That’s why I think Star Wars and Star Trek MMORPGs are going to benefit from fantastic numbers of players. Their fan base is simply so large that some of them are bound to try their hands at sword fighting or Multiuser SpaceBattles.

What does “elbereth’ do? How do these rings react when dropped down a sink? What is a sink for? Where do nymphs live? Where is the Oracle and what is it useful for? Gnomish Mines? Amulet of whom? And it is guarded by who? In what progression will I reach the elemental planes? What are their attributrs and who lives there? Which gods are neutral, and which good? What happens on the night of a full moon? No moon? Is it bad luck to eat my own pet if I’m starving?

Procedural placement from keystones does not make a game lore-free – you played Diablo, didn’t you?

@Ryan – Consider your own proof:
“So that it can be saved by a pipe”
“Defend a castle that is being attacked by…”
Those are both lore statements.

I think like the nethack example, my mind filled the gaps on the first one. As the complete one just wasnt inviting for me..

I agree on the importance of lore though. Lore and stories have always been the driving force for me in the games. They are there to mask the game mechanics. If I’m not pulled in by the story/lore, I start to see the plain mechanics of the game and the experience is ruined. Unless the game mechanics are superb!, but that doesn’t happen often to a veteran like me anymore…

However, I don’t think Joe Avearge MMO gamer cares much about the lore, or even well written quest text. Given that the most successful sub based MMO to date has “lore” that grows more rambling and incoherent with each major update (they lost me when the Alliance was joined by “kindly space demons”), it doesn’t seem like it’s much of a priority for WoW fans. I have seen claims to the effect that most MMO users don’t even bother to read to quest text, they just scroll down to the objectives and run off after them. I know anecdotally that it is true of many folks I’ve run into inside various MMOs (“What, you read all that crap?”), but I don’t have a firm sense of how common it is.

Well, yes, I would like the meaning of words to be determined more precisely. Having ambiguous terminology can be frustrating when trying to have a meaningful conversation. So, I want to define these words more precisely.

I think most of your examples show that theme is important to people (which, by extension is why art style is important), but I don’t think that the lore is quite as important as you say it is.

I imagine many of the players who would not care about the given reason would also turn around and complain if that reason was taken away and nothing left in its place.

I disagree. In WoW, Night Elves can’t (currently) be Mages. Do you imagine many people went to look for a lore-bawsed reason why there wasn’t a “Mage” class icon on the Night Elf character creation screen? Or do you think the vast majority of people thought, “I must pick another class or pick another race that can be a Mage.” I think this is more likely than people going to find out about the old elven addiction to magic. I also think the ploy to reintroduce the Mage class to the Night Elves in the next expansion only irritates a small minority of people who whom the lore is truly part of the experience.

I agree with your basic premise, that context is important. I think that’s why familiar themes like high fantasy do well, because the core audience knows the general rules of the theme. However, I don’t think the lore as I define it is what really gives the context. I think it more gives the texture for people who want to dig a bit under the surface.

To put it in terms of your stadium example, theme is having a large, metropolitan city in the background to put the stadium in context. Lore is knowing that it’s a specific city that is looking to build a stadium to attract or start a professional team to increase tourist revenue. Lore may make the stadium picture more meaningful to some people, but it’s not necessary as your example directly shows (at least for me, since I don’t know which city that is).

My thoughts.

In one movie we say “OMG he’s FLYING, psssh, /done”, while in another we’re like, “Yeah okay I can dig it”. In this way it helps establish parameters for writers.

suspension of disbelief and many other factors of story writing and reading, are, you could say, almost subconscious. It’s hard to take that fact, for what it is, and apply that to any realm of a persons intelligence one way or the other, as it’s a human condition.

We all do it. We watch movies, and simply by into the fact that the guy can fly. We don’t hypothesize why compared to the rest of the story(well some of us do).

Also in this respect, if you start to theorize about it, where does the game end and the lore begin? Because really if I took WoW and took out the name of NPC’s and the name of the spells, and everything else, you’d be left with what? Would the game be as enjoyable to the world in large?

I think a lot of players, who may not even know how to voice their opinion, would want just enough lore to mesh everything together enough to suspend their disbelief regardless of what they choose to do in an MMORPG, while to anywhere from slightly above that sense of lore to near infinite amounts above that other players want more lore or story.