https://massivelyop.com MMORPG news and opinions Sun, 10 Dec 2023 05:49:55 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.1.1 https://massivelyop.com/2023/06/02/storyboard-managing-the-escalating-stakes-in-mmo-storytelling/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/06/02/storyboard-managing-the-escalating-stakes-in-mmo-storytelling/#comments Fri, 02 Jun 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=442848 Everyone who has at least passing familiarity with stories, whether they be in MMOs or elsewhere, roleplayed or canonical, realizes that stories need stakes. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t seem to really understand what stakes are… and even more unfortunately, that includes not just roleplayers but professional writers working on MMO storylines. The thing […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/06/02/storyboard-managing-the-escalating-stakes-in-mmo-storytelling/feed/ 16 https://massivelyop.com/2023/04/17/wisdom-of-nym-everything-is-broken-a-tale-of-final-fantasy-xiv-post-calamity/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/04/17/wisdom-of-nym-everything-is-broken-a-tale-of-final-fantasy-xiv-post-calamity/#comments Mon, 17 Apr 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=435809 “Marise? Are ye up there, girl?” The answer was yes, but she didn’t much feel like answering. Actually, she didn’t feel much liked doing anything but sitting there scrunched up against the wall and waiting for tears to come as they resolutely refused to do so. So she sat there, and she scowled, and she […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/04/17/wisdom-of-nym-everything-is-broken-a-tale-of-final-fantasy-xiv-post-calamity/feed/ 6 https://massivelyop.com/2023/04/14/storyboard-when-is-an-mmo-story-real/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/04/14/storyboard-when-is-an-mmo-story-real/#comments Fri, 14 Apr 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=435542 So we’ve had some fun with talking about MMO stories that are player-driven and MMO stories that are pre-scripted. Both of them have advantages and drawbacks. But there is also very specifically something I did not mention as a benefit or drawback of either, and today I want to talk about that a bit more. […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/04/14/storyboard-when-is-an-mmo-story-real/feed/ 9 https://massivelyop.com/2023/04/07/storyboard-pros-and-cons-for-scripted-narrative-stories-in-mmos/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/04/07/storyboard-pros-and-cons-for-scripted-narrative-stories-in-mmos/#comments Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=434528 Last week, we looked at the pros and cons for stories in MMOs that were purely player-driven, or at least using player actions and interactions as the primary driving force. This week, we’re doing the inverse and looking at stories that are pre-scripted narratives. Obviously, as I alluded to in the prior column, this is […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/04/07/storyboard-pros-and-cons-for-scripted-narrative-stories-in-mmos/feed/ 19 https://massivelyop.com/2023/03/31/storyboard-pros-and-cons-for-purely-player-driven-story-experiences-in-mmos/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/03/31/storyboard-pros-and-cons-for-purely-player-driven-story-experiences-in-mmos/#comments Fri, 31 Mar 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=433392 What is the right way to tell a story in an MMO? That is a silly question, like asking what the right way is to tell a story in a film. There are lots of potential answers, and all of them depend on a number of factors, like the kind of world the developers want […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/03/31/storyboard-pros-and-cons-for-purely-player-driven-story-experiences-in-mmos/feed/ 16 https://massivelyop.com/2022/05/13/storyboard-the-fatal-flaw-of-overreaching-villain-plans-in-mmos-plotlines/ https://massivelyop.com/2022/05/13/storyboard-the-fatal-flaw-of-overreaching-villain-plans-in-mmos-plotlines/#comments Fri, 13 May 2022 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=387800 So the other day, a friend and I were talking about villainous schemes in MMO storylines. Specifically, we were talking about why World of Warcraft’s whole thing with the Jailer as the Big Bad didn’t work out properly but the long-standing Ascian plot in Final Fantasy XIV worked out just fine. And before you say […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2022/05/13/storyboard-the-fatal-flaw-of-overreaching-villain-plans-in-mmos-plotlines/feed/ 36 https://massivelyop.com/2021/05/06/storyboard-the-back-and-forth-of-roleplaying/ https://massivelyop.com/2021/05/06/storyboard-the-back-and-forth-of-roleplaying/#comments Thu, 06 May 2021 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=334997 The other night (Tuesday), I had a pretty terrible roleplaying experience. I don’t want to go into too much detail, only note that it happened in a game with a name that starts with a “W” and ends with an “orld of Warcraft.” But the actual content of it isn’t terribly interesting, nor do I […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2021/05/06/storyboard-the-back-and-forth-of-roleplaying/feed/ 1 https://massivelyop.com/2020/10/21/perfect-ten-a-small-sampling-of-literary-offerings-from-mmos/ https://massivelyop.com/2020/10/21/perfect-ten-a-small-sampling-of-literary-offerings-from-mmos/#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2020 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=305280 Salutations are in order once again for our most literate and eloquent readers of Massively Overpowered! I bid you welcome to our numerical column of weekly merriment, Perfect Ten, because this week I take on a topic near and dear to my literate heart as we tackle a variety of tomes released that one may […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2020/10/21/perfect-ten-a-small-sampling-of-literary-offerings-from-mmos/feed/ 16 https://massivelyop.com/2020/06/04/storyboard-making-fights-matter-in-mmos-and-in-roleplay/ Thu, 04 Jun 2020 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=285225 You know what’s fascinating about the original Guild Wars release, later redubbed as Guild Wars: Prophecies? The Prince Rurik fight works. Yes, these are spoilers for a game that’s been out for 15 years: You ultimately wind up fighting an undead Prince Rurik near the end of the main story. And at a glance, this shouldn’t feel […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2020/01/03/storyboard-the-future-of-mmo-roleplaying-in-the-new-decade/ https://massivelyop.com/2020/01/03/storyboard-the-future-of-mmo-roleplaying-in-the-new-decade/#comments Fri, 03 Jan 2020 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=262200 Here we are in a brand-new decade! (If you feel the urge to pedantically correct this, you are wrong, it’s a new decade, hush up.) And at the start of this decade, the first question on everyone’s mind is… well, whether we’re going to see another one. The second probably had to do with how […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2020/01/03/storyboard-the-future-of-mmo-roleplaying-in-the-new-decade/feed/ 8 https://massivelyop.com/2019/07/20/storyboard-never-forget-that-all-mmo-lore-is-made-up/ https://massivelyop.com/2019/07/20/storyboard-never-forget-that-all-mmo-lore-is-made-up/#comments Sat, 20 Jul 2019 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=234747 Let’s take a trip back to the dewy slopes of June 2006, when Chris Metzen addressed the question of how the lore of the Draenei deviated from the lore that had already been laid out. See, in Warcraft III, the history of the Burning Legion had been established to include Sargeras being corrupted by the […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2019/07/20/storyboard-never-forget-that-all-mmo-lore-is-made-up/feed/ 25 https://massivelyop.com/2019/06/10/storyboard-exploring-religion-in-mmos/ https://massivelyop.com/2019/06/10/storyboard-exploring-religion-in-mmos/#comments Mon, 10 Jun 2019 15:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=227933 One of the things I wanted to do in bringing back Storyboard was to expand a little bit beyond just roleplaying to the stuff that does inform roleplaying, chiefly when discussing lore. Our individual game columns sometimes cover lore and backstory, and this stuff is important, but lore concepts are vital to roleplaying and also sometimes […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2019/06/10/storyboard-exploring-religion-in-mmos/feed/ 23 https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/19/storyboard-stop-whining-and-accept-your-mmo-plotline/ https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/19/storyboard-stop-whining-and-accept-your-mmo-plotline/#comments Fri, 19 Apr 2019 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=220225 I’m going to let you in on a very big and also very obnoxious secret. All right? No one is going to like hearing it, no one even likes saying it. We’ve all collectively agreed that instead of talking about it, we’ll just have some of us know this fact and some people think the […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/19/storyboard-stop-whining-and-accept-your-mmo-plotline/feed/ 42 https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/05/storyboard-on-the-art-of-verisimilitude-in-mmo-roleplaying/ https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/05/storyboard-on-the-art-of-verisimilitude-in-mmo-roleplaying/#comments Fri, 05 Apr 2019 17:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=217419 Those of you who remember this column from Massively-that-was are invited to take a shot, as was the running joke. Because it turned out I said the word verisimilitude a lot. Verisimilitude, aside from being a fun six-syllable word that rolls right off the tongue, is a pretty vital concept in roleplaying. It’s something that […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/05/storyboard-on-the-art-of-verisimilitude-in-mmo-roleplaying/feed/ 11 https://massivelyop.com/2019/02/01/storyboard-can-you-diverge-from-lore-in-roleplaying/ https://massivelyop.com/2019/02/01/storyboard-can-you-diverge-from-lore-in-roleplaying/#comments Fri, 01 Feb 2019 17:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=207883 All right, this is new for me because most of my titles do not contain dirty lies right in the question used to kick off the column. But that question is inherently a filthy, filthy lie because the answer is obvious. Of course you can diverge from lore. You can do anything you want. If you want to say […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2019/02/01/storyboard-can-you-diverge-from-lore-in-roleplaying/feed/ 18 https://massivelyop.com/2019/01/11/storyboard-what-makes-an-mmorpg-a-good-home-for-roleplaying/ https://massivelyop.com/2019/01/11/storyboard-what-makes-an-mmorpg-a-good-home-for-roleplaying/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2019 17:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=204120 Guess who’s back. I gave Star Wars: The Old Republic a lot of grief over the course of 2018 for the fact that its server merges outright demolished the game’s RP servers. This may be understandable, all things considered, but it still had a pretty huge effect upon the game’s RP community, and while you could […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2019/01/11/storyboard-what-makes-an-mmorpg-a-good-home-for-roleplaying/feed/ 11