The Story Hook

I was trying to reflect on recent games and why I get hooked or not.

And for the most part I will stay interested in a game along as I feel like I am progressing though the Story of the game. This goes for both single player and online RPGs. However there must be room for exploration and to go off the beaten paths for a while.

The trick is, I should always be able to jump right back in to the story at any time. Too many games with great story elements built in periods of time where you had to go wandering to collect XP in order to be powerful enough to meet the next challenge. Final Fantasy was very much like this.

This was one of the reasons I did not get hooked in to Age of Conan. Too many times I had to leave the main storyline quest to go "run errands" in order to continue on the main quest. On the other hand, I felt that the side quests in Lord of the Rings Online (for the starting areas) fit seamlessly in with the main story line quests. For the most part, the side quests put you in the same area as you were going to go to as the story quests.

WoW had some story in some of the quests, but it seemed to be an afterthought. Also it suffered from giving the player too many quests at once. So many that it devalued the whole notion of questing.

Going back to EQ, there were very few quests. Yet, I found almost everyone of them interesting. Even the Kill Ten Rats. Why, because there were not that many. Then again I was younger and just playing and seeing the world was new and exciting. I would actaully enjoy making the run from Freeport to Qeynos. Well for the first few times. But then I did not have to do that run often since there were things to do in both areas.

This isn't limited to Online games. CRPGs can do too much. The Elder Scrolls series are prone to being "too big." I played Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion, but I only ever finished Morrowind and that was though sheer force of will just to complete the story. And I did resort to a walk though to keep on track.

On the other hand, Fallout (and its various decedents) were just right in story and exploration. I never felt completely lost from the main line, but I still had time and fun to do other things in the world. Also it had the advantage to affect the game world. Granted you did not know of your importance to all the little areas until after you finished the game.

I have yet to stumble in to a MMORPG that fulfilled my need to be apart of the story and world such that I am compelled to continue to play. Not sure if I ever will, but I keep hoping with every game that comes out.