Somewhere around the third or forth character I created in Champions Online I realized I just really didn't care about the Qularr invasion.
There I was bouncing about with super powers in a gorgeous environment, but although the landscape was visually engrossing, try as I might I couldn't get attached to the conflicts on any visceral level. This ennui stuck with me through the progression of multiple characters and no matter what quests I was fired off towards, I just really didn't care. Go there, get this, kill these, come back. Having never played the pen and paper game I didn't know who any of the "Champions" were, didn't know any of the races, didn't really have any vested interest in the conflicts I found myself tasked with fixing. I had no connection to anything happening around me on any immersive level, and that more than anything else was why I feel melancholy about the game right now.
Warcraft: Orcs and Humans was one of the first RTSes I've ever played. It was on a demo CD attached to a gaming magazine I was given by a childhood friend and I played it over and over again until I finally successfully pestered my parents to buy the retail disc (I think I'm reverse-aging myself here). I have played every game in the series, even read one of the books, so when I finally bought World of Warcraft and was actually stomping around in these locations, first-hand, that I'd only seen isometrically before was a really powerful experience for me. In pre-Burning Crusade, as soon as I turned level 40 on my first character and obtained my mount, I ran all the way out to Medivh's tower to look at it, even though at that point it was a level 60+ zone that didn't have anything to do except look at the landmark. I took a plethora of snapshots of the Dark Portal, even though to get to either of those locations meant I died over and over and over for what was essentially just personal eye candy. There was no quest to turn in, no monster to kill, I just wanted to see these places that I had a nostalgic attachment to.
Similarly, even though Aion is a new game built on an original IP, and thus has no wealth of lore attached to it like WoW does, I still "care" about the story and the conflict in a way that failed to grip me as far as CO is concerned. In both WoW and Aion I read the quest text, I don't just blindly click accept (although I have to say so far that Aion kicks WoW's butt so far in terms of richness of writing– even in the starting zones on either race I've come across a couple of quests so simple and poignant that it's startling in a genre that's usually a race to get through content as fast as you can for the endgame), something that didn't happen for me in CO.
This is something that's likely to change from person to person; I have a lot of childhood memories attached to the Warcraft franchise which is why the game is so rich to me, but people whose first exposure to Blizzard was WoW look at me funny whenever I explain the plot relevance of so and so boss fight. In terms of progression, the quests themselves (while still being leveling filler and subscription time sinks) still propel you towards doing something. This is expressly visible in Northrend, where subtle details about endgame raids are sprinkled around you as soon as you get into the zone post level 70, and you are consistently being pushed towards a goal that has been building up for ten levels of content. By the time I finally got to Yogg-Saron at the end of Ulduar, not only was I excited for the fight, I had such a physical link to the story that had been set in motion months ago– killing the old god was not just about epeen or guild props, I needed to see him die to end that chapter of the tale.
Storytelling in MMOGs is a difficult thing. Certainly WoW has a hard time with it, and I know that the majority of people simply click through quests without looking further than the instructions they're supposed to accomplish. In a game that's based around immediate gratification– and this is a failing of all MMOGs in my opinion– most people opt for the quick click and don't really care about the story. Single player games get more leeway with this since they can directly control the progression experience, and players are more inclined to indulge it since they're familiar with it. The Longest Journey, for example, was one of the most beautiful video game experiences I've ever had, from start to finish, that by the time I finished the game I felt physically deflated and sad that it was over. Half Life and Half Life 2 don't have a grand, wide-sweeping plot themselves, but the story they've created is so interesting nevertheless that it makes for a compelling experience all the same. I can rattle off any number of RPGs from Fallout 1/2, System Shock 1/2, Planescape: Torment (to name just a couple), all of which deeply affected me because of their captivating plots that drove me to complete the game as much as the need for completion did.
In the end, building such a powerful storytelling experience in a MMOG is a lot harder than a single player experience: even if you take out the click-happy people who will ignore any text thrown at them, it's the juggle between creating a story that's far too specific (a problem that Aion has), or too general and thus failing to draw players in (which would be my issue with CO). I still feel that mainsteam MMOG developers drop the ball on this, but I think that has to do more with marketability than lack of understanding the problem.
In the end, the story that a game– whether offline or on– can weave for us is integral for the "game vs art" argument that wages around this genre. I certainly have had gaming experiences every bit as breathtaking as reading an awesome novel, and I've cherished the things I've taken away from them the same way I do after I finish the last page of a great book.
What about you guys? What games have you played that you thought had great stories, and why did they resonate with you well after you stopped playing?
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