I tried Albion. It’s got a great foundation for the sandbox, but seriously I wish there was story. Players did not adequately fill in that desire for epic tales, quests, and roleplay.
In Wow right now three of the most powerful dragons are just chillin on an elaborate perch solely to hand you quests for some reason. Often, they assume their human forms (which now look like characters from Days of Our Lives) to fight enemies instead of just being a dragon and like eating them.
I think you need some story. I don’t think it always has to be good, though. Look at WoW, it has awful storytelling. Quests are mostly just fetch quests where you kill 8 of X and 5 of Y. Few people read the quest dialogue, but its still there. There is some overarching story line, but its mostly conveluded and designed more for an excuse for you to continue leveling.
Now look at MMOs that did not have a story like Shadowbane. That was probably the purest sandbox PvP game I’ve ever played. At level 4 you’d leave the newbie island (which was honestly really fun and social) and get dropped into the world. No guide, no quests, just you vs everyone else. There was no motiviation or goal, just go kill people. Those kind of games have super high burnout rates. There just is no structure to them or real content.
Early 2000s were filled with MMOs like that. Some games were able to pull it off like Ultima Online, but most failed after 2-3 years. Games like Shadowbane, Asheron’s Call 2, Ryzom, etc. There just has to be some pre-defined goal your players are working towards otherwise it’s just pointless.
That’s basically how I feel. People like to say they want deep virtual worlds with lots of freedom but time and time again they mostly fail due to lack of direction for new players.
I think a lot of it has to do with risk reward management too. Like this isn’t exclusive to the MMO genre, you see it elsewhere. You have two questions: why and what do I get?
The hardest fight in Final Fantasy 7 is the optional emerald boss. Virtually nobody fights him. Why fight him? Its not required and the loot can be gotten elsewhere without fighting a 1mil HP boss.
Skyrim. Why play anything other than stealth archer? You do more damage and don’t risk your health. The reward is the same. You still get the loot.
D&D even if milestone. If I get experience from advancing the story only, then combat earns me very little. It unnecessarily puts me at risk.
If a game is sandbox, then why should I fight these optional bosses or put myself at risk? I stand to lose more than I gain. Management wise, it’s better for me to do nothing which leads to a pretty boring game.
Personally, I don’t read the quest dialogue unless there’s some ambiguity about what needs to be done. I think I’d judge a game pretty harshly if there wasn’t anything there at all though. I think the real question is if quest/map markers are undermining the effort to tell a story.
It’s been a long time, so this might just be the nostalgia goggles talking, but I recall Guild Wars 2 having pretty solid story writing - and… not good, but not terrible voice acting either.
And honestly, WoW’s story through WotLK was pretty great. Then it hit a brick wall in Cata, and I haven’t looked back since, but credit where it’s due - vanilla through WotLK is a LOT of content.
THE best voiced storyline in an MMO that I’ve experienced so far is definitely Secret World Legends, but in an incredibly niche kind of way… honestly it’s probably the single most niche game I’ve ever seen, so don’t worry if it’s not your cup of tea, but if it is, it’ll become one of your all time favorites. If you dive in, choose Illuminati for the faction for your first character - the Illuminati storyline is much better executed than the other two.
GW2 has good quality voice acting, specially after the ditched the weird dialogue screen with characters taking the whole screen. But, at least for me, I couldn’t get into it, felt very predictable and I ended up not caring for any characters. They are mostly annoying.
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