General Discussion

The curse of getting older is that i want more from my games now. I no longer enjoy mindless leveling, or leveling much for that matter. But i enjoy the social aspect of mmos, and questing (if its a good story). I need a good mmo to play that encourages roleplaying and has a very good gripping storyline, that is constant, not some every 5 levels storyline bullshit.  Ive enjoyed games like Face of Mankins (before they fuked it up, back when you cold drop items, and majority of players actually enjoyed roleplaying.) Guildwars when it first came out, i loved the first storyline, it was an amazing story imo, for an mmo. 

I do love to roleplay but i find it lacking when you have to level, or do endgame instances. I enjoy MMOs that don't have much leveling or epic gear, that put you into the game and you go through a storyline or create your own with fellow players, and its mostly based on skill.

I havn't seen a really good roleplaying/ a game with a great storyline   in forever, please help me find one. 

Thanks. 

You mentioned guildwars- all I can think of is the 2 new campaigns and the EoTN expansion ;)

You mean a heavy lore based game?

Maybe Aion will have it, I really like games that use cut-scenes like guild wars did, I heard Aion will use them too.

Have you done all 3 guild wars campaigns?

Also, I like to read the Vanguard quests, the lore is pretty cool on some, shrug, if you like to read little quests they're hella fun.

I tried vanguard, it felt to lonley, and the quests felt like i was grinding. I have tried the 2nd guildwars expansion, but i just could not get into the story, seemed rather sloppy.

You coudl call it a heavy lore based game, but you would have to be carful with that, as just becasue it has a lot of lore does not mean much, for example, wow has a huge huge lore base, yet there is no continuing storyline throughout the entire game, and the entire game feels like a quest grind, to meet an endgame where you grind for gear. Anyone who possibly roleplays in wow i salute you.

Well so far the best RP I've found in any MMO is on the Landroval server of LoTRO. If you like Tolkien at all it's pretty fun to wander around the world. It's a fairly good looking game without being terribly hardware intensive. There is a main epic story line that isn't too shabby, and you can get to all the main cities early on with the exception of Rivendell, but even that isn't too hard to reach. If you are going for mostly social about the only level you would really want to reach is 20 to open up two extra social clothing spots, and maybe grind a couple of gold after that to purchase a house somewhere. PvP is confined to one area so if you aren't big into that it can be a plus not to have to worry about getting ganked everywhere you go. The game play and character creation aren't anything spectacular, but they aren't horrible either.  It does have a free trial, 7 days I think, if you are looking for RP I'd check it out.

What you are asking for sounds a bit like a single player game.  I do enjoy roleplaying a lot and I'm interested in quests, but not the kind of quests that they are handing out in MMOs these days with '!' and '?' and 'X'.  Not quests that say kill 'X' and bring 'Y' to 'X'.  It would be nice if the quests were a little more sporatic in nature and didn't always start with an NPC querrying you to do something for them.  Warhammer seems to have some new ideas, but I haven't been able to get into the beta so I don't know if it's any good.

Id say it does get close to what a single player game is, but its mmo. Tbh the best fun i ever had in a game, was on a persistant world moduel for nwn (which basically turns nwn into a mini mmo) The roleplaying was amazing no matter what lvl you are, what i am having trouble with is, i want to roleplay and yet mmos these days make it so hard. And it has been ages since i have seen an mmo run a story line event. I don;t mean some crappy as wow bullshit event. I mean where gms hop on premade characters out and have a story unfold in front of the players. I have not seen that done in forever. All it seems developers care about now days is end game raiding and pvp. Where is the love for ppl who love to be pulled into a story, and cant stop playing because they want to know what happens next.

And as much as i love storyline i can't give up mmos, because NPCs are no fun, they are always easy to predict.

Originally posted by endermorgan

The curse of getting older is that i want more from my games now. I no longer enjoy mindless leveling, or leveling much for that matter. But i enjoy the social aspect of mmos, and questing (if its a good story). I need a good mmo to play that encourages roleplaying and has a very good gripping storyline, that is constant, not some every 5 levels storyline bullshit.  Ive enjoyed games like Face of Mankins (before they fuked it up, back when you cold drop items, and majority of players actually enjoyed roleplaying.) Guildwars when it first came out, i loved the first storyline, it was an amazing story imo, for an mmo. 

I do love to roleplay but i find it lacking when you have to level, or do endgame instances. I enjoy MMOs that don't have much leveling or epic gear, that put you into the game and you go through a storyline or create your own with fellow players, and its mostly based on skill.

I havn't seen a really good roleplaying/ a game with a great storyline   in forever, please help me find one. 

 

Thanks. 

www.citadelofsorcery.com 

It's really that next big questing experience.  It is currently in development.

is that...?  however, i like storyline very much. if the storyline of some game is good, i will stick to playing it for a long time..on the other hand...maybe stop..

My opinion is that "storyline" quests and roleplaying don't mix. Storyline quests usually only make sense if just one person ever does them. But the reality is that thousands of people save the same town over and over again. They get the same speeches, the same experiences, and the same gratitude. Storyline quests are for single-player games, not MMORPGs...at least, not MMORPGs that actually care about roleplay-conducive consistency and logic.

This opinion might not be understandable unless one places it on the foundation of a particular definition of roleplaying: in a massively multiplayer online environment, playing a role is not sufficient - instead, in-character interaction between players, the game world, and each other is the primary factor.

In replacement of "storyline" quests, I suggest live storyline events that have persistent effects on lore that evolves over the course of the game's existence. This isn't a new idea, it's been done in Horizons/Istaria and Ryzom, just to name two (there have been others no doubt, but I'm less familiar with them).
In Istaria, for example, two playable races and a racial capital city were unlocked in events.
The lore on Ryzom's website depicts the playable races' perspectives on what they think they know about their world, not necessarily the truth of the backstory. From there, that lore would've been updated to reflect the state of the races' knowledge as they uncovered fragments of their past, understanding of their present, and inklings of their future. Furthermore, the lore progress would differ between servers.

With live storyline events, your character has unique experiences that they can tell stories about to their metaphorical (or literal) grandchildren. Epicness is justified and genuine, requiring no exorbitant suspension of disbelief. Though not everyone gets to participate in every event, there are always more to look forward to (unless, as in the cases of Ryzom and Istaria, bad companies take over and neglect the game; note however that Istaria is now under the care of a fine company who are already getting their feet wet in running events, releasing more lore, and providing lore-grounded explanations for mechanics changes).

Ultimately, what I want, as a roleplayer and a sandbox enjoyer, is a storyline implementation that fits in the persistent massively-multiplayer environment instead of being an ill-conceived port from the single-player realm.