Being a middle school English teacher for so many years, and reading fantasy my whole life, has made me a pretty good editor in my humble opinion. So this post is a suggestion specifically on storyline and is intended more for the programmers than anyone, but feel free to weigh in on it.
1st: Great idea to have had M’s wife die. Having a loved one die can make people do all sorts of things. I’m only lvl 11 so far so maybe we’ve already learned more about M and why he’s doing what he did. I find people much prefer a villain who has reasons for his (or her) actions besides simply being evil. 2nd, I think it’d be nice if M had a slightly better nickname/handle/signature. People like it when they have to use their brains a little to figure out what the intials “G.R.” might stand for or something.
For example: the Harry Potter series. The author doesn’t let us know the villains real and full name until, what the 4th or 5th book? Most of the 6th book is devoted to getting a better understanding of him and why he’s acting the way he does. I think especially with the amount of life magic going around M having some crazy plot to bring his wife back to life via consuming the world tree or the universe or whatever could be something to work with. Especially if we start to have a better idea of WHY he loved his wife so much. Maybe he was always picked on and misunderstood by everyone except for her. That’s a common enough idea in novels but still a good one. This also allows us/you to have more people helping the villain who agree with his plans if we find out that while his plans might be bad for a lot of people, maybe he feels it’s for a just cause. (For an example from MMOs, watch the cinematic trailer for the WoW 2.3 patch, in the space of just a few minutes they make the villains very sympathetic. To this day I refuse to raid ZA because I feel that the trolls have more right to it and I don’t care if that means I don’t get better equipment.) And people loved that at the end of book 6 we have that note that is signed only with someone’s initials. My wife was bouncing off the walls when she read it going “I know who it is! I know who it is!” It was a fairly obscure character and she was as proud of figuring it out as I’m sure many people were in terribly enjoyable mental anguish NOT being able to figure it out. “M” is fairly simple and while on the one hand you might want to keep the game simple, on the other hand look at your target audience and see how many of them read Harry Potter…..so you might want to keep it simple but I think that J.K. shows us you might want to give children/teens something a little more challenging.
Not a single reply or comment :'( Well maybe people just aren't interested in storyline in this game. I know storyline is VERY important however in a lot of games and I hope it becomes so in this one. I've got plenty more suggestions on storyline and it'd be nice if I could just submit those ideas straight to Kingsisle or even better straight to whoever works on that subject.
IMO; The storyline of a MMO should mix in seamlessly as possible, to the game machanics ( objects you interact with incl. NPCs and surrounding terrain ) The better this is done the more emersive the game becomes.
I would like to hear about the earth shaking in the under ground city and a mysterious rift opening up which would be found out later that the Myth teacher has indeed been up to no good and either a botched or on porpus experiment has opened up a worm hole , portal etc. there. this rift is a doorway to Dragonspire ( a link to a world which is not on the Great Trees list in Ravebwood )
you could write story all around this.
I guess I write more like a story board ( comic book style ) but with out the drawings
i think there should be another set of bad guys. then in the last world there will be Malistaire attacking them and you have to fight them off and then malistaire comes back and helps us and bacomes the death school teacher.i know. it's a long sentence.
I actually had a comlaint about the storyline, and I wasn't going to bother posting anything about it, as it is just an opinion, but I suppose this makes it convenient to do so.
I will do my best not to reveal any of the end for those who have not been there yet. My complaint is that when adventuring in Wizard City, we learn that Malistaire is setting up all kinds of plans to distrupt wizard city. But when we get to the end of the game, none of that makes sense, and seems rather pointless. Perhaps Malistaire's loss of his wife rattled his brains, but logic would dictate that a better plan would be to NOT get noticed and lay low, get the watchamacallit, and do the thing he does at the end without bringing attention to himself. (Vague enough?)
Yes, I know, there cannot really be a game if we are not suppose to chase after the villain. I guess my point is that the antagonist's motive ends up being a little contradictory at the end. Why disrupt Wizard City and the spiral, if it has nothing to do with your main goal? Where is the incentive? Where is the reasoning?
What if Cyrus Drake or Ambrose was to blame for his wife's death? Or maybe he has reason to believe so. Then, maybe we can see why he would have a grudge against Wizard City and the spiral in general.
Anyway, I don't mean to be so negative. I thought the game in general was done very well. It is just crazy folks like myself, and I suspect the original poster as well, that like to hear a good story.
