Does an MMO need a story?

well said

My personal opinion is.. I love having the storyline that Bioware as placed in the game.. However, on alts it's overdone and not needed.. Do we really need to repeat the same general quest for the sake of getting better exp and rewards? That I don't like, and wish that Bio gave us a sandbox alternative.. When I play my alts, I don't want to ride the same theme park train I just road twice already.. Give me the freedom to choose MY path without penalty..

If my alt wants to play Mr Vigilante Jedi by farming whoever I want, whenever I want.. I should without feeling as if I sacrificed exp and rewards for skipping "quest"..

While I /agree with almost all of what you said, it would seem that an MMO, post EQ and WoW, needs a story to be a sucess. There was a free beta for a game called Dawntide where the developers thought to re-create UO in all it's glory. In the free beta, you couldn't even find enough players to form a group on just 1 server and the players who did come in left rather quickly. You just can't have a sandbox with no community as was found with SWG as well. It seems the day of the "sandbox" purist games are now over. Sad, but probably true.

However, I /agree with you 110% that themeparks seem to have an end like a console game. Developers would be smart to include some of those "sandbox" elements at end game to create player retention and not just have to feed story, at a very fast pace, to keep some assemblence of subscriptions. Even Bliz can not get content out fast enough as I see this with my adult son who re-subs for the latest expansion, blows thru the content that took devs months and even as much as a year to create, in less than a months sub and then unsubs until the next one. STO couldn't keep up with the unsatiable appetite of players and it cost them large in sub counts and eventualy an NGE, of sorts, to a F2P game which ruined most of the game for lifetime subs like myself.

A good mix (sandbox and themepark) at end-game would probably work for all the different playstyles. And allow devs some time to keep pumping out the content to surfice for those players that need this type of development.

My experience in SWTOR thus far has been of the same caliber as playing Dragon Age or Neverwinter Nights. The story is good enough that I would play it as a single player game. Games like WoW, Rift, Aion, WAR, or all the other MMORPGs out there don't even some close. It would be like comparing Good Night Moon to Slaughter House Five. Not comparable.

Of course those games don't strive for story. They strive to appeal to a group we used to call Monty Haul players back in D&D days: players that just want to min/max there characters and kill stuff. For those players we will soon have Diablo 3 and GW2, so no matter what BW did they wouldn't be sticking around.

Instead BW is going to be stuck with all those Star Wars and KOTOR fans that play casually. You know, those people who will takes months, instead of 2 weeks, to burn through the current content. The ones playing 6-12 hours a week, instead of a day.

I've been telling people about the game and one interesting thing they've been asking is if they need to group all the time or if they can play it solo. A whole lot of people are turned off by a game that requires you to schedule your play time.

Lastly, if the game is dying could you please explain this: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2...=related_right

Does a MMO need story?
This was asked time and time again pre launch, and the same results will always apply.
For those who are not interested in story a MMO will never need it, for those who are interested the story will be a great addition.

Nail. Head. Hit.

SWTOR gets right what so many games get wrong. It actually cares about it's own story, and it's story is the actual focus of the game.

It's not a game that's for every gamer, and it shouldn't need to be.

Sorry but I think you have me confused with the steriotypical wow player. In the 6 years I played wow I never did a single raid, nor did I do any of the rep grinds, nor did I even complete a top level dungeon. Your just small minded and tar all wow players with the same brush.

I know exactly what an MMO is and I can tell you WOW WAS a great one, the fact that it is the most successfull MMO that has ever been made back this up. SWTOR on the other hand is a terrible MMO which is why most of the people have left.

I couldn't agree more.

All MMORPG's have a story, the only thing that SWTOR did was put a voice to it. They took away the need to read the story and allow you to hear it which can be considered better or more immersible. And the story in SWTOR is more personable because each class has their own story part that is different then others.

You can say TOR isnt enough of an MMO but the problem isnt the story, its the things like sharding. Instanced story segments if fine, and I think they actually did them really well(theyre infrequent, and always next to other class story instances).

I dont think the focus on story is a negative.