f13.net

I got inspired by a thread on Corpnews talking about MMOG design and people talking about what setting they would like a MMOG to be made in. I thought it deserved it own thread.

I have always wanted a Planescape style MMOG. Doesnt have to be DnD, just that sort of thing. It would be very easy to do instanced mission areas, or new content add-ons and stuff. Also it would be really easy to add new races or classes. And it give a reasion for so many powerful people to be all living in such close proximity to eachother, unlike WoW or EQ where the entire world is populated by heros, but it seems wrong.

I would also like to see a Steampunk or Cyberpunk MMOG.

How about all of you guys? Where would you like to play?

World of Darkness
All Sergio Leone westerns
pre-Clans Battletech (Clans are the Night Elves of Battletech)
Robotech
Lankhmar and/or Vlad Taltos

Steampunk.  

Fallout (post-apocalyptic).

Ancient Greece or Rome (with their respective deities).

Western (or Firefly esque space western *drool*).

Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock
steampunk-fantasy

One that recreates the world of "Neuromancer" by William Gibson would be the perfectly refined Cyberpunk IMO.

Probably also a good reflection of the "Iron Kingdoms" for Steampunk (a pencil and paper RPG setting).

And a ++ for the pre-clans battletech.

Steampunk, for sure.

Iain Banks' 'Culture' would be excellent, too.

Steampunk is already coming with the new DnD MMO. (Assuming it gets published).


I'd like to see Cyberpunk above all others. The thing that drew me to AO was the talk of Fixers using the net which turned out to be nothing but a transport system. Neocron came close but I despised alot of their design decisions.

To work it'd need:

Dark, gritty scenery..bladerunner basically
My own grungy aparment, complete with rats and sirens outside, and a computer
The net<-A MUST
Cyberware in some form.

Personally I'd like to see the old PnP Shadowrun turned into an MMO. It fused Cyberpunk and Fantasy and worked for the most part.

If you going, might as well go in whole hog.

What I would like is a flexibile gaming system, ala Gurps, that can be adapted to suit almost any setting.  More of a multiverse with travel between widely different dimensions/worlds each with their own "laws" flavor and settings, plus potential links to other worlds.

So, you could have a post apocalyptic theme one, where in certain locations nucleur blast open portals to other place like a high magic fantasy world, oriental themed world, even bizarre horror themes or alien settings.

Plus, in that circumstance, expansion are easy to justify. ;0)

Still waiting for a good sci fi game since AO, E&B, EVE and SWG really dont cut it.  Someone make me a nice hard sci fi game please.

Xilren

Sci-Fi, space exploration, planet exploration, 100% dynamic content (fully destructable and constructable evironments).   Players acting as agents or citizens of pre-established fictous government entities with adequatte socialpolitical controls to stop players who don't take the game seriously from ruining it for everyone else.

 Where do I sign up?

I do have to wonder why fantasy is so dominant. Is it a perception that fantasy sells over scifi?

I'd second the PS:Torment idea.  Something about that game still makes me think, and it would be a great setting to put ANYTHING you wanted in.


Something about that makes me cringe.

Riverworld.

Definitely Leone.
For something western-based, but with more fantasy: Deadlands.

Caveman era (actually, I'd prefer something less historical and more silly, like the movie "Caveman". Claymation dinosaurs and gigantic iguanas would be a plus).

Something Aquatic/Atlantean, with a mix of sci-fi and fantasy both (like the Namor comics).

Sounds a bit fascist, isn't it?

I want players to have freedom in what they do in the game, but I've decided just turning people loose to do whatever creates a real unstructured wreck.   Some of the players are going to try to seriously build up an interesting universe, many of the players are going to just do whatever because a game is, after all, about having fun.   Left uncontrolled, the later will tear apart any progress the former makes at building a good virtual community.

Since this is my ideal MMOG we're talking about, I'm opting for an approach where the players don't run the governments, but act as parts of that government.   Want to blow stuff up?  You can be a space marine or a fighter pilot, you'll generally be following orders of superiors and can work your way up the military chain of command through good conduct.   Want to work independently?  No problem, you can be a civilian plying whatever trade you're interested in, perhaps a tradesman, or perhaps as a bounty hunter.  

While combative civilian professions would exist, there'd be laws in place so you can't just run around do whatever with your character without facing some pretty stiff consequences.  Being a criminal is an option, but criminals tend to lead harsh short lives and that's likely how it'd go here.  

Overall, all these restrictions should result in a much more believable and even enjoyable environment.   Believable because your character has to deal with realistic societal pressures, and enjoyable because the gameplay is much better structured than a "do anything" format.   It's sort of like how a class defines an idea of a profession better than a randomly chosen skill pool.

The overall feel of what you're suggesting is 'serious' which would motivate me to suggest you market it as an MMOW instead of an MMOG.

Curse my blatant overediting.

Yeah, pretty much a more seriously geared MMOWish endeavor.  I hesitate to say I'd be for developing a mere simulation so much as a game that takes itself a little more seriously.   There'd be a lot of focus on the interactive game mechanics in any dream game I had a hand in.

Jennifer Government. But not shitty and web based.

Dragonlance. Planescape. ... Either really.

Fallout. This should be a no brainer though.

Deus Ex. Would be nearly impossible but by god the possibilities for dev run conspiracies in an instanced world make me giddy.

We're recapitulating the original evolution of computer games.  Probably because of the thresholds of disbelief.  In Fantasy, anything jarringly unrealistic can be ignored on the grounds that a world full of wizards throwing fireballs doesn't need realism.  To a lesser extent, the same goes for SciFi settings, anything can be explained away by Clarke's Law, which is why the era of Fantasy dominance will probably be followed by SciFi dominance.  Only once the tropes and conventions for dealing with the unavoidably unrealistic elements have become so accepted that they aren't even noticed, will we get games based on strict historical or contemporary settings.

In the late 80's, early 90's, fantasy RPG's (M&M, King's Quest, Ultima, the Gold Box SSI games) dominated computer games so completely, that I understand it was almost as hard to get backing for a non-Fantasy game.  That was followed by dominance of Sci-Fi themes and decidedly fantastic historical settings (Wolfenstein, Doom, Descent), then by hard-core realistic combat simulators (tank simulators, plane simulators, submarine simulators).  The modern era of "realistic" shooters (that have more in common with Quake then the fans really want to admit) is actually pretty recent (and already playing itself out).

--Dave

You know, I've been playing games since the early 80s and it never even occured to me to look at it in that way.

Here's a good question: Why are the current crop of Sci-fi MMOs so unsatisfying?


AO is about the only one I find at all palatable. SWG makes me cry. The space based games look more like glorified persistent Wing Commander than MMOs to me. Neocron had too much PvP empathis for me. (When I played you were literally punished for not PvPing by decreased XP gain).

I second Deadlands.

Other game settings I would love to see:

• Glorantha - Still my favorite FRPG campaign setting
• Legend of the Five Rings - Samurai, ninja, magic and Dune-style politics
• Paranoia - Already said too much...
• Top Secret/Spycraft - Spies, secret agents, etc.
• Some sort of sci-fi space exploration setting
[/list:u]

There is a Roman MMO being created, called Roma Victor (http://www.roma-victor.com/). Only God knows if it'll see the light of day or not.

But I would absolutely love to second the Firefly MMO! There's something about that setting that would work absolutely perfect in a game (preferrably as an MMO). Old fashioned gun fights, brawls, horses, whore houses mixed with some space ships, cybernetics, and technology .. Ok, now I have to watch the series again!

I certainly hear you. I wish there were some better ones ... Have you tried EVE or JumpGate?

EVE is interesting, but you certainly have to like the style of play. But it is very cool looking and it is pretty fun doing missions and kill pirates. It gets old when you start strip mining astroids because your corp keeps asking everyone to help stockpile resources - it's probably much more fun being a pirate than a good guy.

JumpGate was interesting when I played a few years ago, but just didn't catch me. I did try Vendetta Online with their free 2 week trial - it seemed interesting enough. Reminded me of the later versions of the Descent games (it is a in-cockpit space sim that can use a joystick which is cool). Maybe I'll try that game again in the near future.

Ooooh, another game I'd like to see made into a MMO like is Allegiance. That was a kick ass game and would be even more awesome on a larger (than 64 player) scale and made persistent.

Steampunk, definitely.

Cyberpunk, preferably Shadowrun provided someone could do the license justice (which no one fucking would). An RP-Heavy Shadowrun MMORPG with a more action based combat system, a matrix combat system, vehicles, based around doing Shadowruns with Random people? Awesome.

Half the fun of Shadowrun is making a group of people with various mental or social problems get shit done.

It'd take a very large environment or lots of low-population servers for it to work right...I mean, 50 people doing similar high-speed chase Shadowruns on the highway would just look stupid.

...Or a REAL MMORPG based on Phantasy Star (not PSO's world, regular Phantasy Star), with a Hunter's Guild where players can actually GIVE others quests (i.e. a High level crafter can just post a request for materials at a hunter's guild, and players can take the quest).

Microsoft owns the FASA properties, including Shadowrun and BattleTech.

--Dave

One of the issues with some settings is a distinct lack of loot. In a Western MMORPG there just isn't a wide range of items.

Fantasy gives you a TON of loot options because you can add random crappy effects to anything and say 'it's magic!" So you can have your sword of + strength, your sword of + agility, your sword of fire damage, your glowy sword of plant killing, etc etc. And artistically you can slap a blue glow on something and call it new and improved.

In a western setting you just have a bunch of revolvers.

When you add magic or "nanotechnology" or whatever you open items up to a very wide range of effects, as well as allowing people to specialize in magic itself. If you take the average MMOPRG and strip out all magic and magical effects you have a pretty boring game.

Magic is sort of a free-floating creative license to do whatever you want.

medival sword and magic with dragons and sorcerers
apocalyptic post-nuclear wastleand with mutants and ruins

Syndicate. Can anyone count the ways the persuadertron could be used for grief?

Dark Semi-Futuristic (Syndicate, Deus Ex)
Cyber-Punk
Steam-Punk
Fantasy

Those are the 4 I'd ever be drawn to due to setting. Modern-day (if they're gritty enough to make the "real" world unrecognizable this is alleviated), non-fantasy-historic, and full-blown scifi turn me off in RPGs but I'll still play them if they are good enough.

I'd especially love a planescape(-esque) setting. Can you imagine what could be done with a MMOG set primarily in Sigil? Beautiful, beautiful music.

RIFTS.

Dune

And if we're going to bring PnP RPGs into it, FGU's Aftermath.

For my fantasy pick I would choose WoT or Sword of Truth, since ME:O is slated to release(...evenutally....).

And I second the idea of Shadowrun as a MMOG, that game created countless boredom breaking adventures and laughs when I played it back in the day. I heard it went clickbased now so maybe I'll give it a try again. But I think it would make a great Cyberpunk MMOG.

Oh and I just remembered that any of David Edding's stuff would make a great fantasy game and you couldn't go wrong with Timothy Zahn for sci-fi. Which raises an interesting point...why doesn't a company get an established writer to create a good book but release it in MMOG interactivity format? I mean in fantasy novels you always hear about the neighboring kingdom/state/planet preparing for war or all the weapons in testing at the labs, why not let players become the great supporting cast for the story?

Privateer Online damnit.  Would also love to see BattleTech persistant universe.

Mmm... something to do with Cyberpunk. Preferably with open pvp. The opportunities for griefing will be endless, but meh, what can you do.

Also, the GURPS cross-world thing would be really good, if done right. It'd be interesting to have interchangable fantasy and sci-fi (and everything in between) environments in one game.

 - meg

There's nothing saying you couldn't do that in a Wild West setting either. I'd rather play a game that plays with the facts a bit anyways.

Revolvers are the shit (and it's not like all guns are the same), but other weapons can be included as well: Axes, throwing axes, martial arts, brawling, archery, farming equipment....Even swords if you want.

If you want more fantasy, you could stretch the facts and even include magic. Indian had their shamans, the Chinese had alchemy/herbalism, the Blacks had voodoo, and to steal an idea from Deadlands, the white men had "Luck" (In Deadlands, there was a card carrying mage class called a "Huckster").[/quote]

First of all,
/slap

-Not sci-fi.
-Fantasy's been done into the ground.
-It's time for the wild West, a'la Outlaws. If I can help design it, I promise it won't suck.

Something with pirates (why this hasn't been done yet I have no clue).

Ancient Rome, but only if I get to command units. Being a legionary isn't fun. I'd like to duel rival generals in instanced battlegrounds for more units and prestige ala, Rome:TW in an MMO format.

Total War the MMOG.

Each player gains around a dozen unit slots over the course of his career. You can use about 4 or 5 in a battle at once, you can form groups of around 5 or 6 players to build an army of 20-25ish units.

Unit choice/abilities are fixed by your General's class.

Crafting, mining, and healing is done between battles by 'retinue' units (which a certain number of your 12 units have to be, say minimum of 3, maximum of 6).

DAoC RvR type set up with limited size battles for pvp, various limited size set piece npc battles in the home realm, as well as general hunting zones.

XP levels for your general gain you your 12 unit slots and points toward shiny abilities for heroes leading your units.

Death penalty is a little xp debt, plus units are healed up one at a time while out of combat (on or offline) by your retinue.


But you asked for a setting...

Star Wars, Ancient Rome, Epic Scale DAoC, WH40k, the napoleonic wears don't get much coverage I guess; to be honest I don't care much. Just give me Total War: teh MMOG.

You guys might both want to read the PC Gamer review of Age of Empires 3.  They're trying for some persistant world stuff.

The American West.  Like this,  (http://rdushay.home.mindspring.com/Museum/Other/Boothillrevw.html)not like this.  (http://www.wildwestsim.com/index.asp?)

Ancient Rome

Same here. Take something like Planetside but add space, more exploration, more interaction with the environment, PvE content, deeper character customization ....

Road Warrior Online.

I want to run you off the road, loot your car, steal some of the gas, and peel out before the psycho clan shows up for scraps.

I want to get missions in outposts and build up a reputation out on the dangerous wastelands.

In order-

Shadowrun- I just loved this setting (mechanics were a bit clunky), partially because it is set in my home area (Seattle and surrounding). I thought it did a good job of melding tech with some magic with a decent explanation.

Cyberpunk- I want a 1337 Solo kthx.

Wild West- Something based on the Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove series would totally rock.

Car Wars- I even liked the buggy as hell Autoduel.

Wheel of Time- There is so much detail to the world already that it seems like a natural.

Song of Ice and Fire- brutal realism with very little magic.  Dave Rickey is working on something fantasy-ish with no demi-humans, so maybe that will satisfy this.

Firefly which is old west in space.

And they are using Steam to distribute....awwwwww, so close.

Fallout / Road Warrior setting would be goodness (Long as they had cars and no banks for item storage. I would want this to be UO old school gank-o-rama.)

I think a survival/horror setting would be interesting too.  Zombies!

Perhaps the matrix will be cyberpunkie enough, I doubt it though.

I think one reason that SCI FI games has not really taken off is due to the way ranged weapons currently work in most mmrpg. I have just really not liked the way ranged combat feels in any scifi mmrpg I have tried yet.

If somebody throws a fire ball you give them a lot of leeway but man if somebody is shooting a gun like thing  that looks like a rifle but is only accurate between 64 meters and 60 meters it brings out the eye stabbing part of me.

I think it may be more doable if you went for a scifi game with a more COH style fluid combat system.


My personal favorite of games I would love to see done and done well is shadowrun. But this project would have some pretty big issues because that universe combines very realistic stuff with some advance scifi bits and throws in the elf dwarf thing into the mix. It would be really tough to do it without making you want to get stabby.

I am still a sucker for the ancient super NES and genesis shadowbane games.


kaid

So if someone gave me $20 million and told me to make an MMO I would (after asking for $20 million more - blackjack and hookers are expensive) create an MMO that roughly approximates what military colleges use to teach young officers about geopolitics.

Basically, everyone gets to run a country. (Set it in a mythical post-World War 2 era, but with no Cold War and no bipolar world - think the Warring States period of Japan, but with a lot more guns) You want to take over the world - or maybe not, maybe just develop your own little mercantile slice of heaven.  You have a military, which you can develop, and you might even use it once in a while, but generally wars bankrupt you as a nation and budding little Napoleans will figure out why world conquest never actually works.

The MMO part of this would be in live team support. Basically, the "quests" in this game would be global events. There's a tsunami, say, that has laid waste to 8 countries. Including a couple that are at war with each other. How do you as a world handle it? How do the international systems in place - alliances, UN equivalents, et cetera, react? Who takes advantage of it for political or economic gain? Who just wants to be nice guys?

This would not be a 3000 person game. This would be a 300 person game, with maybe 50 countries. You'd have a bit of "levelling up" to run your own country, depending on the country in question (maybe you need political support and get "elected" by the NPC voters, maybe you can take over in a coup and piss off the people who WERE running the place). None of this is rocket science, there are text MUDs (mostly sci-fi) that do this sort of thing all the time.

See, my pet theory is that there's a space in the market for a game that uses MMO design principles, but does not actually stick you in a suit of armor and expect you to run around a first-person-shooter level hitting bunny rabbits over the head for their lunch money. There's a level of seperation involved in playing a national metagame, yet still allowing for socialization and personal projection. People who've played PBM games of Diplomacy may be nodding their heads here.

This would also probably only cost around $5-10m to develop. Much less if it's done as an "indy" game with low production values. If it was done as a web game I could probably do it myself, if I had mythical spare time. But it would be pretty cheap. More money for the blackjack tables!

(Edit: Or as Schild said, "Jennifer Government. But not shitty and web based.")

That's why you make it play like Planetside.

I guess what I'm looking for is just the next generation MMOFPS. I just want more RPG elements to it.

And Krakrok, nice to see another Firefly fan. :)

@Lum: Sounds like the old BBS door game, Barren Realms Elite (http://www.johndaileysoftware.com/products/bbsdoors/barrenrealmselite/index.asp). I'd say a web version as a plugin for say phpbb where each website running phpbb would war against the other websites running phpbb. When is the first F13 vs. CorpNews game?

Edit: Or Flash based like Tactics Arena.

This is your first and last warning.

Hehe I infact do play planetside I am not sure that kind of ranged combat would work super well in a more traditional mmrpg but it is a good fun game.

One thing that surprised me is we even managed to hook my friends wife on it and she is the most anti fps person you will ever meet. But there are enough support roles and things to do that don't require super ammounts of twitch ability.

If you went with this style combat you really would have to have a LOT of useful and fun support roles cause many people who would be attracted to it kinda suck at fps skills.

kaid

Wow, your quick today :)

As to a setting, I like some of the ideas that have come up here:

Steampunk
Shadowrun
Firefly

What I think I would enjoy personally though, is something White Wolf based. I wouldn't have considered it before, but Bloodlines has warmed me to the idea. You would need more detailed character progress than what Bloodlines gives, but it could work.

I'd throw the whole mythos in: Vamps, Garou, Mages, etc.  Make use of limitations like sunlight, the Masquerade, lunar cycles, etc. to help balance things out.

Promblem is, it'll never happen because you can't make an MMO an M rated game and the setting won't work on anything less than that.

I wonder why. I bet if someone made a well produced X rated MMO, subs would be right up there with WoW and EQ.

Probably true.

UO was rated M.

I think it tried to get changed to a T rating however. They removed some sensitive items from the game. The expansions were going for T rating.

Yes yes yes. (The clans are extra matured cheesy night elves, inner sphere all the way!)

There is a roman empire MMOLG in development 'Victor Roma' or something?

A Rome Total War mmolg would be nice, with combat being army on army combat.

Personally, I kind of like Fantasy, but I think they can do a lot more with it than re-make Lord of the Rings.  My favorite settings have always been the science fiction/fantasy settings, like the old Phantasy Star games (before they replaced "plate mail armor and swords" with "neon spandex and glow-sticks"), or other variations on the fantasy theme.  Western/fantasy, like Wild Arms, is something I haven't seen a lot of, either.

One thing I just wanted to agree with is the idea a few people have mentioned here of moving the game more towards the strategy genre.  Considering that arguably the biggest strength of a massively multiplayer setting is it's ability to generate large groups of players in one place, I'm surprised there hasn't been more of a push to see some integration with games that are designed specifically to handle conflicts between large groups (like RTS games).  Something like Savage, or Allegiance, where players can be either a general commanding his army or a foot soldier down on the front lines, seems like it would be a lot of fun, compared to the sort of aimless, ant hill milling around that I'm seeing in World of Warcraft.

I vote for this, since there will never be a grind--deaths being as frequent and gruesome as they are in Paranoia, nobody will ever advance beyond level one :)

There used to be a game for MajorBBS called "Infinity Complex". That was essentially Paranoia. Great fun.

It's not online, but look what I found (http://www.caro.net/dsi/decker/).   Although it only really focuses on the "decker" aspect, and not the fantasy hybrid.

I almost wrote all the shit you just wrote. Then I realized it would be a MMO Jennifer Government. And you know what? Our aggreeing on this scares me.

Independence War.  I'd also suggest Freespace, but the players would be more limited.

To be honest, for the past several months I've thought about a mmog based on Europe during Elizabeth I's reign (1558- 1608). IIRC Francis Walsingham, her majesty's secretary of state,  is credited as the father of "modern" espionage. I just made my first class in C++ a week ago so it'll be awhile before my Walsingham Project sees the light of day :p

Firefly. Cowboys in space.

Car Wars. Leet Speek is the voice of the future, and it counts as role playing.  It even has zombies where the nukes landed.

Freespace. With trading and stuff.

Total War the MMOG (which was what WHFB online was going to be at one stage).

Star Wars......err never mind.

Ironseed online, Privateer Online, Middle Earth online ( Asatru middle earth, not tolkien ).

Firefly online, or a Western themed game without spaceships.

Fallout Online

Shadowrun Online

or, for the fun of it, Darklands Online (Medieval Europe with Saints and Alchemy)

Yea, but how long did people jerky last? Personally, I'm guessing that UO made it to release as an M rated game because of Raph's often mentioned fact that it was "under the suits radar".

I can't think of anything remotely M rated about the game after the first couple of months.

You must of had the profanity filter on.  It was rated M because you never know what other people will do.... and they found out all about internet anonymity pretty damn quickly.  

You see something similar in any game release now that can go online, console or pc, but now it just states something like 'rating does not reflect online play'.

Oooh good call. Buggy as hell, but wow that was a fun game. I still have nightmares about getting wtfpwned by the Wild Hunt. I have a sneaking suspicion that that band of roving centaurs in the Barrens of WoW were inspired by this (having been rolled by them several times).

My most recent MMOG idea was Call of Cthulhu Online.  It'd be a predominantly PvE game with regular story arcs; the gameplay focuses on puzzle-solving and exploration (e.g. following trails of clues).  The twist is that if the players don't "win" the story arc (e.g. stop cult X from summoning the incarnation of old one Y), the server is wiped and everyone rerolls.  Bwahahaha!

Also, 6% of all client downloads wipe your hard drive.

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!

Well, I hate to shamelessly plug one of the games my own company will publish, but with the references in this thread to Car Wars, I wonder how many folks realize that Auto Assault is coming out this year?

As to the main purpose of this thread, I always think of three unused liscenses:

Hyboria (Conan)
H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands
Earthsea

I also think that an interesting Western-style kind of game is possible.  You could set it on an alien world as a colony that reverted technologically for some reason.   Technological advancement in a steampunk kind of way could be a big part of a game like that, I think.

Firefly the game would be called Traveller. It has been rumored several times on the TML, but I don't know if Marc Miller has licensed it.

Would I be able to camp picts?

Can you give us a link for an update? What little I had heard made me feel like I would still be waiting for a true Car Wars game even after its release.

Happy to. It's simply http://www.autoassault.com/ .  We've been adding quite a bit of material lately and are moving into a schedule to add more every week.

Dude , camping Picts is for noobs.. Everyone knows that the Hyrkanian Steppes is where you get the l33t drops..

To pimp for a game that I'm *not* working on (after doing everything but padlocking myself to their offices trying to get an interview), Auto Assault looked like it was going to be really good.  A lot depends on how they went about building the world, but the core gameplay was just a complete blast, so as long as they didn't screw up, it should be a hell of a lot of fun.

--Dave

What I'm about to type makes me wince, but has NCSoft considered doing what SOE did and making a game pass with a flat rate for all of their games? I love COH and might try this autoassault as well.

*feels very dirty for suggesting another company do what SOE did*

I believe at one stage CRS (ww2ol makers) had a license to do a Travellers MMOLG and had discussions about doing it after ww2ol release.
Of course that aint gonn happen now.

I'll agree with Tisirin on Conan.  I'd also like to see a Western/Supernatural mix like what Lansdale and Truman did with Jonah Hex.  Maybe a Resident Evil MMO (or any zombie MMO really).

Other things I'll just throw out there without really thinking about how they'd work:

Tron
Prophecy (Angels vs. Angels and all that)
Oz (the HBO series).  Prison-based MMO where there could finally be true player enforced justice as griefers are made to put on dresses and dance, or are beaten and then shit on.

Holy shit. Now THAT's a great idea. Seriously.

EDIT: Damn, I forgot about the ladies...Can't have a coed prison. Ah well, it'd still make a good single player game.

Skotos is running a text based Call of Cthulhu game.

Looking through this thread, I see alot of references to specific IP's and licenses that have already been tried and cancelled or failed outright.

I'm not saying that the license or setting was a bad one, just that it was either done wrong or doomed from the start.

Multiplayer Battletech Online:3025 - Awesome game, I was in the beta right up until the game was about to launch and Microsoft bought FASA and told EA to fuck off.


I also see alot of people wishing for genres and settings that are currently in development.

Car Wars/Road Warrior is taken care of by Auto Assault.

Pirates?  Yarrr, being done.

And that Conan/Hyborian setting, hehe.  The license is not as unused as you would believe. /wink

I would have to say that a Cyberpunk/Shadowrun type setting would be my first wish.  Fallout would be second on that list.  And to crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of the women. Scratch all that.  An MMORPG set in the War World book series created by Jerry Pournelle would definitely rock.

In 2004, the MMO world was being steamrolled by the combined EQ2 / WoW Juggernaut.  I think that 2005-2006 will be giving us a look at several games that are going to depart heavily from the standard Fantasy/Sci-Fi settings.

Let 's hope that they also depart heavily from the tired D&D/Diku mechanics.

Setting = good, Gameplay = good, Setting + gameplay = win.

Well, I don't think I'm giving anything away when I say that it's pretty obvious what kind of price-breaks and cross-marketing one can do when one has a suite of games rather than one or two titles.

A flat rate or "pass" is definitely something that any company with a suite of games should strongly consider.

Not that any Lineage player has time to do anything else, with that grind. CoH+AA+GW would be attractive however.

Boy if there was an all access pass for coh that included autoassult I would be terribly tempted. Then again I have no freaking time for all the games I currently have. I need to win the lottery buy a nice cave and close the door and not come out again.


kaid

Add in Tabula Rasa and that NCsoft combo is really, really attractive to me.

/Agree. But I was under the impression GW wouldn't sport a monthly fee anyways.

Your right, their will be no monthly fee for GW.  However, that combo of games sounds great (only thing that would make it better for me is if NCsoft would pick up and finish Mythica).  

Perhaps with GW, NCsoft could give a discounted price for the downloadable expansion packs (half price) for anyone who has a NCsoft-e combo pack.  That would be a way for NCsoft to give a decent break for people playing that game and still be in line with the "no monthly fee" cost model.

Color me childish, but I wouldn't mind playing a Watership Down MMO, I always loved those books . . .

(No furry coments, please)

Would you be interested in a game of Furcadia (http://www.furcadia.com/)?

Seriously though, the Plague Dogs (at least from what I remember) is one of the best cartoons ever made. Never got around to seeing Watership Down though. Just as good?

I kept hoping Art Garfunkle would catch myxomatosis. Saccharin for the eyes and ears.

Cyberpunk 2020 Online would have been awesome as it was envisioned.

The Conan world, Call of Cthulu, Deadlands, and Shadowrun would all be interesting worlds as well. Oh yeah, and Star Wars, in the Old Republic days, when there were lots of Jedi running around.

Mmmm, Call of Cthulu 2020 Online.

Deadknights of the Old Cthulurun 2020 Online: The Hyborian Wars.  Only on Station Pass!

sorry to resurrect this (i'm new to the site, and i'm going through all the old posts)

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Ravensloft
Twilight 2000
Raymond Fiest's Riftwar (set in the time of the Valheru, although maybe a young Valheru due to the disparate power levels)

Wow. I am prescient.

Since this has been necroed, I'll say I'd love to see Shadowrun, Fallout and/or Deadlands done as MMOGs.  The old Fading Suns (http://www.holistic-design.com/FS/Universe/Universe.htm) RPG could make a great MMOG as well.

I'm itching for something different.  Steampunk, maybe (NOT amime).   People have mentioned Sci Fi Western, like in those Stephen King books or something... that sounds good, too.  I've been bored to tears with CoH/V lately, but I wouldn't mind trying one of those new comic type MMOs that are on the horizon... I think I read one or the other was going to be skill based... that would be cool.

Bah, you folks are so predictable.

I want Crossroads online. Level up your musician and compete against others! Heavy metal dungeons with spiked lewts, hair bands with amazing power of aquanet, bluesmen selling their souls to Smed, etc. Plus Miagi, minus Macchio.

Harmonix signed on to the Xbox Live Marketplace. Maybe, one day, we'll get Guitar Hero over XBL.

I would have been surprised if you had not suggested some strange guitar MMO.

I don't even remember if I've replied to this yet.  In any event:

Sports MMO's would be interesting.  Golf, baseball, football, hockey.

Old West.  I know it's being attempted, but I'm not impressed with what I've seen on the horizon.  Pure pvp gunfighting goodness.

Dark Age: No magic, just swords and stuff.  Mount & Blade the mmog.

Cyberpunk, like someone else said here, preferably set in Gibson's BAMA Sprawl.

Cthulhu, but you'd be rerolling toons every three months as your old ones would be too crazy to be useful anymore.

Rifts would also roxor my boxers.

Lastly, something based on the Bordertown books (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/guides/guide-display/-/25MCGLVGKRW7N/002-2730294-9533603) would just send me to the freakin' moon.

I'm working on an idea that's been bouncing through my head for years now, but that's a story for another time.

Sci-Fi/Modern games have been less popular than fantasy because people understand guns better than they understand maces and swords. If you hit somebody with a mace... literally hit them so that blood comes out and they say "ugh" like they do in most MMOGs... it makes limbs useless, collapses ribs, and shatters skulls. Even in armor. Swords were mostly clubs as well,  but they could also poke like spears which, again, had a nasty habit of killing folks in one or two "hits" --

-- but we don't have any experience with that so  somehow the endless swing-ugh, swing-ugh, swing-whiff, swing-ugh works just fine visually. The cliche is golden.

Seeing two people stand at about 20 feet apart firing machine guns at eachother and saying "ugh" just doesn't cut the same mustard. Guns are supposed to KILL PEOPLE. With that in mind, they're a lot harder to balance... and instant death isn't much fun (it's rare even in single player games),  especially at more realistic ranges.

That's my excuse anyway.


If I had to choose, I'd like to see a fantasy game in a completely unique setting. No more orcs, elves, fireball-flinging mages, and magic swords. "Fantasy" is a genre without limits, but the entries thus far have lived within relatively strict fencing. That said, I'd rather see a game that stayed fun for a long time and had lots of variety in its gameplay, no matter what genre costume it happened to choose.

This exactly why I think combat systems will suck unless they focus on defense (and by "focus", I mean, giving it more attention than offense). Nifty attack animations and combos do not make a good combat system (and mmo's can barely pull this off either). This goes without mentioning ideas such as tank classes with more "hit points" than others, buffing, and the like.

I'm not sure if any rpg designers know this, but a grown human being can incapacitate most other grown human beings with only his/her bare hands......And nobody withstands a warhammer to the face. "Hero" or not. "Heroes" generally prefer the idea of avoiding spikes being jammed into their heads too.

Well yeah, that problem goes back a long way, pretty much to the creation of levels and hit points.  None of the heroes in any fantasy book I've ever read were thinking about how many blows their HP would allow them to survive.  If they had bows drawn on them or daggers at their throats, they didn't just say "fuck it, I'll take the damage".

[edit] Hmm....I should think this through more. This post wasn't exactly relevant.  :wink:

They really dropped the ball by not having new songs to download for $2.99 a tune.

Wow, I was thinking how they need to do a multi-party mmog.  When you start out, you get three or four characters, letting you decide how you want to build them for combat.  Your idea of having RTS/crafting/gathering sounds pretty cool too.

As for genres:
--Sci Fi or Sci Fantasy
--Civil War
--Napoleonic Wars
--Toon town gone bad...hey it's Mickey, but with hookers and beer  :-D

See, now this man's thinking.  If you wanted some form of foozle-bashing you could include pop and hip-hop foozles.  MMmmmmiiiillion dollar idea here.

Deadlands would be awesome.

I've said this a thousand times.

A big company needs to buy up the license to Planescape: Torment. You could put fucking anything in that world, and if there were a door, it'd be a-ok with continuity. Goddamn I'm a genius.

Planescape was a D&D setting, so with DDO coming out that looks pretty unlikely.

Fitty: Get Foozle or Die Tryin' (and resurrect and come back and try again). Send me a money hat kthx.

Actually, I'd like a GTA-like open city to roam in and then instanced "mini" games. Like you drive out to the golf course and then enter an instance of Tiger Woods (closed if you don't own the "plugin"). Drive to the stadium and enter an instance of (motherfucking) Madden. I mention EA products because they've got the stable of IP to do such a thing, the size to make an mmo, and a creaky old mmo that needs to be taken out back and shot by a robot pirate ninja. But I've been wanting a game that's really a graphical hub for a bunch of other games since I was a wee lad on the Atari VCS.

Smurfs Online

Anarchy Online, done right. Not the messy system, broken engine, etc. they have now. WoW's system and interface with AO world, mob variety and skins would satisfy me. Manginas can pretend the Nano breed are elves.

Darklands would be a fun MMO setting. The skill system was very UO-ish and the only magic was potion tossing and the prayer mechanic. There were a lot of events tied to the lunar cycle that could be cool in an MMO. I am sure Christian groups would go nuts, too, if you let players do witchcraft. That's an extra bonus.

God that was a fun game. Buggy as hell, but it was worth it. Love to see even a single player remake or sequel to it.

I'm surprised someone hasn't said 'Pern' yet.

The MMO setting I'd like to see is 'modern day'. You could go through school, get a job, do that every day, and one day, maybe, you could retire and just sit in front of the TV the rest of your life. Or, you could be a clerk at the DMV whose goal is to make life miserable for everyone around you - bonus points for making people shout at you.

anything without elves or magic, or pseudo-magic

I found a game for you: http://www.eagames.com/official/thesims/thesimsonline/us/nai/index.jsp

1.  Mythological/Homeric Greece.  I want to bop around little islands on my pagasus beating up titans and gorgons and taking their l3wt. The prospect of a Hades expansion to this non-existent game is already making me excited.

2. Dante-esque Gothic Fantasy/Horror.  In other words, World of Motherfucking Diablo.  (WoW) + (a few years' experience) - (pink haired gnomes/Nightmare-Before-Christmas undead and fucking anime-inspired shit everywhere) = umf umf.

3. OK, I'm ready for my lynching but I have to say I'll always be interested in well-done high fantasy settings.

Skies of Arcadia Online.

Or at least a game in an SoA-styled world.

Most of my other ideas are unsellable grand mal strategy games, or space games distinguishable more by feature sets than by original story ideas.

I dont know if anyone has said this, but what about some thing like Crimson Skies for a setting, it could be pretty heavy on the vehicles and stuff, but with indoor dungeons.

Also, I had a dream (yeah, very dorky, I know) about Starcraft MMO. It was really sweet in my dream, so now Im hoping Blizzard makes some thing like that.

Ditto on so many of these:

Deadlands or anything else with a wildwest + open pvp setting
Battletech
Crimson Skies
Any gritty Steampunk, Cyberpunk or Post-Apocalyptic setting will get my money for at least a month
Necromunda // Inquisitor (both WH40K universe settings but with a scope that might be doable in a MMO)
EvE + flight sim controls = winner
Tribes universe (jet packs + vehicles + bigger vehicles + fps = luv)

Thats all I've got at the moment, really I'm just looking forward to more worlds that are designed to be the game, not established worlds being fucked up in order to fit into a game.

I'm a little late noticing this thread, but my answer is definitely gold rush/western.  You know... part Sierra's old Gold Rush... part Outlaws... 100% kickass.

My friend who works for an mmorpg studio and I actually began outlining design doc for such a game a few months ago, but we both kinda got busy with real life so it's been collecting dust.   :sad_panda:

http://www.planetside.com

Play Vanu MAX for jetpacking, though. But it is similar on a lot of levels. Best mmo thus far, by far.

Dune... done right

Inconceivable!

I never read much Science Fiction or Fantasy but two books I did read and enjoy in my youth were the Dune series and the Foundation series.  I think either would make a good setting for an MMO.

Yeah I know of Planetside, but the Tribes universe has a decent storyline to it, and the game I'm imaging would be more of a meaningfull full-scale war type deal and less a CTF with no score capture static bases that are meaningless type of thing.  Also jetpacks for everyone is love, mortars are love, and can you imagine if they went all the way from light armors up to starsiege mechs?  That would be fucking awesome.

Win the lottery and send this guy (http://www.frontier1859.com/) your money.

I had at times a high hope for Warhammer online, since that's a fantasy RPG favorite, but... no. They cannot convey the nature of the game in the (most likely) WoW copycat it eventually will end up as, if it ever comes out.

RIFTS? Yes, I'd add my vote for that, despite it being an "everything but the kitchen-sink" world using Palladium's sucky system. At least it has variety. TORG/Planescape/Nexus type stuff is also interesting.

*coughbattlecruiser2000cough*

bad dev! bad!

Hell fuckin' yeah. But then I'd have to make an air pirate character named Don Carnage.

I am gonna have to go back and play that again. I got stuck doing a mission 4 or 5 times, loaned it to my brother, and haven't played it since (even though it has since been returned). It inspired me to go see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which was kinda fun too.

yes, very fun.  Good call.    Go here: Porco Rosso (http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/porco/synopsis/)

"Come over here and SAY THAT! PWNZ0R!!"
(http://otakubooty.bootyproject.org/images/misc/porco5.jpg)

Alternate America where the natives won and drove the Europeans off.

Dark fantasy.

No, I don't mean drow.

Give me a world built around a character like Baba Yaga instead of dropping Baba Yaga into a fantasy world cause, uh, it's fantasy.

A world with Gypsies, werewolves, witches, vengeful ghosts, dark forests, and superstition.

More horror than fantasy, please.  And, even though I'm usually cool with elves, /no fucking elves/.

Call of Cthulhu..

No wait.. If I had to camp Joseph Curwen's lich form for the 1% chance he'd drop the scroll of +5 Yog Sothoth slaying, I'd puke..

How about Hellblazer.. and no.. I don't mean the damn movie version, bastards..

Or, while we're on the subject of comics, how about a Sandman mmog.. it'd rock to live in the dreaming, but it'd suck to have to take a 40 man raid to kill one of the endless (seriously, do you think the developers would grok the concept that the endless are endless?  I doubt it, you know you'd end up having to have 10 priests, 10 rogues, 10 mages, and 10 tanks take down Despair or some crazy stupid shit)..

Hmm.. out of the three, the only one that I can see working out is Hellblazer.. that world was infused enough with magic to make it work, and you could make it pvp with demons vs. humans.  Different classes like Witch Doctor, Investigator, Magician, etc., and maybe some other interesting things..

CoC in a purely instanced world with common towns like Guild Wars and each instance having it's own story might work.

But it couldn't be an MMOG the way we know it. More a matchmaking service for a squad based investigative survival horror.

I gave a lot of thought to the structure of a squad based conspiracy MMOG. The ideas work on paper, in action people would break them.

People would break the fuck out of them. I had a Cthulhu now/Dark Conspiracy P&P campaign going for a while but it only took one guy not into it to fuck the whole thing up. Imagine that multiplied by a thousand.

You'd have to structure the goals such that they can be completed by a relatively small handful of competent individuals if they really put their minds to it.  Imagine the world in which a CoC campaign generally takes place - the "heroes" are at the very edge of the bell curve, while the rest of humanity doesn't have a clue about what's going on.  Given the intelligence distribution of your average online game, that'd work well.  The only trick would be making it fun enough for all the people who aren't able to get in on saving the world this time around.

What would be really cool is to work the mythos into some game where the 99% of the population really has no clue.

Y'know, sell it as something else to the masses, but then have a few people mysteriously disappear and pique the interest of the mythos chasers. Of course, it would never work, but I think it would be really cool.

Duh - I just realized what the answer to that one is.  Put in a zone full of foozles to whack (completely unrelated to the Mythos, like a field of bunny rabbits) and 10,000 levels of advancement.  Problem solved.

Pure genius. Throw in a little random consensual PvP for the e-peen set and bingo.

You win.

My ideal vision of it would inevitably be ruined by the players since I'd like to see player owned/crewed ships with ship to ship battle involving more conventional MMOG combat AND Puzzle Pirate type stuff. No way you could get anyone but the poopsockers to do that unless you made it "POOSH BUTAN, WIN LOOTS" simple.

Historical medieval setting (ie, no magic) with conflict between city states.  Think, northern Italy around the Renaissance, or northern Germany with the Hanseatic League.  I'd like to see a well built political system that allows for intrigues and control over pre-established cities.  Make the game very economic oriented, with trading guilds and city states fighting over control of many different resources and markets.  Basically, think Darklands (http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=278) crossed with Eve, with some Europa Universiallis thrown in.

If that makes any sense.

This site is too vast to try and Necro quote.  But I had thought in the past you had indicated that Fallout would not be a good setting for a MMORPG.  Your point was that the game was a success because ".. great story telling" which would not really translate well into a MMORPG?

1. Fallout
2. Vampire Masquerade (both time periods modern and old - time travel would be a neat twist - rather than new zones - you have new time periods).

Ah, fuck, my 2 page post got eaten. God. Damnit.

Ok.

Let's go back to Lum's question.

For what game/idea would you invest $20M?

None. Not until Blizzard fucks up WoW to a point of no return. Right now, I would:

(http://www.fantasiescometrue.com/WDCCVARIOUS/WDCCVARIOUSIMAGES/wscrooge.jpg)

Edit: Someone contacted me just because I confused them. Ok, let me clarify. If I had $20M right now, I'd rather be swimming in it than investing it in online gaming. I just don't think the technology is there yet.

Cthulhu mythos.  Game starts off as a single player experience. You are an agent of the old ones (you pick your god at player creation).  As you complete objectives you come closer and closer to causing the return of the old ones to your world.  As you complete your objectives you get to choose powers:

• pets (deep ones, Mi Go, Shuggoth, etc) - results in a more RTS type gameplay
• intelligence gathering - results in a more explorer-type experience with artifact collection and placement, (basebuilding-type gameplay)
  
• strength/speed/health - standard hack/slash/nuke
• control of NPCs - turning the pitiful fools against themselves, an attempt at a less-combat focused gameplay (likely you are an agent of Nyarlathotep)

As you choose powers you see your avatar change, slowly becoming more and more monstrous.

The single player game ends with you bringing about the return of the old ones, effectively ending the world as it existed and making you something of a god.  At which point the mutliplayer game begins.  Your world is your base of operations, the goal is to increase your influence by taking over additional worlds.

It would only be interesting if they made combat a sort of bargaining/puzzle/MTGO-style card game sort of thing, based around bargaining with the powers, giving up lungs and friends and shit.

But you know they'd just throw in holy hand grenades and consecrated/blessed shotguns and call it a game.

Nausicaa would be fucking great (airships! steampunk!).

But then I wish I had the founding and a huge group of talented people to do Elric/Stormbringer (Michael Moorcock, which is rather dark fantasy). That's my dream.

Well, I think a lot could be done with the Eternal Champion stuff as a whole since the multiverse in those books incorporates worlds other than fantasy.  It would take a pretty massive team to do something like that though, but overall I think it would add a lot of context to Elric's world.

The game is pretty much complete in my head since it's a couple of years that I shape my ideas around that setting.

I consider this a very powerful licence, not only because it's truly evocative and already rather "graphical" in the books (the descriptions are absolutely awesome and Melnibone would be worth the price alone) but also because it's still available (Moorcock wouldn't be against the idea and some exposition) and because of the potential of the Multiverse.

I've done a whole lot of work but some of the traits are:
- Some raw game mechanics taken directly from "Elric" the pen&paper ruleset made by Chaosium and completely skill based and realism based (no infinite hit points, no levels crap, no infinite treadmills).
- A game world separated in two. Shards (the implementation of the basic world in the books) with factional PvP where the guilds conquer and control the land and spawn NPCs themselves (no passive NPC lore, it's all in the hands of the players) and portals that link these shards together (realm-crossing) and open access to planes (static, not instanced). Then from these planes (working like hubs similar to Guild Wars) the access to other PvE dimensions, worlds and adventures. These completely instanced for full control and authorship in the stories.
- The implementation of powerful artifacts that transform the player into a demi-god (hello unbalance). Think of Strormbringer (the sword). These can be taken/summoned from the PvE instances accessible through the planes (exactly as Elric got Stormbringer) and then brought back to the PvP shards. These artifacts grants insane powers and change the whole aspect of a character (more fearsome, huger etc..) but they are also lootable in PvP. To remain in the game world they have a maintenance cost that can be paid only by killing people in PvP. So no hiding. The opposite faction can also use divination to track the current location of the artifact, so you are always hunted and cannot hide.

The main problem I see (not really a problem I guess so much as something to figure out) is how the players would fit into the overall story.  It wouldn't make sense for them to be aspects of the Eternal Champion since it was only on rare occasions that even a few aspects would be in one place at any given time.  To have thousands of them interacting with each other wouldn't really work.  I suppose the players could start out in Tanelorn, or possibly be people like the Chaos Engineers or something though, but for the most part I don't see a lot of people from Elric's world being able to travel between dimensions.

Well, my implementation is pretty loose. It borrows many elements that I find functional and inspiring but then I ditch everything that doesn't fit in the model.

As I said the world is split in two. The PvP/conquest world has no directed story and is enrooted with three static factions (Law/Balance(crafters-traders)/Chaos), plus the possibility for the players to form "fallen houses" that will work like independent factions. The players start here, the PvP is the first and main purpose.

(This PvP world is cloned on different servers like it happens in every other game. The difference is that the players can open portals to the planes and then, from the planes, travel to a different shard. But then you can own landmass only on one shard set as "home" and if you set a new one you lose what you previously got.)

Then there are the planes and the access to the multiverse (which can shift from horror to fantasy but wouldn't go past the setting boundaries) where there's space for directed lore and stories to follow, like pieces of "dreams" that you gather progressively (discovering the story). Like a web with many ramifications.

I used the setting for inspiration, then the actual rules depend on the game needs only.

Probably would be for the best I suppose since a lot of the larger story of the EC (like the "game of time" stuff) can get pretty confusing.  One of these days I'll have to go and re-read everything in order.

Sid Meier's "Alpha Centauri" online, where you play as a colonist of one of the factions, rather than as the entire faction. Tech tree to work towards, etc. ATITD in space with combat!

There's a lot of talk about a wild west MMO. Tales of Alvin Maker (http://www.hatrack.com/news-reviews/news/2005-01-05.shtml) anyone? It's just about the only old west MMO that I have faith will actually ship. And yes, a Firefly MMO would make me feel all tingly inside.

Lum, you need that $20m to make that game. I would buy it.

Someone on slashdot posted this - which I find much more interesting than the actual slashdot thread:


Ok, so what's stopping someone from applying the MtG rules to an online game aside from bad taste? Because really, best PvP system evar.

Etherlords makes me say, "nothing", as long as you don't use cards.  Would be an interesting game, especially if they started very conservatively (unlike MtG) until they got the feel for how powerful to make any given "rule" (creatures, enchantments, sorcery).  Would also be interesting to do the "world rules" thing (with each zone, etc starting with a separate global effect).

An MtG MMO with players as something close to a Planewalker seems like it could be pretty cool, especially from a PvP perspective.  Good idea (sorry if I didn't see it earlier in the thread).

Schild's been expressing this idea for Some Time Now. (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=758.msg15457#msg15457)

I think you could even use cards, as long as you don't steal their art/names.

Alkiera

Etherlorda 2 was great until you went online and played against all the degenerate decks( well blue starter deck is complete ass).

Oh man, I forgot to pick up Etherlords 2. Hey SANTA! ;)

(http://us.ent4.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/new_line_cinema/elf/_group_photos/faizon_love13.jpg)

Starforce!

There is a Firefly NWN mod if you haven't seen it.


It looks like the ATITD engine is licencable though someone would have to email Teppy to find out how much. Anyone have $100k laying around to give it a go?

Drippy PUssy, Cockwhore!

...the shame...

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Ringworld

Call of Cthulhu might work, but would require one thing no company is willing to put the balls on the table to do.  Perma death.

Historical worlds that single characters can wonder through.

In fact assuming Lum is still reading this I'd be more than happy to outline the general business model and game mechanics.  I'm about two months away from approaching some money people in DC.

I have been thinking about perma-death for quite some time now. For it to work, you would need a really innovative way of handling character advancement. Maybe something like the old turn-based strategy games, where you could keep your best troops from mission to mission. Sure, you bitch and moan when you loose one of them, but you do not have to start over again and again.

I've been thinking of a system like karma, related to the amount of points you get for character creation...  Certain things you do in life give you karma, other things take it away.  Then if you die, your karma modifies the power of your next character.  So you don't lose 'all that investment' of the character...  the karma in his soul caries on to the next life.  If you've been a right bastard, your next life, you might be a helpless newb... hopefully some other right bastard will come kill you, just for justice's sake.

Of course, the numbers would have to be balanced.  And there would be some character development in the game itself, not all up front.  But some of what you define at creation effects how far you can advance, and how you can advance.

Alkiera

And you'd have to figure out some opposite of karma for the bad guys. Maybe something along the lines of how much of your soul you sell to the devil, he'll help you out more when you recreate or some such.

That'd probably work, but with any real "death" it has to be pretty damn rare. You can't expect people to go changing their character name every week. Things like that (as someone else said in another thread) are considered 'exit points' - you are not longer attached to your character so why keep playing?

Permadeath will never work in a mass market MMOG. You guys know this.

Now if you are talking niche, go right ahead. And since we are wet dreaming in this thread, shoot for the moon.

Oh, speaking of permadeath... Mourning is back.   Such cheek!  (http://www.ageofmourning.com/)

Couldn't see the point of making a new thread to pass this along... or even necro-ing an old one.  Posting was more than it deserves.

For a 'mass market' MMO (who the hell wants to play those anymore anyway? Most of us have quit those already!) I think Der Helm has the right idea. If your 'presence' within the game was a unit or group of things, as opposed to a single avatar, you could lose one or some without losing your identity within the game. (I consider losing your identity as the biggest barrier to implementing any kind of permadeath).

Games like Tactica Online might address this, as I believe your group/squad can lose individual units but it won't affect your overall status/identity within the game.

Mass market budget dollars is the only way most of the wet dream settings in this thread (and wet dream game features) would get made.

You can create it in BYOND except that it would look like Ultima III. Maybe Multiverse (http://www.multiverse.net/) will fulfill the promise in 3D but I'm not holding my breath.

Wild West with fantasy elements (Zombie Cowboys, Indian Shamans, shape-changers, etc)

Elite, in MMOG form.

Warhammer 40k, as a background where you could be a Rogue trader/smuggler/agent of one of the tons of different factions,. but not "play as a space marine".

Moorcock's 'conjunction of a million spheres' is nice and open-ended, but you really don't need to go any further than the Dancers At The End Of Time sub-series to make anything and everything possible. This of course brings new problems, since players should really be able to do anything to satisfy their whim, and by nature of the game will be unable to. Restrictive environments are so much more useful to the developer.

The other problem with Moorcock is that even in his popular fantasy books, he primarily writes intelligent, witty and sensitive romances. Taking away the character interplay and Moorcock's prose, and you're left with a fairly underwhelming multiverse. Amber (Zelazny) is more inviting for a multiverse, as there's more development of the setting in this series.

For a nicely defined world without too much scope, Marion Bradley's Darkover provides a balance that would suit an MMOG setting. You've got well defined geography, multiple sentient races, classes and castes, millenia spanning history to set sequal games in, etc.

Dark Tower.  Yes.

For something most definitely niche, develop a massive persistent strategy game based on the Game of Thrones.  I didn't say Song of Ice and Fire because I wouldn't base the game on those specific characters or anything.  I'm more interested in simulating the Game than Martin's books.

Permadeath?  Yep, in the form of aging and losing members of your family.  Your "avatar" is your family crest.  You could possibly lose all of your family, but never that last one.  He/she could live on to rebuild the family name, lands and estates.

Each day consists of 4-6 years.  That is real time!  Each real day, 4-6 years of game time passes regardless.  Each of these "years" represents a "level" for the armies or individual "heros" you assign to level for that time period. (i.e. Training.)  Yes, that is offline leveling at its finest, but you do have to be careful.  You can't have these characters lvl'ing AND defending at the same time.  If they were ALL training while you were offline, you could come back to your last surviving heir sitting on a hill all by his/her lonesome.  As I said, this is a strategy game, not your traditinoal MMOG.

You build alliances by intermarrying or sending wards off to other families.  You grow your family by setting them into reproductive mode (if married or willing to take on bastards (lower forms of hero's that are capped on the influence.) Each family member is a "hero" and considered an individual, armies are different and come in large groups, not individuals.  "Heroes" can lead multitudes of armies.  The number of armies a hero can hold depends on level (age,) influence, standing in the family, etc.

You build your treasury by mining, farming the land, fishing, trade, etc.  Again this depends on your strategy for castle building/placement, towns, farms, mines, etc.  Sections of land can be challenged if war is declared, etc.  Think Civilization from the micromanagement standpoint.

Really all of it would be Civilization except for the diplomacy portion.  Plus, the concept of "family" and reproduction and adding hero's etc. 

Obviously, I haven't thought out all the details, but I think you'll get the idea.

Oh, progression through game? Sellsword (no lands, no family)--> Hedge Knight (no lands, no family, but you are recognized for your worth) --> Sworn Knight (attached yourself to a Lord)--> Lord (Able to hold lands and start building a little empire of your own, but sworn to a king)--> several layers of Lords --> King (Top of the food chain, but have to contend with other Kings and can get knocked down with one wrong move.)  Naturally, the higher up you go the harder it is to keep your position without real skill and guile.  This will allow the positions to rotate quite often creating a nice dynamic landscape but physically and diplomatically.

This kind of thing does an end run around Mcquaid's catass player retention whine. The old "Legend of the Red Dragon" turns per day. It has player retention but no catassing. "The bigger you get, the harder you fall" mechanic keeps mega empires from sticking around for long. Your idea really sounds like MMO Merchant Prince which I'd play in a heartbeat.

Yes.  I like the idea.  Would be a group founding with the option of building a base structure similar to X-Com?  And the ability to attach those bases to other players (perhaps spaning cities and nations) allowing for large complexes or such.  Nice pie in the sky, but I could dig it.  Would make Alts something of a skill then, instead of just a time sink.

The idea is to make training/leveling easy, but with risk in the form of "defenselessness."  You can lvl up your armies while in a time of peace or lower than usual threat.  If your enemies allow you to do this for too long, they will come over the hill to face a very veteran kingdom.  There would be a balance to be played between veteran vs. zerg forces. (Choice: should I grow my army or train my army.)

That, along with all of the other micromanagement decisions and, more importently, diplomatic decisions would provide for a game that would be complex, but playable with 1-2 hours a day perhaps.  I suppose a catass would do slightly better just from those obvious reasons constantly being able to change actions depending on the environment would bring, but I'd try to balance this.  Direct action type gameplay could be directed in exploration areas, dungeons, etc.  Those activities could be used to moderately boost treasuries, boost fame/reputation, etc.  Again, those are catass type activities (meaning catasses would prevail since time played = reward.)  I suppose it could be used as a side diversion while the "years" go by in the game.

I'd almost rather keep this very niche.  In my mind, the game would progress in a way that really just allowed you to check in several times during a day to check that things are progressing well or make changes if they aren't.  Each play session would probably only be 15-30 minutes consisting of making commands to your armies/workers/knights/etc.  Combat would be turn-based (meaning it would take real days to finish.)  Some battles would be one turn (an army of 5000 vs. a small patrol of 50,) and others would take a week (epic battle of 15,000 vs. 17,000 perhaps.)  Sieges could take weeks. (food lines cut off, diplomatic discussions of surrender, etc.)

The pace of the game would be slow enough to allow anyone paying ANY attention to their kingdom enough time to make choices.  Those that turn their attention away considerably will start to lose ground, which is as it should be.  You are not rewarded for slumber in The Game of Thrones.

Yes, there would be prices to pay for maintaining a bloated kingdom as well.  These would be in the form of keeping citizens content, taxes fair but high enough to keep paying for things, borders become harder to protect since they are stretched thin, etc.  The best way to avoid these issues is to keep your diplomatic ties very strong.  As your kingdom increases, it become increasing difficult (and at some point impossible) without "friends."

Actually that sounds almost like MMO Romance of the 3 Kingdoms.

Excellent.  Somebody make that then.

/very agree.

You do it.

If Koei does, we'll probably never see it.  When it comes to MMO's they don't seem to want our money since they don't seem to have any plans to give us Nobunaga's Ambition Online or Uncharted Waters Online.  A shame since Uncharted Waters looks fairly unique.

I think I would seriously make a mess in my pants if someone did a faithful adaptation of the Bronze Age Hellenic world, including Egypt and the Near East. Take down 100+ Persian Immortals as a single Greek Phalanx? Yes please. Be a young Spartan soldier, having to steal stuff at night to survive because the barracks headmaster doesn't feed you enough? Sure. Get uber quests from Athena? Kickass.

I also like the idea of a Medieval/Renaissance world full of economic competition, exploration, and political intrigue. Let me be a spy and actually SPY on people, and have some kind of lasting effect on the world. Let me become a little bastardly merchant prince. Lemme be a Brigand and lay waste to weakly guarded caravans, or scare the shit out of me when powerful PC's acting as escorts fight me off and scare me away. Lemme be a sponsored explorer that runs into indigenous populations, and let me decide how to treat them - I can befriend them and forge trade deals, go around them if I don't feel like dealing with them, or decimate them with superior arms and skills - any of these choices should benefit me.

Of course, none of the hairbrained ideas we come up with could actually work, as your average MMOG player actually LIKES the stupid grinds and derivative shit from WoW or Vanguard. Not having easily-obtained levels andvisible quest machines confuse and scare them.

Just over one year ago, the size of the MMOG market was smaller than it is now. Nothing really changed much except that a few more games were released that were more functional, a lot more people got online, and more people online started using broadband. These will continue to be factors which change the market, but so will the type of games.

The games designed today will not be played by "your average MMOG player". Perhaps "your average MMOG designer" is still blinkered enough to miss that, but I hope (and indeed suspect) not.

Righ has a point. Which such a larger pool of potential players to choose from, there SHOULD be more niche MMOG's in development. After all, there's a larger potential market to target.

But first we have to convince devs and suits alike that a profitable game with 50,000 players really isn't a bad thing.

Of course, the first game that specifically targets a 50,000 sub audience with a carefully crafted game at a premium price on a $3 million budget will end up attracting 5-10x that.

I don't think you can make a game that will attract that many people on that budget anymore.

I could.  Send me 3 million and I'll give it a shot.

That's conventional wisdom talking. UO was made on a smaller budget. I bet those game dynamics could be duplicated into modern terms for that price, but that is a blatant, uninformed guess.

Yes, you can. It just won't have pixel shaders and bump mapping and all the other useless shit that contributes fuckall to immersiveness, sitckiness or dare I say it, fun.

Cap it at 50,000 subs then. Make them wait in line to subscribe to the game. You can't join until one of the 50k people quits. Let them sell their account on eBay for hundreds of dollars to people that want to play. Better yet provide the auction system for the accounts on your own site. Exclusive club MMOG for the win.

Ahhhh artificial scarcity capitalism.

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MultiVerse is claiming you'll be able to create an indie MMOG on a $10k budget using their system.

There was another system like Multiverse that someone posted here, but they didn't support a free 3D modelers.  Kinda hard to build a MMOG for 10k when 4 copies of 3D Studio Max blows the budget. I hope one of these MMOG construstion sets pan out.  I have a ton of ideas. I'd like to try out without having to start at the very beginning.

I have yet to see a good all-in-one "platform" for a game. Usually you pick by parts: networking system, graphics system, database system, etc. While their "demo" game (http://www.kothuria.com/) looks like ass, it is possible that in the right hands it could be made to look nice. The problem with such an approach is that you don't know what you have to sacrifice to get it there until you.. get it there. (Which is why most dev houses go with an inhouse 3d engine or license unreal/quake or other platform).

It looks like they are using the Axiom 3D engine (website down (http://www.axiom3d.org/)), which is a port of Ogre (http://www.ogre3d.org/) it seems.

What we really need is a standard UI language and a standard network communication language (not TCP/IP - I mean, MMO langauge to handle state changes, UI updates, etc etc), which could allow you to plug-n-play different graphics engines depending on OS and game mode. (Imagine being able to login in to a 2D/isometric 'god mode' to setup your harvesters, manage resources, task your peoples, build your fortress, etc on your Mac at work and then going home to login as your hero/avatar for some FPS/RPG action on your PC).

Sorry didn't mean to derail. :)

I think the derailment was pretty well established. It's probably a good point to reference a post closely related to the derailment (http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=197) on Raph's blog.

I'm not sure if you're meaning GUI when you say UI but if it were me I'd make Flash the standard GUI. It's vector, it's an industry standard (or at least has a broad install base), it's cross platform, it's scriptable, and accepts dynamic content at runtime. One of the problems indies have (at least the graphically challenged ones) is providing a polished user interface and Flash does that. I'm surprised more people don't use it as such.

I did some searching and it looks like Torque (http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=7119) has this functionality which is nice.

The problem with Flash is that it's not very well suited for 3D games. It might be able to do the UI/GUI well, but anything 3D or 2 1/2D doesn't work very well.

When I mean language I mean like XML. If you can describe how the UI should look and function in a standard format, you could easily have plug-n-play UIs that will work in any engine (Flash, Unreal, Quake, HTML even) as long as it can support/translate that language.

Then, you could create your UI using Macromedia's Flash tools and plug it into your Unreal engine to provide the UI.

XML is a format, not a language. We could both use XML to descibe our UIs but end up with two very different looking descriptions. What you want is a specific type of XML specialized for descibing UIs, like XAML or XUL.

The problem with Flash is that it's slow. Even for 2d things it's slow.

Also UI updates and state changes are two very different things. In a typical client you have state changes and then the UI responds to those changes - you never change the UI directly. That's why people can write customized UIs and mods and things like that.

The client might currently know the HP of everyone in a mile radius but you don't have to display that. You could write a mod that would though, or a mod that would based on a filter like "show me everyone near death." But you don't want the server saying "show this on the screen." All the server does is update state information and the client displays that however it wants. It can display your inventory as a 2d image, a 3d model, a window with grid lines, not show it at all, etc etc.

Oh I understand that. I was separating the communications language from the UI language. The UI language simply describes how stuff looks and what funky colors you use. The communications language would provide the client with the information the client needs to display, including state changes (so it can be displayed).

XML stands for Extensible Markup Language, so it could be considered a language by some. My only point is that a standard format would be needed, and maybe something like XUL or XAML would work, though it doesn't have to be based on XML. Heck, it could be a CSS derivative. Doesn't matter what it is, as long as it's a common supported format that you can plug into various different clients.

I'm not suggesting use Flash as the game engine, simply draw the 2d flash "interface" canvas over whatever game engine you're using.


I haven't found it to be slow. It handles full motion video. I've implimented this before in a DirectX8 setup and it worked adequately. Again though I'm only advocating this for indies to save time and provide polish.

CSS is probably a better idea though. In fact the Firefox rendering engine would probably be a good fit with the default background color rendered as transparent.

Ok! Let's get crackin'! Who wants to take a shot at it first? We'll make MILLIONS! (In support licenses, of course - it'd have to be an open standard).

Flash solely for UI overlays isn't a bad idea. I could see that working well. HTML+CSS would be tricky because scripting HTML really sucks.

Agreed, but there's no reason it has to be HTML.. could be XML modified by CSS. Or not markup language at all, as you can define the objects/properties within the software and directly modify them via CSS; no reason it has to be paired with a markup language. Too bad Flash doesn't use an open format (at least, not that I'm aware of?) otherwise it'd be a great option.

Where in time and space is Carmen Sandiago: the mmog. Or SG:MMOG. I'd really also like Mad Max: the MMOG.

Oregon Trail on the Guild Wars engine/system/story arc.

When a new fantasy MMO comes out, I get in my car and go buy it.  Even ones I saw were lame at E3.  SB, Horizons, AC2, Eq2, WoW...I would have bought Wish, Mythica, or even freaking Dragon Empires -- no lie.  By contrast, a non-fantasy MMO needs a hell of a gameplay hook to get my attention.  I'd just like a fantasy MMO with new gameplay.

I'm not sure, but I think I might be in the majority.

You're in my majoirity.