My new MMO-obsession (Final Fantasy XIV)
- Thread starter CriticalGaming
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Well as someone who played a LOT of WoW back when it had very few expansions (I stopped playing after Burning Crusade, and before Wrath of the Lich King), there is a LOT of really cool narrative storytelling in the various quests. The problem is that most people don't care about them, and are just leveling up to be on par with their guild mates, who are of course max level, and doing all the new content. And I can appreciate that social pressure, but doing so, does mean that unless you actively backtrack and just go try out the various missions, you will miss out on a lot of cool storytelling.
My personal favorite, was already a really obscure quest, in a zone that was mostly vacant anyway. It was...I think the Western Plaguelands (maybe Eastern, I forget which one exactly). The zone was mostly dead, no pun intended (undead zone), because the level range for it was in a transition range, where it was easier for players to just go from one popular zone, to a different one, and just skip the PL's entirely. But I always enjoyed fighting undead, and I played on a PVP server, so I would actually seek out zones with low player traffic, as it reduced the chance of getting ganked. And...I found the coolest story, just...tucked away in a corner, literally, of the map, in a small little ghost town, literally. It starts so small, but expands into this ridiculously long, and complex mission arc. You start with a crying ghost girl, who has lost her dolly.
Small wall of text
The quest is to find the 3 pieces of her doll, scattered around the village. You have to fight ghosts of the villagers to get to the pieces, but eventually, you get them for her. She thanks you, and mentions something about the sad man. I will be paraphrasing a LOT, as it's been probably over a decade, and I don't recall all the specifics. But, to sum up, she basically hints at another quest, to help another ghost find rest, and instead of it just being a small fetch quest, you run into one of the Bronze Dragonflight (the ones that deal with time travel), in the graveyard where you go to try and put the other ghost to rest. The dragon (in the form of a gnome woman) explains that the ghost you are trying to save, is actually a really tragic tale. In life, before the undead plague hit, he was a paladin of the Silver Hand, and took great pride in protecting his village. When the undead horde came, he rallied the villagers, and successfully fought off the undead, but was seriously wounded by the undead captain's fell blade in the process. Unbeknownst to them, this blade was cursed, and when he went to sleep that night, he awoke as a death knight, and proceeded to slaughter the entire village.
Now, his ghost, languishes in torment over what he did. And it has caused an incredibly powerful serious of temporal pockets to spawn all over the area. The various ghosts of the forces that fought, are tied to him, and the dragon asks you to help her free his soul. The plan? Go around and find all the items with temporal/spiritual significance to the hero, and the soldiers under his command, and bring them all to her, so she can do some wibbly wobbly timey wimey magic on it, and summon all of them to one place, to replay the fight. But this time, you have to alter the course of events. It won't change that everyone is dead, but it will give them closure. So, you take all the parts, back to the village and trigger them. This puts you in the middle of a large scale fight, with the ghost villagers and the hero, fighting the waves of undead. And it's a tough fight, you have to be good to keep them from dying. And then, when the BBEG shows up, you have to help kill him so he doesn't wound the hero. In doing this, you are able to let the ghost make peace with himself, and put to rest, a LOT of ghosts, who were all caught in limbo as a result of his grief.
Now, his ghost, languishes in torment over what he did. And it has caused an incredibly powerful serious of temporal pockets to spawn all over the area. The various ghosts of the forces that fought, are tied to him, and the dragon asks you to help her free his soul. The plan? Go around and find all the items with temporal/spiritual significance to the hero, and the soldiers under his command, and bring them all to her, so she can do some wibbly wobbly timey wimey magic on it, and summon all of them to one place, to replay the fight. But this time, you have to alter the course of events. It won't change that everyone is dead, but it will give them closure. So, you take all the parts, back to the village and trigger them. This puts you in the middle of a large scale fight, with the ghost villagers and the hero, fighting the waves of undead. And it's a tough fight, you have to be good to keep them from dying. And then, when the BBEG shows up, you have to help kill him so he doesn't wound the hero. In doing this, you are able to let the ghost make peace with himself, and put to rest, a LOT of ghosts, who were all caught in limbo as a result of his grief.
And, I'm sorry but that's just really fucking cool! But, it's like, a lvl 45-50 quest, with like 20 different sub quests tied to it. Seriously it's incredibly involved. But SO...FUCKING....FUN. But, I mean hell you can activate an account and START at level 75 or whatever, so no chance in hell you'll go back and do it. You'd get no XP for it, so only lore enthusiasts would even attempt it now.
And I think that's a shame. Because it was quests like that, that made me love WoW, and keep playing it for YEARS. Because I wanted that kind of storytelling in my game. And it IS in there, in several quest lines. But if you're just plowing for the new EGC you're going to miss out on so much.
I think the thing with mmos is that a major part of the experience isnt the content itself. Its playing with friends or even strangers.
These days the online world thing isnt that big of a deal as every game does that shit now. But there is still a bit of magic in the mmo specifically that hits differently.
What is strange to me is how the automatic group finder in WoW is labeled as one of the key things that killed the game.
Yet with FF14, the group finder has been there since day one and still the community grew around it. The problem with the WoW players is that they never adapted around it and their stubborness let the game die around them.
Also i guess that the fact that ff14 has a big single player story plot that also has an mmo existing around it means that the journey to cap is less important because there really isnt a gear hunt as much as there is just content for everyone to do together and enjoy.
The old Pamela Redpath quest. Soon as you mentioned the Plaguelands and a ghost, I just knew.
Yep! I forgot the names, but yeah that's the one, and it was so good! The way the various story elements were presented, it just made it so compelling! And old WoW had a lot of those moments. I'm sure later expansions did too, but I stopped pre-WOTLK so I can't cite any. But yeah, pushing to end content ASAP, just makes you miss out on a TON of quality effort and writing, for a lot of the game.
Well leveling solo in MMO is ultimately always going to be inferior than playing a solo game, so the leveling experience will always feel like an inferior product that's more or less there as a long tutorial and something to distract people when they play with an alt while waiting for new content to be delivered whle still being online and being able to talk o guild mate and such. I think the most fun I had leveling was trying to do it as quickly as possible. When wildstar, one of the many failed wow clone, came out me and a couple of people from my old wow guild played it. For some stupid reason it was really advantageous to reach level cap in less than 3 days of the release so we tried to reach cap as fast as possible. I only slept 5 hour in 72 hours and only because the game crashed on me and queue to get back in was several hours. I think I ended up reaching level cap in 30-40 hours of playtime or something like that (I still wasn't the first one to reach cap in my group I think 3-4 reached it before me out of maybe 10). It was actually pretty fun to go from zone overunned with player to zone completely deserted.
As far as group finder, ultimately any content that rely on group finder will need to be much easier to clear. You can't select your teamate so you're alway going to get some bad players and the amount of coordination possible will be severely limited. Group finder doesn't kill mmo, but it does limit what can be done. I also don't think it's a big deal, Pre group finder WoW had more sub than post group finder. Now there are many reason for that but it's clear it didn't lead to massive influx of new player, at most it stem the decline. I remember doing PuG (random group of player) of raid content in BC and LK and it would take forever to get enough good player to be able to clear even the easiest stuff. The groupfinder version of raid content was so easy that it was kinda pontless, you could clear content the moment it came out and even if nobody knew the encounter you'd still be able to finish it, honestly I don't know why anyone would do group finder content more than once just to see the pretty sprite.
As far as group finder, ultimately any content that rely on group finder will need to be much easier to clear. You can't select your teamate so you're alway going to get some bad players and the amount of coordination possible will be severely limited. Group finder doesn't kill mmo, but it does limit what can be done. I also don't think it's a big deal, Pre group finder WoW had more sub than post group finder. Now there are many reason for that but it's clear it didn't lead to massive influx of new player, at most it stem the decline. I remember doing PuG (random group of player) of raid content in BC and LK and it would take forever to get enough good player to be able to clear even the easiest stuff. The groupfinder version of raid content was so easy that it was kinda pontless, you could clear content the moment it came out and even if nobody knew the encounter you'd still be able to finish it, honestly I don't know why anyone would do group finder content more than once just to see the pretty sprite.
Just finished it last month, hold up extremely well although I found the second half of the game to not be quite as good as I remembered it. A bit sad that I messed up one of the side quest, some of those are really obtuse in design...
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Yeah, the 2nd half is a bit half baked at times. Freya was done dirty but the infamous Necron also comes to mind.