In a world where both Final Fantasy 14 online and World of Warcraft are trying to win players over with their lore and story, who actually does it better?
Shill Show: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheAccolonn
Exclusive Content: https://www.patreon.com/accolonn
Twitter: https://twitter.com/theaccolonn
Discord: https://discord.gg/JjR3pAR
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/accolonn
Everything Else: https://streamerlinks.com/Accolonn
#SHADOWLANDS #MMORPG #WARCRAFTLORE
source
Bruh I can't wait to see you going through the expansions…
I love your streams ! 😀
Just wait until you start doing all those side quests you've been skipping. Later on FATEs even start having zone wide stories and there is quite a bit of environmental storytelling out there that you haven't even had the opportunity to notice yet. That's not even considering the job quests you haven't done yet.
As a lore guy, you're in for a real treat once you're caught up and have the opportunity to find those hidden tidbits that aren't in the MSQ.
Shit, Acco I wanna join Zovaal.. though in FFXIV After Shadowbringer, I wanna join the Ascians lol
It's funny to me because the greatest stories ever in wow, just happened to take place there, like getting in to stupid shit with friends, or winning a hard fought AB by 10 points. Hunting your nemesis for days leading to epic fighting. Never did it have to do with blizzards story telling
People have this bad habit of getting lore and story confused. They're not the same thing. But I think some storytellers get the two confused themselves, and pass that on to the audience.
WoW has a 5head lore? xD
Isnt it more like: Oh damn we made a mistake we just adjust (and that over and over till even people that like the lore hate it?) kind of lore? xD
too many people confuses lore and story.
Story is what drive the journey forward, and lore is the background setting. Blizzard made the mistake of putting lore upfront and story an afterthought, it's why the constant retcons are very frustrating.
Fake news, the story of wow was never good or important.
Final Fantasy has a history of great rpg stories, they know how to do it, this fit very well with the MMORPG gender
Final fantasy online is no stranger to great lore and story telling. Most of the story lines in ffxi were incredible. Especially chains of promanthia.
Granted, a villain who you know is the villain but don't know their motives, putting it together piece by piece and ending with a mind-blowing final reveal piecing the puzzle together right at the end, CAN be done amazingly well. A character who's a mystery to be unraveled bit by bit until you can look back after the final truth bomb comes out and see everything recontextualized with new eyes, can be a fantastic narrative. Hell, FFXIV has a few of these, even. The difference is whether the motives end up mattering, bring out emotion the moment it's all on the table, finding release from the built-up tension of a mystery that's been dragging you along for hours upon hours.
With Zovaal… there is no tension. People are past the point of caring about whatever his deal is, and there won't be much emotion to go around even if Zovaal's motive for doing what he does is the most sympathetic thing in the world. Because they've been holding onto each and every bit of his motivation and they plan to just let it all out at once, which is already a risky gamble by default. But throw in the fact that nobody cares about him now, and them already dropping the ball hard with the Sylvanas twist, and that gamble's reception will almost assuredly be met with mediocrity at best.
The absolute best outcome Blizzard can hope for with the end of Zovaal is a quiet fart when the curtains fall, and that's sad honestly.
"why is ff14 so successful?"
BBC: Big, Black, Choakabo…. one $20 mount you needed to buy via twitch subs that feed's into twitches algorithm, and boosts the game in twitch's ratings works wonders. It's no surprise streamers left and right started to shill out to Square even when their complete noob's to the game.
I think the story telling is so successful because it involves the player in the story.
The useful idiot as our MC in ff14 is pretty good until the latest 2 expansions start to give us more than just the "idiot" credit. Looking forward to you experiencing those moments.
Another thing XIV does very well is that it explains its magic, science and laws of nature in a way that is fleshed out, understandable and satisfying to our willing suspension of disbelief. There aren't a lot of jarring McGuffins. Its pretty easy to follow the abstract. They accomplish this by doing the time honored technique of leaving the obvious vague and accentuating the details.
Why is FFXIV successful?
First of all compared to WoW, it has the 3 IMPORTANT thing every MMORPG has to really be on top of to make it successful:
1) A close connection with the Dev and the player. It's a game where the Dev designs the world, content, story and everything for players to experience, learn and engage in. You need both side to make an MMORPG really work.
2) A wonderful amount of content for almost every type of players. Hardcore raiders, world first, midcore players, casual players, RPers, designers, fashion lovers, story lovers, lore lovers, almost everyone. Heck the whole game content design is wonderful for anyone with real-life commitment, cause we can take it at our pace, and we can still be roughly on top of everything needed to be done as needed.
3) A CONSISTANT work on the game. FFXIV is the only and I mean ONLY MMORPG, where we get a consistant pacing of patch and content coming out. Every 3 month we get something, straight up, no questions asked. Sometimes it delays, but in the end we GET it.
This is just to make a MMORPG actually be a good mmorpg and be fun to play. So what makes FFXIV stand out ahead of others? Sure it is of the Story and the Lore of the game, but it's what goes on BEHIND that simple factor:
Yoshi.P and his team plans MANY years of story and lore building ahead of us. After an expansion they're always been working on the next 2 years worth of stuff, including the story to make sure everything makes sense. And not too long before Endwalker, Yoshi.P has mentioned that him and his team has already has in mind the next 10 YEARS OF STORY…Aka, the next BIG arc of the game. THIS, is why the story and lore of FFXIV is amazing, engaging, emotional and immersive. World of Warcraft's story/lore is none of this, they're just scrapping up what they can from their own little pile of idea, or simply take other ideas from other people and say "THIS WILL WORK" and in the process not realize they ruined old lore completely. They're not even planning ahead anymore, just trying to work in the moment and screwing up history that they've built up.
Blizzard: Villain has commited genocide – I sleep
SquareEnix: Villain smiled to me – i cry for 8 hours straight
There is no 5head, hidden lore in WoW. It's more like dredging weeds, parsing through which tiny pieces of lore the writers deign to give you while weeding out the retconned bits that don't apply anymore.
FFXIV story is built up for many years, you can imagine the kind of payoff is like for someone who don't skip the MSQ. Managed to make even Preach emotional. That's an achivement.
I've noticed that you also used the "Useful Idiot" term in your other video, you might want to look into the Dark Knight Story to see how the FF team tackles that type of story telling trope.
I think it's not even Rule of Cool that is the problem. Michael Bay films still make money. But even they have a logical progression. WoW's storytelling is literally just missing huge chunks.
WoW's story telling is: Here's Zovaal. He did things. Sylvanus helped him do other things. Stop him. It's not even Cool. It's just bizarre. Why do we have to get confirmation that Argus busted the Arbiter in a tweet? 9.2 is the End of the Warcraft SAGA and we only find out what actually happened 5 seconds into the launch of the expansion in a tweet. And then you have to wonder why Argus soul went to the Shadowlands in the first place? Sure he's the death titan, but Danuser himself told us in interviews before the Shadowlands came out that it was built for mortal souls, so even death titans still go to titan afterlife. Why didn't his?
Who knows! It was a fan theory since they didn't tell us wtf the red beam was over a year ago and it doesn't feel set up at all. It feels like they story boarded random bullshit, slapped it together with rubber bands and a slinky into a story and waited for us to fill in the rest so they could steal it later.
WoW writes have become to reliant on deus ex machina plots to dig themself out of holes of their own making.
You want a fucking list?
-Doesn't treat their employees and players like shit
-Consistent quality control
-Actually listen to player feedback
-Devs have a lot more freedom so they aren't as bound by financial goals as WoW's devs
-A GOOD FUCKING STORY
-GOOD FUCKING GAMEPLAY
-PRIORITIZES CURRENT PLAYERS OVER ATTRACTING POTENTIAL FUTURE ONES
–NO ONE IS STEALING BREAST MILK FROM THE FUCKING FRIDGES
Id rather WOW any day. FF got some pretty good hype train behind it. It's pretty slow and sloppy and the fact that consoles can play it makes it even more slow. FF,s PvP is dogshit and plays like a mobile game.
In endwalker ive had several gasp moments, but they are rarely big events, they are big gasp moments because you as the player put 2 + 2 together and every time that happened to me the line that comes to mind is always "holy shit, that makes sense"
Im genuinely tickled at how Accolonn is so amazed by Ff14 storytelling when he only just finished ARR, and not even a foot in to heavensward. Not forgetting all the other expansions the game has to offer.
Little does he know.