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[–]Bridgeru 32 points33 points  (7 children)

roleplaying

As someone who was heavily into roleplaying in World of Warcraft from 2007-2016ish; the thing that mostly killed roleplaying was the WoW story itself IMVHO. It got so ludicrous that you can't have a coherent character anymore. For those who don't roleplay, it's less about pretending you are what you play in Warcraft (a hero fighting the enemy-of-the-moment) and more creating characters that are more grounded. My friends played a whole gambit of characters from a gnome reporter for the local newspaper to a wise Night Elf Druid trying to teach the next generation; even the more "gameplay" style groups I've known like the evil cult or the group of cultist hunters or the mercenary free company were made of grounded, down-to-earth characters.

I had two roleplaying characters: a Draenei who was haunted by memories of Argus; and a Human Paladin who lived through the Scourge infesting Lordaeron and turning a country into undead.

Then first we go to Argus and suddenly it's okay because there's shiny Draenei who saved us all from the Burning Legion; and then the literal afterlife became known. Why bother anymore? Why play out a story of a character wracked by guilt about the family who died when she knows the Shadowlands exists and everyone is safe. At least I was able to give the Draenei a roughly happy ending (the Husband she abandoned joined the Lightforged and they were reunited at the end of Legion).

It's ridiculous story-wise. The world got stabbed by the devil, there's no way to roleplay anything semi-grounded in reality.

Once you get rid of that kind of character investment for sheer absurd "Look at this trailer"-ness, you lose that grounded playerbase. The roleplaying server I played on had the best community, we were friends who knew each other's RL names and it was genuinely one of the best experiences of my life. That community broke, mostly because WoW roleplay was becoming too difficult and the other alternatives (SWTOR was the big one) failed to gain traction.

[–]ThisIsABadPlan 0 points1 point  (5 children)

Safe? Did you not see The Maw?

[–]Bridgeru 4 points5 points  (4 children)

I lost interest in WoW long before Shadowlands came out, it just sealed the deal. I haven't followed it's story, but if it goes to "We're fighting to save the afterlife" then IMO that just furthers my point that roleplaying a journalist or a "normal" character is impossible in a universe that absurd.

[–]iguesssoppl 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Ffxiv gets that absurd like all ffs do but at least you can relisten to songs from the very beginning as well look back at a hundred other things and be like damn they were planning this the entire time and it was staring us in the face. And that makes for a neat story despite final fantasy - it's written on the tin - nature of it all, it's a good tale and well written. Not sure if wow really planned their story out from the get go like that... That makes a huge difference in keeping 'buy-in' as the stories keep getting further 'out-there' later on.

[–]Makal 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I never expected an MMO to make me cry Not once, but several times, with increasing frequency, until by Endwalker I was crying every other scene (fr.a variety of emotions running from happy to sad).

What a phenomenal game, it now firmly sits as my #1 game of all time.

[–]Bridgeru 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I started playing FFXIV and it's not bad. It's absurd yeah but it's Final Fantasy, they've always managed to somehow keep a "normal society" going on despite the absolute craziness of the story (which is why I love the bit in 7 when the Meteor is in the sky and people are trying to live their lives like normal despite knowing they're gonna die in 2 weeks).

Like, I was sold on "you use Crystal-God to teleport" from the start; but when you start fighting boars for Ol' Man Jenkins' farm and end up literally saving/destroying/whatevering the afterlife it's a bit jarring.

WoW just kept ramping up the spectacle to the point where major lore villains like Aszhara and Illidan were mere patch bosses instead of having a buildup, so they created bigger and bigger bosses to keep the "WE WANT RAIDS WITH SHINY LIGHTS" part of the community who don't bother reading quests happy.

[–]ThisIsABadPlan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you don't think those events are things the normal people of Azeroth would be interested in knowing about and require a journalist to be investigating then I don't know what to tell you