MMORPGs And Franchises

MMORPG.com has an interesting piece on major franchises and their relation to massive games. They take a look at the question of whether or not virtual worlds are appropriate venues for IPs. From the article: "It's precisely because of that 'famous world' that we run into trouble. The more famous it is, the higher the expectations that players put on it. This leads to the developers having less and less flexibility in the way that their world is built, the rules that they choose to use, and the content that makes the game interesting."

Comments

How can they totally leave out WoW?

[jchenx]

Okay, I read the article, expecting them to mention World of Warcraft at some point. It's based on some very popular IP, being the whole Warcraft universe (the subject of 3 RTS games already, and a number of novels). But they didn't. That's just a huge oversight.

Yeah, the Warcraft universe isn't comparable to Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter, since they came from different media, but you can't argue that the Warcraft IP didn't exist or that it wasn't very popular. Yet Blizzard found a way to keep the lore intact AND build a hugely successful MMORPG at that.

Re:How can they totally leave out WoW?

[muertos]

I think you've missed the point. WoW is based on the Warcraft franchise which is wholly envisioned and developed by Blizzard. It's not a third-party interpretation, and Blizzard can do no wrong, in the minds of the fans. Mostly. Obviously, if Lucas can sh*t on _Star_Wars_, Blizzard could potentially screw over Warcraft, but the benefit of the doubt is given to Blizzard until they do something so utterly insane as to immediately cut any ties of loyalty their fans feel. But the fact remains that Blizzard hasn't, and any introduction of new material by Blizzard is simply an addition, and accepted as correct.

Star Wars Franchise Notwithstanding

[mabu]

So this is the excuse that's being spread around the industry relating to the failure of SWG? That it was such a well-known franchise that customers had unrealistically high expectations and this led to its failure?

Oh yea, very high expectations of a MMORPG that wasn't fundamentally changed and nerfed every few months. It's undoubtedly because of Star Wars' fame that players such as myself had such high expectations from the game: that it WORK; that it make sense to play it.

Puleaze.

It's all about the gameplay. The big companies still haven't figured out yet that most players really don't give a shit about derivative work. Granted, if you stick "The Matrix" on some title, there is a set amount of dingleberry-brained consumers who will buy it, but a MMORPG doesn't live by those rules in the long run.

Star Wars Galaxies

[illuminix]

SWG was an awesome game at first. They killed it by changing the rules too many times. Shouldn't it be common sense that if you have something popular that a lot of people are enjoying, you can add to it, but don't drastically change it. SWG managed to survive one drastic change. The fanbase was up in arms, but gave them the benefit of the doubt. But then what do they do? Less than a year later they do another change that's twice as drastic. From a gameply perspective, the game isn't even hardly recognizeable. Removed all of the classes and skills and replaced them with something different, made huge changes to the combat system, then sat around wondering why everyone left. And people left. They left in droves, and it's now just a shell. The poster child of how not to run a mmorpg.

If WoW did something similar, it would be a disaster. Thankfully, they're probably not that stupid.