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Any MMO IYO stacks up lore wise to Game of Thrones?
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,400
In your opinion, does any MMO lore wise stacks up to Game of Thrones?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
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I'm not a fan of Game of Thrones.
But I would gladly play a game if I could play as Peter Dinklage.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
The portrayal of lore is where MMORPGs lag behind. GoT only portrays lore. That's all it does. Whereas games must worry about gameplay. Even the most story-focused games like Telltale's episodic games still have gameplay segments interspersed with storyline and story-related decisions.
In terms of the amount/quality of lore, ESO matches GoT (and is probably slightly better). (And from what I saw of the EQ world in EQ2, it seemed to be quite close too.) Just in terms of the number of events and attention to detail, ESO has GoT beat and it has a similar focus on believability and world-integrity. They've had since 1996 to build up the lore, and each game since then has made lore a focus (with the disclaimer that I never tried Redguard, and that I'm deliberately claiming they started their lore focus with 1996's Daggerfall, not 1994's Arena.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
WoW, LOTR blows GoT away, and ESO with all the books detailing people and events.
Ofcourse GoT is just a rip off off Mongles, Huns, Hadrians wall, Picts legends, Early Britian after Rome left...you know a completely brand new back story
Game of thrones is a rip on the war of roses
...It's storytelling is a rip on the greek tragedy...:)
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Most MMOs wane in comparison when it comes to story, but when it comes to character customization, GoT is very lacking. It's also horribly linear, but I guess it makes up for that with regular updates.
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I feel GOT is big time over rated and became more popular because of the series and sexism not because of it's Lore.
To put it in perspective,i know LOTS of people or have talked to lot's of people and i NEVER hear anyone talking about it's storytelling or Lore.
I bet anyone who has read the 5 books could without a lot of trouble explain the Lore of each book.However FFXI's LORE is massive,i could not being to cover it all,likely not even close to 1/4 of it.If i skipped over FFXI since it is massive,i could even talk about FFX a game i feel is the best story told Lore filled game ever.It does not really stray from it's path it is the same story throughout, Yuna out to save the world through her pilgrimage.The characters are big time defined ,npc's and creatures along the way all have reason.It is a story told unlike many others,it is basically hovering between reality and fiction.
IMO no character has the LORE of Yuna or even Tidus for that matter,the story is massive and deep.In the GOT series they try to use the typical sexism idea to sell it's appeal instead of actual Lore.They often should have used male characters to portray fighting but nope they had to toss in cute female characters,almost like an Asian video game and nobody talks about how great Asian video games are.
basically without the sexism,hardly anyone would care about GOT.
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/Facepalm....
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
For me, there's a difference between "lore" and "story". To use a quick way to tell them apart, from a game point of view, story is everything that happens to your character and surrounding characters and what they learn about themselves or other characters... while lore is basically everything they should already know about the world, or that they don't but allow the story to happen. Basically story is about the characters and lore is about the world they live in.
Using that difference, when it comes to story, I'd say no, no MMO can even come close to the level of story present in Game of Thrones (the HBO series), or in A Song of Ice and Fire (the book series)... and probably the same can be said about almost any good book or book series, but specially so about GoT/ASoIaF, because the way it's made is to be VERY character driven.
When it comes to lore, however, I'd say yes, lots of MMOs have the same level or easily surpass both Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire... take away all the interesting characters and leave the world as it is and isn't very original or very deep fantasy... you have ancient nature oriented elves, undead coming from the frozen north, barbarian tribes on the north, different countries (houses) roughly based on ancient earth culture, magic, dragons and so on. It's not the setting, the lore what makes GoT/ASoIaF great, but the characters that inhabit it.
And it makes sense that way. MMOs, while they can have stories, and some have very good ones too, aren't an ideal medium for great stories. The strenght in MMOs should be in the lore, in the setting, in the world where we inhabit, so it makes sense that it should be as strong or even stronger than the lore found in other media, compared to TV series, movies and to a lesser degree books, where you tell a linear story and there's only so much time and resources you can leave to explain to the viewer/reader without losing its interest.
In books, movies and TV the details that are known about the lore must be told to the viewer/reader... in a game there's much more chance for the lore to be out there for you to discover on your own.
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If they made a Game of Throne MMO and added perma-death and full loot pvp... would you be upset?
Of course not.
How can ANY video game has stories as good as GoT (including the actual GoT adventure game)? Not only you don't get scripts that good, you can't get enough good actors & actresses to get on a video game. (Heck ... even CoD only gets Kevin Spacey .. ONE good actor).
I'm not so sure about that... but it all comes down to how you define lore.
For me it's always a combination of how detailed the setting's history is, and of the nations that make up the world. Some of the highly detailed settings like ESO do a pretty good job matching GoT. Most of the GoT books aren't about lore and background. Sure it's there, but it's mostly the adventures of the main characters that you're following - so it'd be better to compare the majority of the book to the questlines in game that your characters go through.
ESO, SWTOR, GW2 and probably FFXIV and LOTRO all do a good job at it too. TSW is excellent at the story part, but there isn't all that much history to it since it's basically our world, but with monsters and shady corporations.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
It's mostly the drama part where MMOs completely fall short. And of course pacing sucks in just about every game, especially the ones that have tons of side quests to derail the main story.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
Agreed. You basically have to go to single player games to find good stories.
MMOs can do good stories .. in principle .. but they have to put them in instances, and do it like good single player games.
What good is MMORPG lore when characters are like Hodor?
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GoT is good .. but it has nothing do with the setting. I agree with you ... the setting is really not that unique. You got a bunch of places with funny names, some magic, dragons, and undead. Nothing new there.
What makes it *so* good is the characters, stories, and the unflinching brutal nature of the plot. MMO, or even video games, cannot do any of that.
If the Warcraft lore was made into a single player RPG like The Elder Scrolls it would totally be up there with GoT.
Mmos (and even the rts games) are not the best medium to offer such a fantastic and rich lore.