For me it's Requiem: Memento Mori's lore. Now the game is a F2P crap game nowadays, started out fine but it was ruined (who would have guessed :o), but the lore is interesting. Nothing to original but it works for me; sadly the lore is the only decent thing that game has atm but people don't even notice lore in MMO's so i don't know why devs even bother :o

one word.   diablo.  yes anyone who has seen me post has most likely seen me mention it.  I will love it till the day i die.  Diablo 2 and its expansion make the best RPG/story ever told.  and the diablo3 first book is amazing.  would read more but more local stores all sold out  : (     

For me, it's a toss up between Final Fantasy XI and Guild Wars.

It's definitely LotRO for me.  No other MMO has made me interested in actually reading the quests.  The developers of LotRO took great effort  in writing the quests.  Yes, I may have to kill some rats, but the NPC who gave me the quest made me interested enough to care to do it.

The lore in WoW is OK, but the quest writing left a lot to be desired.  Some were interesting, but the majority felt kinda sloppy.

Asheron's Call is the only mmo that really sucked me into the story. Great lore with new stuff being added on a reagular basis. Live events where you could interact with the characters from the story.  And just the general gameplay where  instead of "Quest A: go to location X and kill Y",  you would read lore to get hints and clues that send you in the right direction but make you actually ADVENTURE to find your goal.  I never made it near the max level because i was having so much fun exploring the world. Thats what I think a game should be like.  Sadly, i don't think we'll see anymore games like that anytime soon.

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?

Do you acctually have any real evidence for that first claim? I've read plenty of quest texts, as do many others; clearly I could not make a claim for the majority of players, but I do think you are simplyfying this quite a bit. There is also an issue of evolving storytelling techniques that work better in a computer game setting, a central part here is "show don't tell". Long bits of text brake up the experience with a limited impact and does not convey the story in an optimal way given the medium available.

As for the stories and lore, I'm not really sold on any of them. I think this sort of pulp requires good storytelling to be barable, let alone good. I'll not make any friends pointing this out, but the story and lore behind, say, Star Wars is second rate crap. The movies (or at least some of them) do a good job of making it cool, but this is down to storytelling not the story itself. Most fantasy is like this and I really don't mind, I like clishes, it is very possible to make good points with clishes when done right.

I just don't think it qualfies as good. As such the question is mostly about how good a job is made of the storytelling. There are enjoyable bits here and there, I like how WoW has ditched some of the older "evil race" stuff; I enjoy the irreverence too as it acknowleges that that the core material simply isn't good enough to be taken serious for long streches of time. I wouldn't touch any of the books with a 10 foot pole though.

If you want a story that unfolds before you while playing...made by other players and dungeon masters...you should try Neverwinter Nights 1 online gaming servers.

Check my separate thread about that game:

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/275584/NWN1-The-best-online-RPG.html

Originally posted by Blueharp

Originally posted by Torvaldr

@Shae - That is pretty much how I see established IP limiting a game too.

In LotRO you are a supporting character. The main story NPCs do interact and adventure with you at key points in some intance quests so that is kind of cool. The part that isn't cool is how the story is frozen in time at different geographic locations just as you would have them in a chapter of a book. You visit, interact, and adventure with key Tolkein characters at various points in the game, but they are always the same at each place you meet them. It's not like they recognize you've already saved them (over and over again).

Wouldn't this be a problem in any MMO though?

Yes, but it seems remarkably so in LotRO.  In EQ2, WoW, Aion, and AoC I mostly see the same NPC in the same place doing the same thing.  They are stuck in time, but only in one place.  In LotRO prominent iconic figures are stuck in time in several different places.  It seemed weird to me when I was hopping around the world a lot.  To Turbine's credit they do a really good job at trying to mask that, but it's still there for me.

Originally posted by Torvaldr

Yes, but it seems remarkably so in LotRO.  In EQ2, WoW, Aion, and AoC I mostly see the same NPC in the same place doing the same thing.  They are stuck in time, but only in one place.  In LotRO prominent iconic figures are stuck in time in several different places.  It seemed weird to me when I was hopping around the world a lot.  To Turbine's credit they do a really good job at trying to mask that, but it's still there for me.

Yeah, that could be an issue, and I think it's also because with a licensed property they can't break the mold too much, but they want to advance the storyline.  

AoC being an exception because there's so much much much Conan story that...yeah, it's not the same.  He's already 15 places at once. 

Originally posted by Deomitrius

Asheron's Call is the only mmo that really sucked me into the story. Great lore with new stuff being added on a reagular basis. Live events where you could interact with the characters from the story.  And just the general gameplay where  instead of "Quest A: go to location X and kill Y",  you would read lore to get hints and clues that send you in the right direction but make you actually ADVENTURE to find your goal.  I never made it near the max level because i was having so much fun exploring the world. Thats what I think a game should be like.  Sadly, i don't think we'll see anymore games like that anytime soon.

Pretty much this.

Anyone who hasn't read this: http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/Azure go ahead and read it.

Well Ultima had an amazing story line until it hit the MMO.

Have to agree with a lot and say LOTRO for the best Storyline in a MMO.

AoC and WAR could have had great storyline due to their IP but they didn't focus on that at all.

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Originally posted by Rockgod99
Eve Online because it's my story.

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Can't say I find the story of a dude who plays video games all that enthralling personally.

I'd say LotRO comes out on top by a fair margin here.

Anyone who doesn't answer FFXI hasn't played it long enough (if at all) =/.

It's a no-brainer, honestly.

Yes to
AoC
Lotro
GW

they are great in their own ways.

Don't see many votes for Fallen Earth. Maybe a lot of loosely interconnected subplots, but they are all well written.

Originally posted by Pedrob

Well Ultima had an amazing story line until it hit the MMO.

You mean "Until it was hit by Ultima 8 and they decided that was so bad they went back all the way to Ultima V to get out of it for the MMO?"

Well part of the story is how it is delivered.

I'd say Guild Wars does best overall, FFXI does fine as well, but there really isn't much of an overarching narrative.

WoW's 'story' is actually rather interesting if you take the time to read the quests (but no one does).

Didn't play lotr, so no idea there.

Eaverquest 1 and LOTR

The best MMO with a story, is the one without a story.  MMO's should be worlds, not stage plays.

Originally posted by Blueharp

Originally posted by Pedrob

Well Ultima had an amazing story line until it hit the MMO.

You mean "Until it was hit by Ultima 8 and they decided that was so bad they went back all the way to Ultima V to get out of it for the MMO?"

Small bump :P but they did fix it, but the MMO didn't continue the storyline, and it was further killed when EA took over.

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Originally posted by pencilrick
The best MMO with a story, is the one without a story.  MMO's should be worlds, not stage plays.

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That sounds like an excellent MMO.

It also sounds like a horrible MMO...wait for it...wait for it...here it comes...RPG.