Yea, basically no one means that an mmo's good story is good as far as classical art, or great novels are great. I would say that movies are scarce that aproach good novels.
they mean that if you follow the story, read the lore, and invest in the world, the story develops in interesting ways.
If you don't invest, then it's just mmo quest flavor text town. at that point you just wanna box it up and push it in a corner.
One of the more unique aspects of FF14's storyline is that its vaugely final fantasy game level writing, with MMO as the story t elling engine (so few CGI cutscenes, mostly dialogue or camera tricks with mmo models. it's basically literally machinima for 90 percent of hte storytelling.), which are told over a long, long period of time. The characters, locations, creatures and lore are repeatedly updated and utilized over years and years, which is utterly foreign to Final fantasy games (which, inexplicably, seem to design fascinating worlds, then drop them in a dumpster when that game is over. ) So you get to be attached to characters in world. or cities or locations. it's kind of a unique situation amongst really any mmo, and amongst most rpgs.
Players who have played it for years have been slow burning it. they didn't quite get the impacted ass full of repeat plot eye-rolls because there were generally something like Expansion >6 months >between expansion stories >6 months >expansion. so it was kind of drip fed. and with the ARR smoothing they removed a number of side quests and dungeon requirements which sort of distracted from primal wack-a-mole. man they need to clean up ARR
I absolutely agree that there are a number of things that could have been done much better, or more well written with the same tools. in your example instead of simply tossing the mguffins, they should have made a scene where that was the logical choice. maybe villian almost grabs it then over the side it goes as a last ditch. definately could have been done better. it kind of reminds me of the end of game of thrones. i constantly saw scenes that they should have just...depicted diferently but arrived at the same plot-development and everyone would have hated it less.
I suspect that various crews are told to develop plot points. and the B team just creates the linking quests between the big ones the A team works on.
