Lol, you actually read it for the story?
Well, it's not exactly like there's many D&D jokes nowadays. The comic has been subjected to Cerebus Syndrome, but for once, it changes the comic for the better.
The comic relies way too much on lucky coincidences and idiot balls to resolve its conflicts for me to take the story seriously. And it really pushes the suspension of disbelief thing on how the characters act. The fact that the morals and Aesops this comic runs on are typically things you'd see in a children's cartoon show or a Marvel comic doesn't help it much either considering the universe it's set in, which causes a few face-palms once in a while.
Other random reasons:
Nale's motive for being obsessed with killing the OOTS is... either for the Evulz, or he hates his brother for some reason. I have no clue.
Xykon is only menacing because he's level 30-something. His personality is "Child who does whatever he wants". He's only able to live with it because he can fly and kill people with his finger. What did he do to be blessed with this ridiculous amount of power? Who knows. It's like how Aizen from Bleach is ridiculously powerful for no real reason. Or most shounen anime antagonists.
There's also Shojo, who is paranoid enough to fake insanity while manipulating politics from behind the scenes, refuses to let even his most trusted paladins know, yet has no problem with informing the OOTS about his deceit. And despite him being paranoid enough to not let any of his paladins know about his secret, he's ridiculously careless about eavesdropping. Seriously, his entire facade ended because two paladins were about to enter his room while he was speaking loudly to his accomplice about his deceit.
Vaarsuvius suddenly went insane over the time-skip, despite showing no signs of this before the time-skip, meaning that the author most likely decided to do the Soul-Splice plot on a whim sometime afterwards.
Also, the entire Therka subplot can be summed up as "Girl betrays her own side, and her own lifelong mentor, because one of her enemies, who is a total stranger to her, is too sexy. And we're supposed to take it seriously."
And the fiends' plan is ridiculous, and only worked out due to the extreme luck that's often used to resolve conflicts in this comic, and yet the fiends are still portrayed as being intelligent scheming masterminds.
Oh, and while we're on the Soul-Splice plot, there's Vaarsuvius's ridiculously fast and instant personality change that happened right after getting smashed by a chunk of wall. It looks like the author was trying to shoehorn an Aesop in there somewhere and have Vaarsuvius learn hir lesson or something, but failing at it.
I would suggest for the author to cut back on the story's seriousness, but the average reader isn't going to analyze the story that way, so it doesn't really matter.
I like the story.
There are some pacing complaints that are fair game for any incomplete webcomic and the story lost some focus as the objectives keep changing and getting bigger, but whilst it's lite, I don't think it could be as good or funny as it is if the story were so lacking. You are completely right about the V stuff though
Meh, I don't really hate the story overall. I'll never take the story seriously, but the author tract and idiotic Aesops are what annoy me.
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Good webcomic
Three years ago, I got bored and decided to search "Stick Figure" on Wikipedia. On the page for Stick Figure, there was a link to the Order of the Stick's Wikipedia page. I clicked on the link and after finding out what the Order of the Stick was, when to it's website.
I started reading the first few strips, but ultimately got bored and exited out. I forgot all about Rich Burlew's webcomic for another year. After rediscovering what the Order of the Stick was, I started reading the comic. Within two hours, I read all of the first story arc and a few strips of the next.
Over the course of several more days, I read the entire strip up to 672: A Familiar Conclusion (mainly because that was the current strip and I can't see into the future). Since then, I've followed this comic devoutly. Ratings:
Story: 4/5
The story is great. The early strips are somewhat lacking in plot, but later on, the story becomes very well-told. There are several annoying plotholes, which detract from the story, but the rest is (for the most part) good.
Art: 5/5
The art, despite appearing to be simplistic, is very expressive and unique (though this is subjective.)