I was moving some of my stuff from boxes (yes, I am still kinda unpacking from my move…(hey…I’m lazy, I have a pretty tough job and I have a lot of stuff!). I was taking books out of a box to see if there some I could donate to goodwill or the post library or send to the troops overseas. I found a box of Rifts books I had purchased in the early nineties.
Thinking what could be a good new MMORPG I thought what about Rifts? I’d have to reread the books to understand every class and the entire Rifts world, but it seems like a PnP game that could be adopted to online gaming. Its old sure, but it is interesting.
I have no idea if the game is still in publication or if anyone at all plays it, but its got a “Thundarr the barbarian” feel to it. What do you guys think? A mix of WoW, conan and super science? Bad idea or not?
Totally it would have to be Cops & Robbers. Set the game in a number of 1930s-era cities near famous prisons. San Francisco: San Quentin, Alcatraz. Kansas City: Leavenworth. New York: Sing Sing. Seattle: Walla Walla. Chicago: Joliet.
Let some players be Robbers: mafia members of various stripes. Instead of guilds they get Families, who dispense law-breaking missions like theft, gunrunning, bootlegging, extortion, murder, prostitution, counterfeiting, and racketeering. Let other players be Cops: instead of guilds they get Precincts. They solve crimes by acquiring evidence on the Robber players: tire tracks, footprints, fingerprints, murder weapons, eyewitness statements, bodies, cars dumped into rivers, and so on.
When a Robber is caught his character gets thrown into jail and he must choose an alternate character (or spring his character from prison somehow). Or a Robber can drop a dime on his fellow Robbers, turn state’s evidence, and get set up in witness protection.
Cops who do well can move up and become Feds. Feds who stay clean and don’t take bribes can join the Untouchables.
I’ll try to contain my ahem enthusiasm and spare everyone the novella, but just TRUST me when I say Naruto (which isn’t in my top list of anime, so I’m not a fanboy or anything) could be made into an amazing MMO. There’s so much you can do with it, but the main thing that draws me to it is it is the perfect world for both RvR and FFA PvP, there are rogue ninja and there are ever shifting alliances. If you could get the players able to serve on a “council” for their city you could have some politics going on, one day your guild may be walking around happy with your Sand Village member and next week his village is your village’s sworn enemy and you have to disguise him or hide the fact that he’s still affiliated with you, or hell, turn on him. The only restrictive measures I’d have is that a faction can’t go out of commission permanently, due to server decay reasons (what fun is it if everyone is under the same rule?) and there’d be a limited amount of “reset” rules for cities and factions, but they’d be kept at a minimum for playability.
I also have some crazy ideas about the ability system and dynamic PvE content, but trust me, I have pages written up that will never come to fruition (especially since getting funding for a licensed anime game means you have tons of “creative consultants” breathing down your neck wanting a quick and easy buck). The model is the most important, but the universe FITS it so well. I’ll spare everyone the minute details.
Theres plenty of games i would LOVE to see MMO versions off. Starting with Sid Meiers: Pirates!, Grand theft auto, Mount and Blade, Vampire: the masquerade, The elder scrolls: Oblivion and Fallout.
Shadowrun. I would love to see a Shadowrun MMORPG. I’m not sure it would be enough to drag me away from WoW, but it’s the only thing that would have a shot.
“Where’s Jimbo, he’s got ‘Mechanics 2’, he can put this new carb I looted into my busted Ford pickup truck so I can make the run across the mutant forbidden zone to the ruined Wal-Mart for some expired antibiotics and a crate of irradiated power pickles”
“There’s no time for that! We need to perform maintainance on the the laser turrets around the corn fields. It’s a full moon tonight and the turbo-hyenas can smell the twinkies we’ve stored in the spent missle silo in the middle of the field…”
I’d love to have a fantasy MMORPG where the gameplay aspects actually supported becoming immersed in the world - where the fact that all the things you’ve already killed keep coming back again and again isn’t something you quietly ignore for the sake of the story (or where the fact that death is very non-permanent isn’t an issue either).
Maybe something along the lines of Zelazny’s Amber series, but with the immortals (aka players) creating bodies in various worlds that they can visit, but not actually going in themselves…
Basically a fantasy MMO without all the bullcrap. Dynamic game world (your side can lose), intrigue & communication takes precedence over physical combat/grinding, your character can make a difference.
I would love this. In fact, I was writing up for a while. The only problem was that there’s limited (but incredibly awesome) opportunities for PvP. The game would have to work very differently than “normal” MMORPG’s. It couldn’t get away with being a WoW clone.
I would love to see Shadowrun done like EVE. one big ass server, with the entire Seattle Sprawl as your play field. it would be absofuckinglootly astounding to play.
as for pvp, I see several servers with different rule sets to accommodate preferences
I’ve been watching a few episodes of Thundarr the Barbarian on Youtube. I don’t have my Rifts books in front of me, but I’m sure they’re outdated. Anyway using Thundar as a template, I think an mmorpg based on the concept would be pretty fun if done right. All of the ideas here would be pretty cool if done right, actually.
Age of Conan was said to be the next big thing, but they lost a lot of subsribers rather quickly. (because overall, it wasn’t too much fun and was buggy to boot.) But one reason I think it would have a hard time even if the bugs weren’t a problem is that it has WoW as a competitor. City of Heroes may not have WoW’s numbers but it does have a niche of its own. LOTRO was pretty good even though I didn’t keep my subscription, and it has the Tolkien thing going for it. I don’t know how Warhammer is doing, I have it, but have never even loaded the disk. Dungeons and Dragons online was a disappointment for me, for a few reasons. One was that they used Eberron for the setting. I don’t know much of eberron, and I might have stuck with it for awhile if it was set in Forgotten Realms.
I think any new MMORPGs will need to different from WoW in setting. Whether its Rifts, or a Road Warrior setting, at least it would be a different setting. A very long time ago I had the game Star Frontiers…I wonder why there are no character based space MMORPGs?
Or are there? I’ve never heard of one, except EVE online, and I know little of it. It sounds more resource management than action.
This is how a lot of small to medium playerbase MUDS work, as the ease of creating graphical assets goes down (or more likely more free prerendered stuff is available) you might see more of this.
The biggest problem with “your character makes a difference” is that you have to have a very small player pool for everyone’s character to make a difference.