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[Column] General: Wayback Machine to the Future
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
One of the things that most of us love to daydream about are the books or single player games we'd love to see made into MMOs. In today's Fair Game column, we do exactly that with some of our favorites. Read on and then let us know what you'd like to see turned into an MMO in the comments.
First, many thanks to the glorious K.S. for the initial idea for this particular column, upon which I have expanded just a bit. I’ve read a lot of books and played a lot of games in my time, of many I have very fond memories. The idea was presented to me that some of those beloved games (and books) of way-back-when might make for fantastic MMOs today. So the question is:
What games or books from your past would you do back flips to have turned into an MMO? For me, it was hard to narrow down, but I have a few here.
Read more of Lisa Jonte's Fair Game: Wayback Machine to the Future.
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You Oxen die to snake bites.... oh s# t
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Traveller. One of the first scifi paper and dice RPG's ever. The best setting ever. Set in the 54th{ or was it 53rd?} century in the 3rd Imperium of man. Most of the published adventueres took place in a frontier area called the spinward marches. Tons of history. The bigest problem with a Traveller MMO would be the size of the thing.
I think one of the reasons I loved SWG so much was because it reminded me of traveller.
Yay!! An article by you where I don't feel I should be typing a response whilst hiding under my desk! I Thank you!
Those are all some good ideas for games. Unfortunately most of them would only work if game makers go back to making games that are worlds rather than not very complicated rat mazes where your main goal is to find the best cheese.
Though I wouldn't want to see it as a traditional slash and bash MMO, I would love to see a virtual game world based around Terry Pratchett's Disc World series. Or a MOBA style strategy battle MMO based on the Warlords/Warlords Battlecry games.
If you dont do stupid things while youre young, youll have nothing to smile about when youre old.
Mess with the best, Die like the rest
Beserker Wars , from Fred Saberhagen. An amazing sci fi series of books spanning over 50,000 years into mans future fighting the ruthless Beserkers, machines with one base program, to extinguish all life, from microscopic up!. What a Fantastic MMO this could become. It could inculde amazing space fights, colonization, trading, almost anything we have come to love in an mmo!
A 2cd < close 2cd > would be the swords and lost swords books . < same author > What an amazing fantasy world that would be to adventure in!
Chrono Trigger! It would be cool to have races based on those characters, like Frog and Robo.. and there was a dog-like swordsman, but I'm not sure.. maybe it was another game.
I keep hoping for a good MMO based on Dune.
Also a "heart of Africa" Victorian explorer-era type game. I'm thinking of the Tarzan books with their exotic locales and mysterious lost cultures. I'm also considering the old Avalon Hill board game Source of the Nile, where only the borders of the continent were known, and the interior geography was different than the real Africa. There was rumor years back that Cryptic might have been considering something like this based on some drawings that were posted as teasers, but nothing came of it.
I know these were just joke suggestions but there is some serious fantasy titles that should be made into MMORPGs.
Really ElfQuest should be made into a MMORPG. ElfQuest was the third rail of fantasy in the 70s and 80s. On one side you had Tolkien and on the other end you Dungeons and Dragons but in the middle was the psychedelic fantasy world of ElfQuest created by Wendy and Richard Pini. The ElfQuest series has been in print for 35 years and has an incredible ammount of Lore and history built into it. This would be the Perfect setting for a deep and immersive MMORPG.
For those who haven't read the 4 Novel Series, here's the basic idea behind it. People who don't seem to fit into the future society of the late 2000's - 2100's have an option (after survival training and acquiring useful/marketable skills) to exile themselves via a unique one-way timegate that goes back 4 Million years to start their new lives.
However, the Exiles find that Pliocene Era Earth is already occupied by an alien race which manifests in two different forms, Elves and Goblins, aka the Celtic Tanu and Firvulag.
After testing for latent Psionic abilities (which can be enhanced via wearable Tanu devices 'Torcs') the exiles are sorted into unwilling Slaves, willing Workers, or for the gifted few, equal status in Tanu society as Torc Wearers. There also exists a rare option to escape from the Tanu and become members of the local Rebellion.
I won't say anymore about the storyline in order not to spoil things for those who haven't read the series, but if you're interested in knowing more about it, here's the basic Wikipedia link for it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saga_of_Pliocene_Exile
I want my gddamn ZELDA MMO, and I want it now
btw, MMO with episodic content -> TSW
MMO with permadeath and "next of kin" inheritance -> Star Citizen
Secrets of Dragon?s Spine Trailer.. !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwT9cFVQCMw
Best MMOs ever played: Ultima, EvE, SW Galaxies, Age of Conan, The Secret World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2X_SbZCHpc&t=21s
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The Return of ELITE !
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"Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit"
I know the fantasy market is saturated, but I have a fantasy game like no other that, done correctly -and this would be admittedly very difficult to do-, could provide innovation out the wazoo, though I'm not certain it would bring the numbers, because of how fickle the overall MMORPG community is. I felt so strongly about this, in fact, that I wrote, beginning in 2004, and rewrote in 2007, a 220 page document about it...
Earthdawn
With a properly rendered marketing campaign, and a computer game built around all of the principles of the tabletop game, this could be magnificent.
Bladerunner.
But I will keep saying if the MMORPG is based on a popular book, singleplayer game or perhaps even a toy or what ever known IP then they really need to make sure they make a virtual sandbox type of game of it as I already know it's story and want to create my own story within that already know world.
If developers just want to make a themepark out of a very well known IP then they might aswell focus more on making a singleplayer co-op game so that they can go far beyond that of what they could do in a MMORPG due to the amount of players they have running around in their game. And I still feel MMORPG still are far away in how story actually influences the full ingame world apart from just your personal story which still doesn't really make sense to have that in a MMORPG unless it's actually created by the player, but unfortunaly your story is already set in stone with some minor adjustments here and there but without any reall impact on the ingame world around everyone.
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view6/2207524/saving-private-ryan-helmet-o.gif
There was a short lived Traveller iOS based MMO, Traveller AR, but it never got out of beta, I played it for a few months, there were thousands and thousands of systems, GM events, exploration, piracy, Vargr's, Zhodani, etc. I was sad to see it fail.
Me too, that would be immense.
Disc Word MUD is about as close as you can get.
Part of me would love this and part of me knows that it would be a cluster fuck. I would however like to see more MMO's that do not take themselves as seriously.
Philip Jose Farmer's "Riverworld" series. There was also a series of books in late 80's or early 90's called "Heroes in Hell". In it hell was timeless so anyone who ever died or ever will die was there. So it, like Riverworld ,had all sorts of historical figures. Unlike Riverworld, it was limited to non-fictional characters...whereas I believe in Riverworld you could run into , not only Robert E. Howard , but his creations Conan..or Solomon Kane. As a matter of fact in the Heroes In Hell series Robert E Howard runs into Gilgamesh and thinks he's met Conan.lol. There were cool things to be had in both series.
edit: apparently they're still making "in Hell" books..cool.
Bladerunner the movie (which was actually based on Phillip K Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) or Bladerunner the book by Alan E Nourse? The tilte being the only thing that the film took from the book.