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On MMORPG Franchise Fundamentals
Thanks to MMORPGDot for its editorial discussing some of the most interesting franchises which are yet to be turned into MMO games. The author mentions: "Personally, I think a franchise game can be just as good as a game with an original world, if not better. It's all a question of what you do with the IP and if you make a fundamentally fun game out of what you've been given", before suggesting MMOs based on Star Trek ("The other great science fiction franchise is easily as deserving as Star Wars of it's own graphical massive game"), James Bond ("More of a realization that I'd like to play in a spy MMOG than anything else, I think a spy MMOG branded as a Bond game would get really good traction"), and Oz ("I think Oz would be an amazing vehicle for a MMOG centered on younger gamers.") Other suggestions?
Franchised MMORPGs are a risky venture. Get it right, and you can draw on an audience for your game which goes beyond the normal MMORPG-playing market, circumventing the argument that there are too many developers competing for too few customers. Get it wrong and you have an expensive mess on your hands which you then have to support for the next few years, while it damages the reputation of your franchise in the meantime.
Success or failure depends on a large number of factors. Obviously, the biggest of these is how good the game mechanics are. A MMORPG lives or dies by these; players spend a lot of time in a MMORPG and a crummy interface, boring combat or a crippled economy will have them leaving in droves. However, the mechanics of a good MMORPG are a discussion for another comments thread. How a franchise can help a MMORPG succeed or fail is what's relevant here.
To a large extent, I think the nature of the franchise is important. In particular, being tied too closely to a specific book or film is dangerous. I'll illustrate this by pointing out two recent franchised MMORPGs and how the franchises have hindered them.
Final Fantasy XI (if you've read my posts elsewhere, you'll already know I love this game) has exactly the right kind of franchise. "Final Fantasy" is difficult to pin down; each of the games has its own characters, worlds, plot and game mechanics. The only commonalities between the games are a few core gameplay concepts, the names of a couple of characters and a few world-elements, such as airships and chocobos. Within those very, very few constraints, the developers were free to create whatever world they wanted. The result was a world which looked and felt like a Final Fantasy world, but which had been carefully balanced to work as a MMORPG. Sure, a lot of newbies wanted to be a summoner, because summons have been one of the cooler things about recent FF games, but there's no fundamental requirement of the game universe that Summoners be uber-characters (in fact, unless the player is willing to put a *lot* of time and effort into developing it, the Summoner's generally felt to be a weak class in most areas). For the most part, people accept this.
By contrast, Star Wars Galaxies had a more unsuitable franchise and used it in a way that added further constraints. By setting the game during the time of the movies, when the Jedi were apparently nearly extinct and forced into hiding, the developers allowed the universe to constrain the game in a lot of ways. Let's face it, most of the players who tried out Galaxies wanted to be a Jedi. In the films, Jedi are uber-warriors, capable of all kinds of neat tricks. This already gave the devs a major problem, in that allowing a class like that, particularly in a game with PvP, is just not feasible in a MMORPG. So, the devs were forced to put Jedi in the world (upsetting those die-hard fans who dislike any deviation from the cannonical universe), make it extremely hard to become a Jedi (which upsets a lot of those who wanted to become a Jedi), and ensuring that the class wasn't actually all that powerful (upsetting those who put the time and effort into unlocking it). The result is pretty much the worst possible scenario. I think it would have been more sensible to set the game in an era more removed from the movies, as they did with KOTOR, to allow for a little more creative control, although it still wouldn't have solved some of the underlying problems.
The Star Wars license also accentuated what was missing from the game when it released. Space combat is such a huge part of the Star Wars universe that it's understandable that people were so upset it wasn't there from release. Had the airships been missing from Final Fantasy XI when it was released, it wouldn't have been anything like such a big deal.
Ultimately, Galaxies hasn't failed miserably and still has a respectable player-base. However, the damage that has been done to the franchise's reputation is not trivial and will be hard to undo.
(Even though it's a D&D setting, a properly done FR MMORPG would be much different from D&D Online.)
The Realms is the most detailed, largest fantasy setting there is. It has an insane variety to it-games ranging from Chondathan caravan runs to Tuigan hunting excursions to searching for Netherese artifacts in Anauroch would all be possible. It lends itself equally to instanced events and random encounters. It would already have a large promised user base. User guilds are encouraged by the setting, and already have many existing parallels. It comes with an established rules system already in place. In short, it has endless possiblities as an MMORPG-if done properly, by a group paying attention to the 2e design philosophy and hopefully with a designer watching them carefully. There is a problem, however:
Due to the layout of Faerun, a team would either have to cover a huge area or create arbitrary barriers to movement.
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
Deliver pizza, be a Kourier, practice your sword fighting, stake your claim in the Metaverse, buy your own Rat-thing, live in Mr Lee's Greater Hong Kong, work for the Feds, tool up with goo guns, ride your bike, design an avatar, be a rock star.
Or declare yourself a nuclear state and hi-jack a submarine.
...it's the players. Or rather, the general vacuum of etiquette, intelligence and propriety.
That's the problem with pay-to-play... anyone who can pay, can play, regardless of their social deficiencies. For a game genre whose major component is social this is a quite an oversight... but the alternative - turning away money - is worse than having a festering, rotten community to every MMO publisher.
I'm sick of the "Bob's Dance Club" MMOGs, regardless of what license-of-the-month they're bearing. Where are the "Studio 54" MMOGs who'll separate the wheat from the chaff to cultivate atmosphere at the possible expense of income?