Legendary: Illidan Resurrection -- the World of Warcraft Show

The difference between our viewpoints on “story”, I think, is mainly based in semantics. I don’t limit defining story in WoW to the text I can skip or the ambient dialogue that characters loop and can be ignored. Good story in an MMO can’t be skipped (or, naturally, desired to be skipped) because it’s innately a part of the playing experience, whether it be communicated by the environment, player objectives, combat (yes, even combat is a part of story), quest mechanics, difficulty of content, sound and music, etc.  All of these are tools to tell a story, and a good quest designer will feel confident that someone skipping the quest text will still have an investment in the content at some level. That’s not to dismiss quest text as a valuable tool, but to point out that it’s only one of many different mediums for getting the story across.

SWTOR and WoW both have their methods of delivering that story, methods that are highly divergent in how those tools are weighted, prioritized, and executed. My own personal experience with SWTOR is that I don’t enjoy the focus on dialogue as much because it can quickly become an obstacle to “getting back to the game” if it doesn’t hold my attention, which I think sets a very high bar for the content they’re producing. That doesn’t result me in bringing me “deeper into the lore”, it makes me wish that I could have more doing and less talking about doing. It also demanded a premium focus on my own singular experience, which detracted from my enjoyment because I was playing primarily to play with friends, which can feel like penalizing yourself because your own personal stories pull you in different directions and make you feel like you’re playing a single player game unless you’re okay with at least one of you being inconvenienced. These aren’t dealbreakers for me; I still have my subscription – but it definitely has an impact on my reaction to the game so far.

I also have a lot of thoughts on good/evil morality choices in gameplay and how it effects your ability to write a protagonist, but I think that is straying a bit too much from the original point. I just wanted to reply and be clear that I actually had a line of thought behind my opinion other than just “HERP DERP BLIZZARD RULZ”. It’s okay to be a fanboy (I do make a frickin’ webcomic about the game), as long as you can back it up with words.

 He couldn’t even keep his Jag gassed up for the nickel an hour he would make in D3.

 Damned good ideas, there.

That kind of punishes new players. I never got the original Amani Bear on some of my characters because I spent a few months without playing, and Blizzard decided to remove access to it just before I resubscribed. I would have been fine with limiting the achievement to people who didn’t use Wrath gear, but instead Blizzard completely removed it from the game. Same with the “Hand of A’dal” title, etc.. 

So, giving people the option to get some achievement later (by recreating the original conditions) is a good thing. But it should be implemented in a more elegant way. This was done very nicely in Ulduar (with the hard modes), but since then Blizzard just keeps taking gameplay elements (that should be integrated into game world) and moving them into menus instead. 

As it exists, the “optional nerf” is just designer laziness and insecurity (“we don’t know how to balance this, so you decide”). But implement it in the form of some NPC that you can ask to help you (ex., “Her blessing increases damage and healing by 5%.”) or some object that you destroy before the fight (“Destroying each tank of Brawndo reduces boss damage by 5%”) and suddenly it makes the game world more interactive. Naturally, there should be some penalty for the extra “help”, like not being able to loot the “Branwdo-Soaked Cape of Electrolytes” at the end, or something, and not getting the “Crave That!” achievement.