Kill pathfinders and windtalkers. Forge a new blade. Look in an old library for a man's son. How many quests have we done in our careers in MMOs? Too many, right? That's usually the answer. But when I ask you, "Well, how many quest texts have you read?" Well... that's another story entirely.We complain about many things... the grind in our favorite games, raids and endgame content, nerfs... People are more than willing to spend time reading patch notes and outside guides for their favorite games, but there's one thing that apparently most gamers don't want to take the time to read. And, ironically enough, it's one of the few few things that spends the most time in front of a player's face - quest text boxes.
Developers, you spend alot of time making sure your content is perfectly tuned into your lore and your history, but be rest assured, very few of your players will take the time to read it or care.
Now, I couldn't believe it. Strike that last sentence; I didn't want to believe it. So I had to jump down to get the opinion and facts from the casual player on the street. I chose three populated places in our favorite virtual worlds - Bree of Lord of the Rings Online, Mercy Island of City of Villains, and Atlas Park of City of Heroes. I kept it to these three because all three heavily push story and lore as a main part of their games.
Upon dropping into the the Freedom server, the first person who was willing to spend some time to be interviewed was a villain by the name of Blooddrop. Our conversation opened with the gameplay of City of Villains - he was brought here by the allure of the fast paced fighting style. He said he read that a review compared City of Villains to the old video game Final Fight, and I can see where he's getting that from. But when it came to story, he shook his head.
"I came here for the gameplay," Blooddrop said. "I like being able to jump into the game for a quick three hour burst. My first character was all about the 1 to 50 grind. I said I'd read the story during the second character... but it just took up too much time."
Hm... so, gameplay can override story. I can dig that. I thanked Blooddrop for his time and moved along to my next stop, Atlas Park on the Freedom server.
In Atlas Park, I got to meet Eartheia, a long time CoH player, and Dr. Spiggurus, a World of Warcraft refugee. The good doctor was brought here by a love of the community, and because a friend of his played. Eartheia, on the other hand, was a long time player who had been enticed back by the veteran rewards and the large content updates. Both only had good things to say about the gameplay and their time in City of Heroes, which is always great to hear. But when it came to the topic of story, things didn't turn out as swimmingly.
"I'm not a comic book fan," Dr. Spiggurus said. "I came here for the community and great gameplay, not for the stories. I don't really like to read them, I just like to get the job done."
Talking to Eartheia got me a stronger, but similar, response.
"I didn't come here to read, I don't have time for that," Eartheia told me. "I just skip the stories behind the missions. Now, if they said the missions aloud to me, maybe I'd care."
So far, I'm batting zero. Not a single person wants to bother to read the stories behind the game that they were playing. So, I turned to the big guns. I turned to the MMO that was based on one of the most famous collections of fantasy writing ever put to paper. I turned to Lord of the Rings Online. With such a powerful property, there must have been some readers in here.
Lo and behold, I was joined at the Prancing Pony inside of Bree by a good dwarf named Madglori and a man who went by the name of Staerke. Finally, finally finally finally, I found my readers. I found the people I was seeking to find!
"I loved the stories." Madglori told me. "I came here for the lore and the writing, but I stayed for the gameplay. They [Turbine] really kept the vision of Middle-Earth alive in this game, and for that, I'm grateful."
"I've read the books 4 times, my sister read them 7. This is my first MMO, and I'm glad I chose this one," Staerke said. "I love to read the quests, especially the epic line. Some of the side quests do get boring and I skip through those, but the epic quest line is great."
Both of them admitted to not reading the stories the second or third time through, but it was admittedly because they already knew what was going to happen during that quest. It was at this point when my party was approached by two level 50s from the Eternal Templar kinship, both of whom were interested in what was going on. They introduced themselves as Devilsheep and Aingiel, and joined us at our table right in time for my question, "Does the story make the game epic?"
"I'll tell you what's epic. The Rift." Devilsheep quickly told me. Madglori laughed and related to us the time when his other character wasn't welcome on a Rift run because he was "undergeared" as a hunter with 3,500 health. After the storytelling about the Rift ceased, I dropped the bomb of a question.
"So what's the Rift about? What's the story behind it?" I asked.
Devilsheep and Aingiel stared back at me and went silent for a moment. "Well, it's about phat loot and awesome gems. That's why you do it," Devilsheep said. So, I re-iterated my question for a second time... What was the story behind the Rift?
"Oh, um, I dunno. I never read it," Devilsheep said. Aingiel nodded along and repeated the same thing. Neither of these two level 50s, both of whom had run The Rift five or more times, could tell me what the story was behind it. All they could tell me was that you killed a balrog at the end with "some elf chick". Only one question came to my mind.
"Why don't you know the story behind it?"
"Oh, um, I dunno. Don't have the time to read it. Too long. I'm here for the phat loot. We done here?" I nodded and put my notebook away and Aingiel and Devilsheep stood up. "Good, I have some rooftops of Bree to jump across. See you later."
He's bored enough to aimlessly jump across rooftops, yet he can't be bothered to actually read why he's completing a very, very epic dungeon. I finally found my conundrum, and it was personified in a roof-hopping, level 50 man.
As always here on Anti-Aliased, I like to give you some words of wisdom, or tips and tricks to breathe life back into your game. This week's wisdom is simple - read.
Read the lore behind your favorite game. Read what the old farmer is telling you to do when he asks for his pocket watch. Listen to the NPCs as they weave their tales of woe and agony. When you're done the quest, I guarantee you, you might just have a bit more appreciation for how many wonderfully crafted characters exist in these universes.
Sure, you might get the quest which is nothing more than 'kill 10 wolves', which isn't worth the disk space it's stored on, but you also might find a quest about a forgetful dwarf who's trying to find ruins to breathe life back into his dying exploration career. Or, you might just read about how a very lowly NPC named Jitters played a role in bringing the worgen to Azeroth.
You might take up more time reading than you'd like... sure you won't be out levelling and getting phat loot. You'll be getting something else... you'll be living your own epic. And I don't mean the purple ones, I mean the history.
Colin Brennan is the weekly writer of Anti-Aliased who reminds you to go out and read your quest boxes for the sake of those poor, downtrodden NPCs. When he's not writing here for Massively, he's over running Epic Loot For All! with his insane roommates. If you want to meet Colin and yell at him, you can do so in Second Life during his office hours of 12 PM - 2 PM EST on Tuesdays and Thursdays (SL: Seraphina Reymont), or send him an e-mail at colin.brennan AT weblogsinc DOT com.
