By all accounts, Final Fantasy XI’s last expansion is Seekers of Adoulin. It was a good expansion, definitely… but it certainly doesn’t feel like a last expansion. It introduces a bunch of concepts and then sidesteps them swiftly, and the actual wrap-up-everything story that followed seems to come more or less out of nowhere. Of course, the reason for this is that the expansion wasn’t planned to be the last; it just sort of happened that way.
Continual narratives in MMOs can have issues, but one of those issues is the simple fact that good narratives have an ending point while expansions need to keep swinging upward. World of Warcraft: Legion certainly feels like all of the notes you’d expect from a final expansion, but there’s no indication that it’s actually going to be the final expansion. Games like Star Wars: The Old Republic have ready-made concluding points for the overarching stories they’re telling, but those events are unlikely to make it into the game, since they’d narratively render the game unplayable.
On the one hand, I’d like to see developers plan out their stories more comprehensively over the long term; on the other hand, I can understand why it doesn’t happen, since when a game is on the high note you don’t want to abruptly end it. Every game will have its final expansion at some point, but you rarely see one meant as such. So what do you think, readers? Should MMOs plan their last expansions out? Should there be a big concluding send-off waiting in the wings until the day it’s time to say goodbye?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
