If only this game did have a proper storytelling...

[Deleted]

... i would call it the single best mmorpg there is.
I mean, honestly.
I am currently playing it, but strongly considering migrating to ESO (have played WoW for most of the last 9 years, dont think ill ever come back).

The thing is, the game desperately lacks storytelling in almost everything, from the too short and far between personal story and living story episodes down to the basic zone exploration.
The zones are little more than farms for resources and currency, where only the decoration changes. You play awhile and quickly get bored by the simple lack of purpose to what you are doing. There are just groups of NPCs, completely unrelated to anything; you talk to them to get a brief idea of what is going on around and that's it. No purpose or motivation to go around and explore what is happening or anything, because you know that what is happening is very plain and simple - these guys are attacking those guys and stealing their supplies. If there is a renown heart, you might as well do it, if not you just move along to the next NPC pocket with more empty talk.

No plot, no story driver to drag you forward into meeting the end goal, something that a traditional quest system would do (and no, i am not talking about the dumbed down menial tasks that serves as "quests" in WoW, but rather the ones from Neverwinter Nights or Skyrim, or even Baldur's Gate).
Just anything to connect you to the game world or your character.
The general goals of the game are also completely unrelated to the game world in any way, shape or form. Fractals, ascended or legendary gear - these cannot count as goals, rather as means to achieve something else, which in this game is lacking.

In the end, the game is just a very beautiful farm. You go in the world to do random activities to get rewards, so you can progress your meaningless self-set goals. With a great combat system at that.

I truly hope ESO can offer more engaging storytelling with long and interesting quest lines that keep you up until late in the night just to see how it ends. And more meaningful general goals and drivers to push you to do content so you can accomplish a satisfying achievement. Or sort of. Because Guild Wars, sadly, cannot.

[Valeron]

ESO definitely has a more traditional way of questing/story telling, I think that is what you are looking for. It's a decent game but I got quest fatigue (if there is such a thing) when I played it.

[Tome]

Hmm, I can agree on some points that Guild Wars 2 storytelling isn't amazing. One thing that definitely bugs me is the lack of profession (class) lore, since there's next to nothing.

But it also sounds to me that you are very used to fetch quests (!) and being served with it or force fed.

Guild Wars 2 got stories in their zones. It's all spread out and can be difficult to find. That is what the exploration is for. You go out and explore, and will eventually find an NPC that talks to you about certain things, or you find an abandoned journal in a cave, or scattered notes, or a dynamic event that pops up with voice acting explaining what's going on at that moment, with the events branching out, eventually starting a meta event with a final boss.

Lore is spread around, and a lot of people have trouble finding it since they are not being force fed and served fetch quests on a train rail, like they are used to.

Guild Wars 2 handles it differently in that sense. You just have to break your own mold and go out there and actually search.

[Deleted]

I won't disagree that there is some lore to be found in every zone, what it is i little more than set-up of the zone.
For instance in Fields of Ruin you have the Separatists and the Renegades fighting each other and litterally everyone else, there is the peace summit in the center of the map and there is the Brand and the Ogres. If you talk to every available NPC out there you will get the basic set-up of the zone, who is who and what they are striving to achieve.
But this is just the set-up. There is no story driven zone progression, your actions do not have any impact whatsoever and none of the characters in the zone is not worth remembering or caring for.

And the NPCs do not tell stories or anything interesting to hook you up and make you care for what is happening around you. They usually go like "we are the ebon guards and we have problems with this and this, so if you can, might as well lend us some help." You then lend some help and nothing happens. At most you complete a renown heart and get few lines of gratitude.
Dynamic events or meta events do provide for some story, but it is usually very shallow and only focuses on what is going on at the moment.
The largest scale meta events that i participated in were in the Straits of Devastation if i remember it correct, where it all was to take down the High Priest of Melandru (or some of the others). It consists of several stages with dynamic events, even branches as three attacks are carried out simultaneously and they all should succeed in order for the final push to be released.
It is very good gameplay experience, dynamic and all, but even that could not make me care for what i am doing, it made me feel like i am doing a chore just to get my hands on the final boss chest.
And i do need to care for what i am doing, which few random NPC talks cant make me to. I need a story driven events, more convincing characters, more well explained background lore and etc. This is what i am lacking in this game.

And i already said i don't like the what you call fetch quests. I like the Neverwinter Nights quests, that are long, twisted and scattered around several zones or subzones, with lively NPC characters that all have their personality and goals, that might betray you sometimes, etc. Quests that leads you through a small story on their own, feeding you a portion of the lore with every stage, quests that make you care for what you are doing and with good culmination with challenging final boss or event that takes skill and effort to overcome.

In short, traditional RPG quests are more like history novel, while Guild Wars 2 is more like school history book. You read it, you understand it, but you don't care for it.

[CaptainV]

Thats pretty subjective.

GW2's storytelling is a very hit, miss experience I admit, its not GW1, which had the darker, much more interesting and deep story revolving around tragedy, loss and final stand hope.

GW2's problem is that it tries to be too timid, theres elements where it could be more grown up, more deep and more ruthless but it never quite tries hard enough to make these elements a thing. Season 3 episode 4 which was the recent story update did have an element of this with two of the creepiest things ever impliamented in GW2, though one of them is entirley tied to raiding.

Speaking of which...

GW2's raiding scene is definatley its highlight, sadly im not a major raider but having done it myself I can say the storytelling there is nothing short of amazing. It has the right darksouls style vibe to it where the lore is told in the scenery, interactions with bosses and the notes left behind. Alot of it just tells you a story from that alone and it works so damn well, the latest raid wing was just, so amazingly well written and so god damn dark.

[Fencers]

There is no such thing as 'proper storytelling'. There are simply different style one might find more or less appealing.

[RH92]

Yeah, I agree with the statement.

What I like about Guild Wars 2 is all those side stories and dynamic chains of events, it feels like the world is alive and you are actually a part of millitary campaign. However it all falls apart on rather weak and shallow main story line with some very anti-climatic endings. It feels like total opposite of WoW quest system, where you get rather good main plot for a MMO, but world feels dead because everybody is either talking about current enemy or being some pop culture comic relief.

It is a MMO, so my expectations are not super high. The genre has been traditionally weak in story department.

[Ajora Glabados]

Yeah, I agree with the statement.

What I like about Guild Wars 2 is all those side stories and dynamic chains of events, it feels like the world is alive and you are actually a part of millitary campaign. However it all falls apart on rather weak and shallow main story line with some very anti-climatic endings. It feels like total opposite of WoW quest system, where you get rather good main plot for a MMO, but world feels dead because everybody is either talking about current enemy or being some pop culture comic relief.

It is a MMO, so my expectations are not super high. The genre has been traditionally weak in story department.

This was exactly how I felt about GW2. I thought the world was very beautiful, liked the dynamic events and adored exploring and all of the game's ambience. I never hit level cap but got pretty close but by the time I quit I recall being so bored. I felt more invested in standard WoW leveling quests than all the big "epic" set pieces GW2 would try throwing at me.

[StationaryHawk]

I think I can understand how people could form this opinion in earlier zones. Many of them don't have an overarching theme tying them together, instead having you simply wander from one event to the next with little to no correlation between the two. You're given a general feel for the area and its inhabitants, but not much beyond that. The higher-level zones tend to feel more structured in my opinion, perhaps due to them being where the personal/living story consolidates and provides a better drive for the events.

As far as satisfying achievements go, I'm big on completion and collections, so what you don't consider goals are goals for me.

[Lazuli]

Well I can tell you right now that ESO story is a billion times better and isn't represented in tiny tidbits of information like GW2, ANet has terrible writers and they often ignore all of the lore previously set in the series for new garbage that no one even cares about.

They have gotten better in recent months, they brought back a character from the original and finished his story which was awesome.

In ESO you are fully immersed and quest lines are often long journeys that make you forget you're playing an MMO. I absolutely love the story it is crazy and the voice acting is beyond top notch.

The combat is not as good as GW2 and neither is the pvp, all they have is a carbon copy of GW2's WvW. There is an xpac coming and I heard it's getting battlegrounds.