Brevity is the soul of wit my man.
Imo the lack of PC agency in a mmo setting is critical to the integrity of its narrative, and i’m confident giving the player so much recognition (ala legion) instead of keeping it strictly as an exposition tool is wholly harmful to the delivery.
You can’t possibly cover all the nuances of each PC through one line of dialogue while accepting a quest, and you still have to narrate a story from the perspective you want to deliver; that said I’m perfectly fine with minor branch out options that have no influence in the grand scheme of the plot and lets your character express their own outlook (like choosing whether to blight enemies or help allies in SoL), but doing the sort of stuff Legion did sets a really bad precedent and adds extra obstacles for both player and writer.
MMOs and RPGs are totally different beasts and it’s important to keep in mind the key differences between the two (storytelling wise), it’s pretty silly to try and compare them.
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Dialogue options that don’t affect narrative outcomes would allow players to express themselves a bit.
“A heroes work is never done.”
vs
“Again? Light you’re pathetic! Fine, let’s get this over with.”
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This is what happens when the story is not really planned for a long run.
in legion, we had all these stories about you being the greatest savior in the universe using these legendaries weapons just because.
but since blizzard wants and needs more expansions, this is what we get,
the PC had become too important in a MMO with millions/thousands of players and now we have all these people wanting different things for their story, it just doesn’t work.
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Funny enough FF14 does this pretty well. They give dialog options that can impact how the NPC responds to you, but doesn’t change the narrative overall. Picking the silly options has led to some amusing reactions.
Ultimately, you can’t run any MMO like a table top game. There’s just too many players at the table and we all have different tastes. For instance, I go nuts for the noble sacrifice and others don’t care for it.
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