Nowadays, with the focus on questing as a leveling mechanism, fewer and fewer people read the stories behind the quests. You can't really blame them. Whatever the NPC says, you know there is a 95% chance that when they finish talking you will either have to: (a) kill something; (b) find something; (c) deliver something; or (d) escort someone. All you need to know is what.

Player NPC interaction mostly reminds me of this:

But the games do have stories. Quite elaborate ones, in fact. Some are better than others.

Does any game stand out to you as having a particularly compelling backstory? Is there any game's lore that actually captured your imagination and held your interest?

From start to finish there is no better story than the one in Guild Wars which includes all 3 campaigns. Lotro would be a far distant second. 

Lord of the rings online has a great story, its a Story paralel on the movies/books and its awesome. Its far ahead of anything else

Guild wars is also very good at story telling, as does the 20 first levels in AoC, and many other worlds have deep lore... There is so much indepth story in vanguards diplomacy its not even funny.. but i have to say Lotro beats them all.

Originally posted by Amathe

Nowadays, with the focus on questing as a leveling mechanism, fewer and fewer people read the stories behind the quests. You can't really blame them. Whatever the NPC says, you know there is a 95% chance that when they finish talking you will either have to: (a) kill something; (b) find something; (c) deliver something; or (d) escort someone. All you need to know is what.

 

Player NPC interaction mostly reminds me of this:

 

 

But the games do have stories. Quite elaborate ones, in fact. Some are better than others.

 

Does any game stand out to you as having a particularly compelling backstory? Is there any game's lore that actually captured your imagination and held your interest?

You sir are correct,that is exactly what most games are,and how people play them quest>quest,they run around blind wit hno real care about the game at all.They just join a game because they heard it has PVP or lots of players,or solo play ect ect,makes you wonder about their choices when they don't even know a story exists.

A lot of peoples like the story in a game but many mmorpg fail to tell it properly. The story shouldn't be delivered only with long pages of words to read.  I'll rather go read a book.

I like the lore of Aion. How the factions are not divided from that childish concept of evil and good but rather from different points of view on how to handle their common enemy. The god that created the planet and everything in it is not showed as a usually perfect god. He made mistakes which may risk to destroy what he created.

Peoples say that GW have a great story, I might give it a try. For me lore is a great + in a mmorpg.

Well... the story in Guild Wars was well told, but had a boring / unsurprising plot.

I love the story Darkfall Online has to offer. *ironic*

GW, for me, had the most memorable story even tho it was too dramatic

for GW:Nightfall and Eye of the North, they brought a known story writer to their team

Jeff Grubb

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Grubb

Eve Online because it's my story.

I can't think of any game, whether it's mmo, co-op, or single player, in which I got sucked into the story at all.  At best I'm aware of the story but indifferent to it.  I'll pay attention to the parts I have to pay attention to but I have never gotten caught up in the story for it's own sake.

At worst the story pisses me off because it conflicts with the ideas I had in my mind about my character or because it's just plain stupid, inconsistant, or otherwise annoying.

As far as I'm concerned "story" in games should mostly be a basic outline of the world and it's events before your character came on the scene and from there on it should be as open ended as possible so you can play out your own story.

Some people have mentioned that Guild Wars had a great story and for them I'm sure that's true.  For me, not so much.  I played through the original campaign and most of the nightfall expansion and the story did nothing for me.  I don't even remember much about it.  In fact, I stopped about two thirds of the way through Nightfall because I couldn't take the extremely linear nature of the game anymore.  Go there do that, go there do that, follow this little closed in canyon to that place, listen to this guy jabbering about some crap I don't care about then go there and do that.  I couldn't stand it anymore.

I'm hoping Guild Wars 2 will be more open and free.  If I hear that it is I might try it.

GW had a good story. So did AoC's Tortage bit.

I would say Lord of the Rings Online could easily have the best story.  It's very deep and captivating.  There are even some books you can read that go with it.  

I'm sure I'll get put over the rakes for this one but I've always loved the Lore behind WoW and Azeroth. It's got lots of depth, heroes on both sides, great bad guys, great good guys and a world you can really empathize with.

Besides that, I was a big fan of the Lineage story lines (1 and 2) but I think that's mostly because of the fact I was a HUGE fan of both games.

Ryzom had a spectacular, very interactive story line that caught my attention in a big way a few years ago. I loved that whole "the planet is alive and you are affecting it" thing it had. Great stuff and wonderful story writers back in the day.

EQ and EQ2 had a passable story line with a few lore archs that were interesting; I have to admit I fell for the Dark Elves in a big way at the very start of EQ2.

I'm sure we could the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings games in here to some degree but those are so fueled from other mediums that it's not really fair to compare those in my oppinion. But then again, I guess you could say the same for WoW and WAR.

Originally posted by shae

I'm sure I'll get put over the rakes for this one but I've always loved the Lore behind WoW and Azeroth. It's got lots of depth, heroes on both sides, great bad guys, great good guys and a world you can really empathize with.

Besides that, I was a big fan of the Lineage story lines (1 and 2) but I think that's mostly because of the fact I was a HUGE fan of both games.

Ryzom had a spectacular, very interactive story line that caught my attention in a big way a few years ago. I loved that whole "the planet is alive and you are affecting it" thing it had. Great stuff and wonderful story writers back in the day.

EQ and EQ2 had a passable story line with a few lore archs that were interesting; I have to admit I fell for the Dark Elves in a big way at the very start of EQ2.

I'm sure we could the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings games in here to some degree but those are so fueled from other mediums that it's not really fair to compare those in my oppinion. But then again, I guess you could say the same for WoW and WAR.

If were just talking interesting and deep storylines then I think it's perfectly fair to include the Lord of the Rings, Conan, and even Star Wars (I shudder to even put the last in with the first two).

I also like the lore from WoW. The whole world is immersive and you feel like you're in it.  I don't like the art style much, but the world itself is really cool.  What I like about the EQ2 story arches is that they aren't all connected so you have a much less directed feel to the game.

I think the quality of the story in a game should be separated from the actual game play a bit and the huge disadvantage to pre-existing IP brings to a game.  For example both LotRO and AoC have huge lore behind them yet, as games, they are very restrictive in what they allow a player to do.  For me this really detracts from the overall experience.  In LotRO the player experiences the story the same way, except the prologue starter quests, every single time.  There is no customizing the experience.  There is no reliving the story from another angle.  It's always the same.  To be fair in some games, like Guild Wars, this is true too, but I find the story experience in LotRO and AoC even more restrictive.  Games like Ryzom, EQ2, and WoW have good stories that let you experience it in fairly different ways.

My experience with LotRO taught me that how well the story fits in with game play, how much it restricts player freedom, and how believable it is while playing are just as important to the experience as the quality of the story itself.  Many different D&D games illustrate this point.

I want a mmo that have a great story witch i realy need to read to complete quest and when you doing a questline with a compelling storyline unfolding along the road i would love that, ive not realy found a mmo yet that realy have great lore with deep storyline and you wanne read it all becouse it realy involves your gameplay.

With todays mmo gamers it prolly will never come people just dont have patience anymore for that kind of gameplay.

Lotr lol thats so well known im still surpprised that players think its great story in that game while you already almost know everything about story before hand, who have not read those books see movies or whatever that involves tolkiens story.

Was not realy hard for turbine to implement that story into game lol.

Nah a original story in mmo thats what i wanne see involving great questlines that give you a real feeling of unfolding a story and having a great adventure with it.

Asherons call 1 i thought was a great story but that was my first mmo at time everything was awesome nothing was wrong or could go wrong lol.

Guild Wars gets my vote for story. From start to finish across 4 stand alone campaigns that all tie into each other, the story was very good.

By the end of prophecies you really connected to your character if you read it all and played through without...

"HEY PAYING 5k FOR RUN TO FORGE!"

Sigh why do some people even play games?

It's LOTRO for me. 

World of Warcraft, the lore is not optimized in the game tho, which i find is a shame.

but with Cataclysm it will change!,  and there are loads of lore quests in WoW, just gotta find em in the the right area's... not every part of Azeroth has heroic lore =)

Haven't played LOTRO yet, but I'll agree with the others that GW has a great story.

Now, lore-wise, I'd say WoW (I'm kind of a warcraft junkie, loved the lore since WC1) and Ryzom, if you take the time to get into it.

Wait, there are things besides numbers in MMOs?

Since when?

onne poster made me thing about your question!

are you asking the once game that flash it at you or the game that as the best lore.

best lore =wow

best lore flashed at you =guild wars