Time & Storytelling

Something I've wondered is what role time plays in storytelling for live service games. The gaps between major updates may not translate to equivalent periods of time passing in-universe, but it gives players a lot of room to get to know characters. If you're coming in as a brand-new player and slamming through the entire story in one go, do big moments for characters have the same impact?

There will be spoilers for several seasons/expansions of GW2 in this post.

Rhonin

Rhonin was an NPC in Dalaran. When somebody brought him a quest item, he'd launch into a long, loud, annoying speech that everyone in the city had to hear. This went on so long that it became a meme.

After a few years of this, Rhonin got killed by a WMD in a novel and was unceremoniously deleted from the game. I thought this was great! Blowing up this annoying character was a fitting punishment for the years of CITIZENS OF DALARAN!!!1! we had been forced to endure.

If you did not play WoW during this period¹, you might know about Rhonin and see him in a few quests. But he would just be another face in the crowd: okay, turn in to this random ginger guy, move on. You would not have endured his speech for years, so would his death matter to you at all?

Savings-Obsessed Norn

In the old Lion's Arch², there was a generic norn NPC. He stood around an area where players congregated. He was Literally Nobody -- a nameless NPC present to make the city feel alive -- but he was beloved by the community for one of his lines.

Every minute or three, he'd exclaim By Ogden's hammer, what savings!. This might get a little tired after hearing it 300 times, but it was a quiet, inoffsensive thing that happened and you may not even consciously notice it. Sometimes, people would joke about it, much like the I could outrun a centaur! line from some characters when they gain swiftness.

When Lion's Arch fell, this NPC disappeared. People did wonder if he had survived³, and were sad that his silly little line was no longer being shouted. There was a sense of loss.

But perhaps this is a bad example: if you did not play during the period of what savings!, you'd never even know this character existed.

Aurene

Aurene is a major character in GW2: when you first meet her, she's an unhatched dragon egg. There's a lot of mystique and prophecy surrounding her; she's supposed to help you end the Elder Dragon threat. Her earliest story arc in 2014 involved intrigue around stealing her egg, and she wouldn't hatch until 2016. From there, there's another two-year period where she's growing and needs to be kept protected and hidden.

One of the high points for her story is in 2018, when she gets killed instead of fufilling prophecy and killing an Elder Dragon.

This is a more interesting example than the first two: Aurene was a major character in the story. The world might be frozen on an idyllic day between game updates, but time continues to pass IRL, and players are using that to discuss and speculate.

If you played GW2 from 2014 - 2018, you are likely to have discussed Aurene on the socials, in /map, or with your friends. Four years of drip-fed story developments is a long time to form fan theories and generally marinate in that character's presence in the story.

But: if you start playing GW2 today, you'll probably binge story episodes. Aurene would be born and die in a month, or less.

Does the moment of her death in All or Nothing have the same impact for these players as it did for the rest of us, playing along as developments happened?

In the very next chapter of the story, Aurene gets better. She had eaten the lich Palawa Joko⁴ recently, and unbeknownst to everybody, this gave her some Miracle Max bullshit.

All or Nothing ends with Aurene dead, and a month where the active playerbase has absolutely no idea what happens next. Whereas, for the folks binging: Aurene has a dramatic death, then pops back up five minutes later ready to go another round with the Elder Dragon. These are two wildly difference experiences.

Conclusion

To some degree, books, films, and TV shows can enjoy the same quirk of the story being "paused" while time marches on for fans. But those are works meant to be finished one day, and the assumption is people can read/watch a series straight through, without letting it stew in their heads for 13+ between Book 5 and 6⁵.

Live service games are a point in time, and the game is only as good as its latest release. The backlog of Stuff to Do in the game is valuable, but the game is always focused on the now. And when a live service game is "done", it's not hanging around in bookstores or available on Netflix for binging -- somebody pulls the plug on the server, and it's gone forever. MMO Gamers only have the now.

Writing a story with the progression of real, out-of-universe time in mind is important -- but I don't see people talking about this aspect of live-service games much. It's definitely A Thing though, right?