are Blood elves who deffected from Kael's army due to his increasingly alarming behaviour.
- Next is Netherstorm, with the Mana forges, Kael's hijacked Narru vessels, Tempest Keep, and all its assorted lore.
- Finally "defeating" him leads to the reveal that Kael has gone over Illadin's head, and sold his services to Kil'jaden directly, in return for a lasting supply of demonic power.

So essentially, Kael has gone rogue, and quite possibly could be deemed to no longer be the leader of the Blood Elves as a nation.

The only thing i am not really sure about is the whole pilgrimage quest line / theme that seems to run through a lot of the blood elf story.  Seems there is some idea that has been set in the heads of the Silvermoon elves that there is some kind of "mystical promised land of flowing mana and honey" waiting for them in outland, but i cant really figure out where the idea comes from, since Kael should not really have had any contact with the Silvermoon elves after he escaped to outland, and the silvermoon elves shouldn't really know anything about outland till after the portal opened.  That and the fact that the whole "pilgrimage" storyline just abruptly dead ends at Falcon Watch in Hellfire Peninsula, with no clear indication as to where the pilgrims were intending to head after that stop.  While i suppose there is the possibility that the pilgrims are looking for Kael, there seems to be more of a "journey to a place" feeling about anything i remember reading about concerning it.

Also, as far as the "OMG, kael in sunwell, lol" complaint people have.  It seems perfectly logical to me.  It is VERY well established that Kael is NOT dead when you clear Tempest Keep and defeat him. There is a big event that goes down in shattrath when he gets taken down (could be a quest turnin, similar to Rends head or the Ony/Neff heads), where he monologues his "dramatic reveal of his true motives".  Would only make sense that if he is intending to assist Kil'jaden in some enterprise dealing with the Sunwell that he would show up there (for a note, appearently, he is going to be the last boss in the 5 man sunwell instance).

[Kail]

  Seems there is some idea that has been set in the heads of the Silvermoon elves that there is some kind of "mystical promised land of flowing mana and honey" waiting for them in outland, but i cant really figure out where the idea comes from, since Kael should not really have had any contact with the Silvermoon elves after he escaped to outland, and the silvermoon elves shouldn't really know anything about outland till after the portal opened.

He sent a team back, with M'uru, after he captured it in the raid on Tempest Keep.  Grand Magister Rommath was in it, and he's allegedly the one spreading all the "Outlands = Paradise" stuff.

[SurfD]

  Seems there is some idea that has been set in the heads of the Silvermoon elves that there is some kind of "mystical promised land of flowing mana and honey" waiting for them in outland, but i cant really figure out where the idea comes from, since Kael should not really have had any contact with the Silvermoon elves after he escaped to outland, and the silvermoon elves shouldn't really know anything about outland till after the portal opened.

He sent a team back, with M'uru, after he captured it in the raid on Tempest Keep.  Grand Magister Rommath was in it, and he's allegedly the one spreading all the "Outlands = Paradise" stuff.

DOH.  I KNEW i had forgotten something important.  I completely forgot about the captured naaru.  /Facepalm.  Makes perfect sense then.  I guess it is Kael's way of attracting new fodder for his corrupted Blood Elf contingent in outlands.

Still, i think i did a pretty good job of connecting the dots, having never read that wow lore entry, but only having played WC3 and WoW.

[Margalis]

I'm of the opinion that instead of quest text lore should either appear in cutscenes (for really cool/important stuff) or integrated into the quest itself. However both of those require far more work than a block of text at the start.

[SurfD]

I'm of the opinion that instead of quest text lore should either appear in cutscenes (for really cool/important stuff) or integrated into the quest itself. However both of those require far more work than a block of text at the start.

Much of the WoW quest related lore IS integrated into the quest itself.  Problem is, too many people dont bother to read the quest text and just skip directly to the "Quest requires X for completion" summary at the bottom of the dialogue.

As to "cutscene style integration", well I can see a few potentially irritating problems with that. (TOO SOON. EXECUTUS!)

Mainly, if you want to integrate it into the quest itself, it is going to require a LOT of scripted sequences, mainly in the form of dialogues or speaches.
- If it is quest dialogue "read a page, click to procied" format, the player likely to skip to the end without reading it. An example would be any of the "Hear my story before i give you the next step of the quest" quests you occasionally run into in WoW.
- If it is spoken to them in text dialogue (ie, in the chat box), it is going to involve a lot of text to read, which is irritating (GO GO Introduction to Shattrath follow the elemental quest, or the "MOVE FASTER, TALK LESS BITCH" introduction to Caverns of time quest), and also affected by such things as local chat spam, potential gankings, and inability to "fast foreward" the dialogue
- if it is VERBALLY spoken, it is going to involve large amounts of disk resources to store all that voiceover

Many of the same problems would arise if you added "cutscenes" to stuff.  Everything cant have a cutscene, and many of them are annoying enough as it is (every time you had to wait through Ragnaros' intro speach before the first attempt, things like that)

[Kirth]

I'm of the opinion that instead of quest text lore should either appear in cutscenes (for really cool/important stuff) or integrated into the quest itself. However both of those require far more work than a block of text at the start.

WoW has this is a sense; Kael Fight, Illidan fight, When you finish the Netherdrake Quest Arc's Are a few that come to mind.

[Modern Angel]

I don't know, I think LOTRO does a good job with the lore/quests.  Most seem to mirror Tolkien's writing somewhat and there are stories in there.  Probably the best written quests in the business. 

Like that quest where I had to kill boars and bring some part to a town so they could eat? oh, wait! THAT WAS EVERY FUCKING QUEST

[Venkman]

No, it's not. But it is the majority of quests unfortunately, so it trains people to ignore all quests. There's a lot of cool quests in the game, but it's sporadic. And by the time you've stumbled on one, you're already trained to WoWWiki/WoWhead your way through to the reward anyway.

Again, it's catch-22. Why bother designing something no one's going to pay attention to? Why bother paying attention when nobody bothered with designing a good one? Particularly when the shift is away from mob grinding to quest grinding, which requires a huge quantity of quests to begin with.

WoW does use cutscenes, like WCIII where it's a scripted event that happens within the game world. That's even more immersive than the AC2 style. Not sure how it does things in FFXI though, but I hear it works well there too.

[ajax34i]

It's not catch-22.  Obviously some are paying attention, so you design just enough good/interesting ones to satisfy, while also populating your game with filler to keep the masses busy.  The lore and lore delivery methods need polish too, and just like everything else, the amount of polish is dependent on how much time and talent you have.  It's not catch-22, it's just a balance point that is somewhere in the middle, where what your playerbase wants, the level of polish, time constraints, budget, etc., all meet.

What's more interesting:  living in the past, where you only have access to literary masterpieces (Shakespeare, etc.) because nothing else gets published/distributed, or in modern times with access to a genre such as sci-fi, with plenty of average filler but also few really good books.

[Venkman]

This may seem capricious, but if your game doesn't rely on players to make decisions at all (beyond to do or to ignore), then the quests are likely to be little more than task givers. In that event, you don't need to make all of your quests wonderfully immersive story arcs. So you can decide whether to spend a lot of time on it. And in making that decision, you perform the balance you talk about. But it's catch-22 because every effort to make a quest compelling can prompt the internal discussion of whether it's worth it and why.

Someone pointed to LoTRO earlier. This is a good example of a dev team leaning the other way, likely in large part due to the source material.

[Sunbury]

When I read lore text I tend to separate 'truth' from 'lies'.  The more 'truth' the more enjoyable.

'Truth' -- what is being mentioned is actually IN GAME or actually has/can/will happen IN GAME.  I'll let slide things like feeding outpost troops, if there actually are outpost troops there, I don't have to see them eating - but it would be nice.  But if there are no troops there, WTF are they talking about?

'Lies' -- stuff that is not in game, has never been in game, never will be in game.  For example, "10 years ago the monster X appeared and did this" - no he didn't, the game didn't exist 10 years ago.   I'd rather read "last year guild X tried to kill monster Y and failed!".

I hope to see someday where most of the 'quests' are 'true' and evolve as the shard evolves.

[Tmon]

I liked one little thing I saw in LoTRO.  When I came back from a kill ten spiders quest the quest giver said something like "Thank you, I know the spiders will quickly rebuild their numbers but at least you have acted to slow the spread."  It was refreshing to have an NPC for once acknowledge that no matter what the spiders would always be there.

[spiralyguy]

Is there any evidence that shows Sci-fi MMO's are anything but niche?  Fantasy is much more popular.

If Blizzard did Sci-fi, they'd probably get bigger numbers than anyone has before, but it won't be anywhere the level of WoW.  It would still be profitable and would help provide a foundation of ongoing games that brings the cash coming in, but don't expect another mega-hit.

I'd be more than happy if they proved me wrong.  Doing Sci-fi right, would be quite nice.

My suggestion is to mix fantasy with Sci-fi (a la Hellgate.)

MMO's in general were Niche before WoW came along.  Sci-Fi MMO's are likely niche right now because they aren't as accessible/polished as WoW, or are downright dissapointing.

I'd wager the casual gamer likes guns more then swords.  A sci-fi MMO with guns has a decent chance in the Fantasy Fans demograph, and will also be more accepted amongst the military sim FPS crowd or the pop a cap in yo ass GTA crowd.  If you take the Starcraft universe (and a plethora of new fans after the release of SC2) make it as asseccible as WoW with shiny rewards to keep players playing and I think you would have a huge success.

[Evildrider]

Is there any evidence that shows Sci-fi MMO's are anything but niche?  Fantasy is much more popular.

If Blizzard did Sci-fi, they'd probably get bigger numbers than anyone has before, but it won't be anywhere the level of WoW.  It would still be profitable and would help provide a foundation of ongoing games that brings the cash coming in, but don't expect another mega-hit.

I'd be more than happy if they proved me wrong.  Doing Sci-fi right, would be quite nice.

My suggestion is to mix fantasy with Sci-fi (a la Hellgate.)

MMO's in general were Niche before WoW came along.  Sci-Fi MMO's are likely niche right now because they aren't as accessible/polished as WoW, or are downright dissapointing.

I'd wager the casual gamer likes guns more then swords.  A sci-fi MMO with guns has a decent chance in the Fantasy Fans demograph, and will also be more accepted amongst the military sim FPS crowd or the pop a cap in yo ass GTA crowd.  If you take the Starcraft universe (and a plethora of new fans after the release of SC2) make it as asseccible as WoW with shiny rewards to keep players playing and I think you would have a huge success.

If there was a really good sci-fi mmo out there, I'd be playing it over fantasy.  I'm pretty sick of fantasy mmo's.  And no, I would not like a sci-fi/fantasy mix MMO.

[Ratman_tf]

If there was a really good sci-fi mmo out there, I'd be playing it over fantasy.  I'm pretty sick of fantasy mmo's.  And no, I would not like a sci-fi/fantasy mix MMO.

Ditto. I've got WoW if I want elves and dragons and shit.

More robots and guns and vehicles, plzkthxbai.

[ajax34i]

I'd wager the casual gamer likes guns more then swords.  A sci-fi MMO with guns has a decent chance in the Fantasy Fans demograph, and will also be more accepted amongst the military sim FPS crowd or the pop a cap in yo ass GTA crowd.

I'd say males probably like guns more, but it's likely that if you take away spells, elves, pets, and support roles, you'll lose a significant portion of the possible playerbase.

[MrHat]

http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/21412

Another rumor hinting @ Starcraft Online.

[Ratman_tf]

[Tannhauser]

I don't know, I think LOTRO does a good job with the lore/quests.  Most seem to mirror Tolkien's writing somewhat and there are stories in there.  Probably the best written quests in the business. 

Like that quest where I had to kill boars and bring some part to a town so they could eat? oh, wait! THAT WAS EVERY FUCKING QUEST

Easy drama queen.

While I will not deny a wealth of boar-centric quests, the game really incorporates a lot of the lore and terms into the quests.  Some of the lore terms I actually had to look up.