Lore? What lore?

I kinda feel sorry for the folks @ Anet who actually took the time to sit down and write up hundreds of years worth of lore/history for each of the three continents (and I guess GWeN too). I mean, it seems like nobody really makes any mention of the lore that much.

After having taken a 2 year GW break for WoW, I noticed how people actually appreciated the lore in WoW. I mean, they had RPers that would really get into it and wrote fan fics and everything. (RPing and fan-fics are definetely not my bag, but I did kinda feel happy for those that found a creative outlet in WoW)

I mean, GW has some substantial lore to explore, but it seems like almost nobody actually cares about the lore, like why the Luxons hate the Kurzicks or why Elona has 3 diff "countries" in it.

When I first got into GW (from beta, and then from launch, when they put out the lore in the boxes) I read the lore from the manuals and thought it was actually really good, especially since they had absolutely no previous franchise titles to draw from, unlike WoW.

Am I the only one who feels sorry for whoever wrote the lore/backstory for GW?

Fan ficts are horrible, and we should be glad few player do that.

I never liked RPing either, but I would guess it's because we don't have to spend time on the game to feel justified in paying for it so we don't make up little time wasters like that, or become as attached to our aviators either.
Secondly WoW has more people, so you get more people who like that sort of thing.

Also you have to go out of your way to find the lore, seriously blizzards better at shoving lore down your through then Anet is.

Well if you're interested in lore, the forum here on Guru is Druid's Overlook
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/f...play.php?f=221

If you want to see fan fiction, hit Lyssa's Fiction
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/f...splay.php?f=20


For artwork etc, check out Nolani Academy of Arts
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=5

There is alot of great lore in GW and many ppl enjoy it greatly.

Do I respect the writers? Absolutely.

Do I feel sorry for them? Are you kidding?

Step back and take a look at the big picture. They got payed thousands upon thousands of dollars to sit at their desks and make sh** up.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the lore of GW, and I would consider myself one of those few people who likes to read into it. Nothing pleases me more than to hop into the game, and just go around reading dialogues about towns, places, or past events.

But do I think we should feel sorry for them? Nah, they're probably just happy they can put bread on the table. They ARE writers after all.... They wouldn't do it if they didn't enjoy it.

By the way, I've NEVER read a fan fiction that I liked, and the lack of them is one of the many things I love about the GW community- GW players seem to be able to differentiate between the game world and their world without letting it interfere with their love for the game. They can play the game, love the game, even worship the game, but come on.... There's plenty of lore already written and being written at this very moment. Do we really need more? Let's leave it to the professionals.

I greatly enjoyed reading the lore , quite nice Especially the proph lore.

You explained it in your initial post: WoW has previous games full of story and events to build itself on while GW doesn't.

In my opinion, GW (including campaigns and expansion) did great at introducing a seriously significant amount of lore in a single game (single game being GW1). GW has less fanboys and fangirls based on this very fact because any fan of GW is a "first time" fan. This will be greatly reflected when GW2 comes out because we will have fans of old (GW players) as well as new fans joining. The new fans will have a different experience from the old fans and those new fans will be split between people who play GW1 to experience the backstory and those who don't (and just read summaries if at all).

Feel sorry for the writers? Not at all. I think they have provided a great amount of lore in this first game (considering GW1 as one game) and it has received a great response from its players. I have to admit, however, that I fully agree with you on wishing we had more lore with Cantha and Elona... a GW:EN-like expansion for each of these continents linking to wherever they lay in GW2 would be highly preferred in my book. Doubt we'll ever see that though.


As far as fan fiction comes along, I agree with GoodApollo1234 in that I have never read a fan fiction that I liked; or, to further elaborate, I have never read a fan fiction that I thought was well-written. Granted, I am biased because I do not understand the interest in and do not care to read fan-written "lore" or stories that are unofficial.

I use to enjoy the lore back when Prophecies was the only one out. Factions was hard to get into the story/lore given the terrible cut-scenes and voice acting. I lost interest when Nightfall came out and tried to tie everything together.

I actually really appreciate the lore in GW. Though I never read it... Think I might go read some when I get up in the morning :-)

Well some people don't care at all about the lore and some do (like me). You can't force people to know everything.

I really enjoyed reading all the quest dialogue boxes, all the lore--especially in Prophecies and in Nightfall-- all the manuals, even some of the lore discussions in forums. And no, I don't feel "sorry" for the writers, because I think LOTS of people read that material, and LOTS of people appreciated the immersion in the game world that it attempted to provide.

It doesn't get discussed much in Riverside, at least, because most Riverside discussions seem to center around *ahem* skills; state-of-the-game flames, rants, discussions, and analyses; and SOME storyline/mission/quest discussion (more of that in other sections of the forums, really).

Same for me. Nightfall had an ok story, but you could see what was coming a mile away.

WoW is more RPing then lore/story until near the end really. (What i mean is all you do is kill boars and stuff for a long time before the REAL story happens) GW puts you in the story right away, but doesn't leave much room for 'serious' RPing in game imo. My guild has two Fanfiction writers (myself and a friend) and while im only ok at it, my friend is an actual author and his stories blow me away. So, our guild respects the Lore a LOT and love to add our own stories to it. Most of us have little profiles for our characters that tie into the main story somehow.

Recently I've made a 2nd warrior to be my RPing character, doing ALL possible quests and reading them all of the way as opposed to using the wiki. Going through them all and doing more then following the green arrow is immersing and you start to really respect the writers. However it also shows first hand how little amount of quests there are (In prophecies) NF is pretty packed though.

There are people who love lore, but I think the problem is most people want to finish the game, so they follow green arrows then farm to get purty armor, Which is fine and their choice. Others like me however appreciate the story part of it.

So to wrap it up, no your not alone

Well it takes effort to read all that jibberish. And you get nothing for doing but wasted time. Add to that the terrible writting its just a chore to read something that has no affect on your character and you miss nothing by skipping it.

Lame attempts at humor, no personally to the characters they all talk like the writter and he talks like a tool. I dont see the reason to torture us with this, if they're nott going to try jsut leave it out save yourselves the time concentrate on something else. I get enough RP by trying to vanquish an area or get to the next outpost in one peice or grind out a title. I dont need to read or think about stories while im playing, the story should be what im playing and it is, thats why I dont read anything. Even the char have more personality than any of the character in this game they didnte even get a line of text.

bigtime102 has a good point concerning the lame attempts at humour and characters talking like the writer. The script does sound like it's meant for 12 year olds (bad anime, anyone?). I do have to agree that the dialogue is absolute crap. I hope the writer(s) have better tuned their skills for GW2. If anything, they should take more classes or the direction/design team should all hire professional writers to give it depth.

For me, I never got into any of the lore because the storylines, EXCEPT FOR GWEN, were TERRIBLE.

Seriously.

SERIOUSLY.

Prophecies I forgave. It was their first try. And honestly, there are moments that while they make you cringe, are so bad they're funny.

Factions was TERRIBAD. I feel sorry for anyone who has JUST Factions. They're trapped playing in one of the most depressing games ever. And the story about Shiro was just laughable. He was so bipolar.

Night Fall... oh where do I begin? Firstly, I wouldn't mind a campaign/story as long as NF if I could RUN THROUGH it with new chars. On top of that, who in their right mind that is playing this game is actually interested in the political drama of princes and those groups? AND on top of that, when it came to Kormir... I DID NOT CARE. I hoped she would've died early on. At least Rurick had the decency to do that much. When she got blinded, all I thought was, "Good!" When you're actually happy that the main character you're supposed to sympathize with in a story gets hurt, somebody did a REALLY bad job at writing the story.

GWEN... was great. Simply put. I enjoyed it. I don't mind playing through it. The voice acting and script was great. It kept me interested. MAJOR improvement. They must've fired the people who did storylines for the other campaigns.


So that's why the lore never stuck for me. Lore is only as good as the story it inspires.

There are fan fics about Guild Wars. Just go to fan fic websites and search for Guild Wars and you will find many.

Also, there isn't much room for RPing in Guild Wars.

Well, back in the day, when it was JUST prophecies, the RP'ers used the international dist I think.

This was before all the other crazy districts joined the fun.

But yeah, in WoW, it's probably easier to RP given that it's an open and shared world, instead of instanced everything.

I don't see how you can condemn the stories of the other games on one hand and then praise GW:EN's writing on the other hand. Absolutely, GW:EN's story was more three dimensional than the other stories, but the writing still had the same stereotypical archetypes, cliché events and conflicts, dry dialogue and mediocre voice acting. At best, the finished script looks like a rough first draft.

I have writen fan fics for other genres before, as well as been in an organization that had regular writting competitions. That said, 80% of fan ficts ARE terrible. However, there was a small group of around 10 people (myself included) who were fairly educated and could write a compelling, believable (within the universe we were writing about), and interesting piece.

Really, fan ficts, like any form of creative writting, is a talent/skill that requires pratice to develop successfully.

Thank you for that thought-provoking, well thought out blanket condemnation of millions of stories all over the internet. For what it's worth, I've read many a fanfic that was a hundred times better than published novels. Hell, one of the last professionally published books I read was so friggin' terrible I still can't figure out how it got published in the first place (Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" in case anyone was wondering, and I only read it because people kept telling me it was good. It's not, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless they're reading it to make fun of it. It's awful).

Kinda funny coming from a gamer posting on an internet forum ;P.

Also, there is fanfiction for GW, but you need to know where to look for it (right here, on this forum!). Most of it is pretty bad, featuring people's own Mary-Sue--uh, characters, but some of it is halfway decent.

It's pretty rich seeing a bunch of nerds making fun of other nerds for their hobby, though, keep up the good work!