Originally posted by mbd1968
Is it really a personal story, if you have two characters of the same race isn't the story the same? How can that be personal?

Yes and no.

There are 2-3 different choices per race that GREATLY change the story.

For example, on a human your choice of background (noble, commoner, street rat) and your choice of "past regret" (sister disappeared, true parents unknown, never joined circus) all give you VASTLY different story experiences.

Then of course you get to choose which of the 3 orders you join up with which all have their own story (Vigil, Priory, Whispers)

I think it goes -

1-10 is your background, 11-20 is your past choice, 20-30 is choosing an order, 30-40 is mission(s) for order, and after that I'm really not too sure.

Originally posted by mbd1968
Is it really a personal story, if you have two characters of the same race isn't the story the same? How can that be personal?

If both those characters are the same race, yet align with two different factions, then the story will be very different indeed.

I dont play mmorpg for personal rpg adventures, but i confess i like the personal story so far (Asura ele 62, order of whispers).

I can do the next one when i want, so doesnt interfear with my open world progression, and the story is connected to the world, i even found cool that is a instance of part of the territory. The story itself remind me a little "Games of Throne" with all that intrigues around :)

I've done very little of the personal story solo. Most of it has been done with a friend, we do mine then his or vice versa. Go do some more DE's and exploring then when we get to the appropriate level for the next stage we go and do that. Both stories have converged at points and if you're in the other guy's version you get the option to progress your own story to the next level and get the rewards for the one completed. Nice touch that.

My only gripe with the voice acting is the Sylvari. Worst English accents ever, bar none.

For  me it was between "it's great" and "it's fun but voice acting is terrible".

Probably because not all of the voice acting is terrible. Some of it is though.

I just voted "it's great' as it seems that's the part of the game I enjoy the most.

i thought they were great in general. A nice little diversion.

im not that picky on the voice overs, and the content is standard rpg fare.

if that was all there was to the game i might expect more but overall i got more than i expected.

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Delivery - I have to say TSW wins hands down for me, well written and mostly well voice acted.
SWTOR - Too much story that continually took me out of the world, caused a big disconnect between the MMO and the RPG for me, didn't even finish one character.
GW2 - Major plus is that it doesn't take up lots of play time, you stay firmly rooted to the MMO, a lot of it isn't very well written or well voice acted at earlier levels, the story gets much more enthralling later though the voice of Trahearne is enough to send anyone to sleep. I got really in to it on my lvl 80 sylvari Necro, enjoying the human story now.

[mod edit]

Obsolete for who? When you say obsolete, what replaced the raiding? Usually when something is obsolete, it's becasue it's been replaced by something better. GW2 doesn't replace raiding. It gives an alternative for those who have no intention of raiding. But for a demographic of peopel who just want that option removed for everyone in the game? I'm willing to bet that number is not as great as you think.

GW2's personal story has a lot more branches than SWTOR did but I think TOR's was higher quality overall.  So it's a trade off.

You can't even compare it to something like Tera which doesn't even make a serious attempt at a personal story.

Originally posted by TwoThreeFour

Originally posted by mbd1968
Is it really a personal story, if you have two characters of the same race isn't the story the same? How can that be personal?

 

Precisely, which is why I consider "personal developer-crafted stories" to be an abomination for MMORPGs. Single player games are for such stories, for MMORPGs I strongly prefer to learn about the world I "live in" and watch it evolve rather than having some form of "personal" story that is repeated for every person who makes the same "choices". 

This is why I'd say that TSW blew this game away.  The story was less about your character and much more about what's going on....there were certain cutscenes where the npcs talking didnt even look my toons way....

After hearing there is a personal story in GW2 about your missing parents I amost tinkled myself...200,000 more toons will here from the same person that their parents are missing?  Maybe they never had parents?  Maybe it's Brave New World....maybe GW2 story (for everything, including personal) is childish/immature, amateurish and hurried to the production line with no sense of progression...just mumbo-jumbo, generic storylines and cliche phrases strewn together like vomit.

Think games have really hard time to make a good story when most movies and books fail miserably.

There was few games that had fabulous story but GW2 is not one of them.   GW2 story is just standard fantasy story.

If story is supposed to sucker me in for long-time it have to be really good and mature (or really funny comedy wise which might be even harder). 

Even praised TSW and Swtor did not provide it for me.    

Few mmorpg's had few good quest stories ( yes I actually read them if they are written good and not just few sentences "help. kill 5 bandits". but that's that.

I'm quite hapy with the personal story so far. I don't find the voice acting terrible and the story is better than most of the crap in SWTOR many people seem to be swooning over. Those stories were either dumb or really over the top with the exception of bounty hunter which was the only story that was good of all the classes, and I forced myself to play them all. The choices were an illusion in SWTOR, in GW2 you get to make actual choices that change your mission completely, though afterwards the choice won't have much, if any, influence.

In GW2 I'm nearly done with the human story and going through Charr and Asura. Level 30 and 20 on those and it's okay so far. I can't say there were 3 classes in SWTOR with decent story and the whole illusion of choice there is frankly upsetting.

So I'm really wondering if GW2 is sub-par, then what games are par and above par? It must be TSW, right? I haven't played that one.

Originally posted by EvilGeek

[mod edit]

Rift had no personal story, it was the story of your faction, that's it.
ToR was a story about your profession, very few choices affected how it played out.
TSW is a story about the world, its inhabitants and how they've been affected by what's going on.
GW2 is much more of a personal story than any of those options, far more choices with more consequences before they all come together towards the very end, you could roll several alts of the same race and have very different stories.

 

Delivery - I have to say TSW wins hands down for me, well written and mostly well voice acted.
SWTOR - Too much story that continually took me out of the world, caused a big disconnect between the MMO and the RPG for me, didn't even finish one character.
GW2 - Major plus is that it doesn't take up lots of play time, you stay firmly rooted to the MMO, a lot of it isn't very well written or well voice acted at earlier levels, the story gets much more enthralling later though the voice of Trahearne is enough to send anyone to sleep. I got really in to it on my lvl 80 sylvari Necro, enjoying the human story now.

very much agreed.. GW2 also was the only one where choices I made actually made a big difference in the events that played out.. maybe I ended up in the same place but the events leading to that where completely changed depending on the choice I made. How the choices during CC work and choices in the story sequences themselves honestly GW2 is the only one I could really consider a "personal story"

" honestly GW2 is the only one I could really consider a "personal story""

You mean Trahearne's personal story, right?:P

the personal story is easily the worst part of GW2.

Stupid storyline and terrible dialogue, VO can be hit or miss for most part.

TSW and TOR did a better job in terms of the whole instanced story experience tbh.