MMORPG: Story is All the Rage.

It seems with each new MMO being announced that story is becoming a bigger and bigger factor. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it does have a big impact on the way MMO's can be designed. The fact that MMO's are by definition multiplayer, massively at that, means that the story needs to include everyone. The problem though is that story does not always include everyone in a way that encourages community.

A community is the backbone to any good MMO and is necessary for the multiplayer aspects of a MMO to operate. From buying & selling, PvE raids, to PvP teams; it all requires community. If your community ties are not built then a MMO goes from being massively multiplayer to merely playing a single player game in a room full of people. Sure, they are there; but they have no major impact on your gameplay, which is the reason for playing a multiplayer game.

Getting back to story, we have this problem where stories are usually single player. They are directed at your character and no one else has any real impact on it. Story itself is great; it immerses you, keeps you chugging through the game to see what happens next, and gives you something to identify your character with. The problem though is that in most MMO's the things you get to identify your character with are the same as everyone else since the same story is used for everyone. So you slayed the evil dragon once and for good! Well so did knightgary, bunnyslayer, pixychick, Tanker, and Toby. The story isn't unique to you so everything you've done doesn't feel really important when everyone else is doing it as well, so most don't care. Skipping quest text is just one result of this as most feel the story doesn't matter so why even spend time reading it.

We then have Single Player Syndrome (SPS), the biggest problem in MMO's. This byproduct of story due to the story(quests) being mostly solo-able. Players generally take the path of least of resistance and doing everything yourself can be easier than finding other people. So they quest alone and this, in case it wasn't evident, does not help establish community. This isn't to say that solo content isn't important, it is, but rather that using too much hinders community growth and creates a mentality that everything should be solo-able. Once again this is a multiplayer game so wanting everything solo-able defeats the entire purpose of the game.

Star Wars The Old Republic(SWTOR) is trying to rectify one of these problems by making each players story unique, to an extent. I have no doubt that their story will be everything a story should be as far as immersion, identifying with your character(you make the choices), and will keep players intrigued until the story runs out. SWTOR isn't addressing the arguably bigger problem of SPS. Since their class quests are solo-able and unique it means that finding a mutually beneficial group will be harder and everyone you see are probably doing their own thing. There is world story and arcs so we will have to see how it all plays out on release day.

Guild Wars 2(GW2) has taken a different approach and is putting their story entirely in an instance, as well as being unique, and having their open world incredibly community/multiplayer focused. What this means is that in the open world, everyone you see is potentially a group member. This will help out a lot with SPS and community building as people band together to complete dynamic events. The concern for GW2 though, is whether it will have enough content to support the community as it grows. It's not hard to imagine massive groups of people, grouped or not, going from dynamic event to dynamic event; clearing them as quickly as they pop up.

I hope this uncovers just a bit of the implications that story can have on MMO mechanics. Let's keep hoping that the implementation of more story into MMO's doesn't end up poisoning the community and detracting from what it means to be an MMO.