Article by Gamegoddess
Yesterday (May 17, 2007) the latest installment of the Darkfall Dev Journal was released. The Sands of Rubaiyat gave us more lore behind the story of Darkfall. This got me to thinking about how many people actually read game lore.
In UO we saw a pretty basic lore wrapped around Lord British, Lord Blackthorne, Minax, and Mondain. It was pretty basic. In games today we see very detailed race lore and centuries of history behind the worlds themselves such as in SWG. If you are a Twi’lek and want to know about your race, you can look at what is given in game and you can also Google it. You can find information of all kinds’ right down to wedding ceremonies including macros.
The flip side of the coin is how many people just think a game sounds good…buy the game, install it and start playing. If you are a crafter, do you need to know lore to make a piece of armor, or a weapon? The answer to this could be both yes and no. If there is racial clothing, weapons, etc, it could be quite beneficial to learn about the race you are playing…and yet, you would be able to play quite well without knowing it at all. Do you care about lore if your only plan is to go in a pk every person you run see? If you are an Orc you can quite easily just go around killing everyone and no one give you a second look. But do you know why everyone hates you and you hate everyone?
The lore readers and non readers are equal. Neither is better than the other. The lore readers will insist that you can’t get the full benefit of the game without knowing the history behind it. This might be true. The non readers will tell you it don’t matter and just let them play the game.
