Too Much or Not Enough Gold?
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Hey Jake,
How have you been?
Jake
I've been doing all right. Participating in a little challenge that's taking up some of my time and giving me stress, but what's life without stress?
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MMO's based on existing licenses huh? History shows us that any game based on a license, mostly of the movie kind, has a very high risk of suckage. Some developers seem to rely too much on the fact that there is an established fan base, and seem not to care about whether their product is actually fun! This seems most true for the movie licenses. It goes the other way around as well. I am NOT looking forward to World of Warcraft the Movie.
Jake
I grant that WoW's movie will probably be awful, but I will wait until I'm in the theatre to make a judgment. I'm a fanboy at heart and so I'm hoping it'll at least be another Transformers.
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Now I haven't got hands on experience with license based MMO's, but I've heard enough disturbing rumours about some of them. Star Wars Galaxies doesn't seem to have a grand reputation, and Matrix Online... Does it still exist? Lord of the Rings Online seems to be a rip-off of WoW... Again, I have no experience with the game, so I could be wrong, but it just seems that way. They never seem to live up to expectations.
Jake
I've heard about SWG and MO, but never played them - can you tell I love acronyms? I've heard the combat system in Matrix Online was a sort of rock-paper-scissors mess, but the continuation of the movie's story was fantastic. With my love of lore, I consider that game to be a slight success even with its shortcomings.
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On the other hand, perhaps the problem is that no matter how good the game actually is, fans (especially) are going to be disappointed anyways. Since it is based on something that already exists, people are going to have a certain idea about it in their heads. If an MMO goes into a different direction than what someone would expect from his/her favourite show/movie/tabletop wargame/whatever, they're going to think it will suck big time.
Jake
I think many fans go satisfied, but we would never know. It sucks that the loudest fanbase is the unhappy troll demographic.
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One other thing suddenly springs to mind. Many of these licenses' stories center around characters. Neo, Luke Skywalker, you name it. They are extremely significant, if not critical to the story that's being told. You can't turn that story into an MMO, because you can't have a million Neos or Lukes or Frodos running around, thus the players will always have a different role from the main story, a role that probably won't appeal to all people... And there's only One Ring... Right? Not 3 million. Am I making sense here?
Jake
In these licenses, it depends on the nature of the story. I believe that the MMOs are plausible because they are epics. The Matrix didn't start as one, but it sure ended as one. Only in movies and books where there are armies can an MMO be acceptable.
I understand where you're coming from, but I think you should consider the difference in scale between LOTRO and any franchise based on one particular character. Spawn, for instance?
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What license would I like to see made into an MMO? Tough question.. The Forgotten Realms setting for D&D would probably be the best. It doesn't suffer from the critical characters in the storyline, as the setting is just that, a setting. There's no storyline that's already been told, no characters we already love. Players won't get the feeling of being insignificant, there is no outcome yet.
Jake
Hmmm. I'm not sure how well you know Forgotten Realms (and I know little), but I'm sure that there's a lore to it that involves beloved characters. I understand what you mean, though, about the setting. If it's a world to be explored, how can one feel insignificant?
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If I dare be a little more original than that, mayhaps the books written by R.E. Feist (Rift Wars and such) could make a cool MMO. Midkemia Online... That storyline however does have the aforementioned important characters, so it would be slightly more difficult to tell a story besides the ones in the books. Forgotten Realms does sound promising though! I hope they will throw in Sim-style house building in it! ;)
Anyways, I hope my rant was clear enough for you to understand. It was difficult even for me to follow!
Cheers and salutations,
Daniel Brouwer
The Netherlands
Jake
I followed the majority of it, and I hope that my counterpoints made sense, too. Oh, and cheers to you for reading my column from the Netherlands.
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