What's the best way to deliver MMO lore?

The MMO genre is increasingly dominated by AAA titles like The Secret World, Guild Wars 2, and Star Wars: The Old Republic, all of which tuck story and lore into special cutscenes bookending regular combat, but that's not the only way to drop backstory into a game. In fact, Diablo III's lore-delivery system might just top them all.

Did I just use Diablo III and lore in the same sentence? I did! Diablo III reveals its backstory to the player through a series of voiceovers that play as you play rather than take you out of the fight. Little audio pop-ups narrate the significance of characters and places so you understand what's going. It's not that the game never employs cutscenes; it just restricts cutscenes to Very Important Events.

Granted, this type of system might not work so well in a full-fledged massively multiplayer game, so today we're asking what you think: How do you want lore delivered in your MMOs?

TH

As a lore freak, I agree on the Diablo III way of delivering lore.
I actually think that Guild Wars 2 is dropping behind in terms of accesible lore content. So many short sentences to describe events that occured over thousands of years.
A player shouldn't be forced to go to fansites in order to catch up on the lore.
My opinion, for what it's worth...

TBH i i am not really the person for lore, as long as it keeps me going i dont rerally mind

MxO's way is the best way by far. They had live events managed by the dev teams which were unique, different and kept the story going.

For example, Niobe maybe trying to get back some stolen codes, she would contact the Zionites, and they would attack the machine areas. Machine players would be contacted by their Agent, and they would fight to defend. It was once only, there and then, if you missed it, tough. The world evolved, the story changed, it was like living in a world that grew around you. They had events like these every week that evolved the story.

Was magical, honestly. I remember when the war broke out again, each faction were meeting, us Zionites were being attacked by level 100 agents (we are 50s capped), and it was chaos.

Great times.

TH

Events in-game are all good... but only if you know the story leading up to it.

I enjoy the way guild wars has done it, with that little introduction that changes depending on what you choose, however i don't really feel like i get the full story of the world and all the raced from that and in game. The game is more story focussed than lore focussed, however it's a nice change to have voice acted cut scenes instead of stupid text boxes all the time. I haven't played many mmo's that deliver lore very well to be honest =/