If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. Samuel Adams
"Spot On" as I see it. The Harry Potter IP is a very agreeable IP to base a MMO upon, and in the end the IP itself will receive less "damage" from such a MMO as compared to what has happened with other IPs. If I were an Investor and I happened to also be versed in MMOs I would be excited about this.
WB buying out Turbine has been quietly in the works for many months we have come to realise now. Turbine's LotRO Development Staff have indeed appeared to be "distracted" these last 18 months, and rumors of a secret project have surfaced numerous times on the LotRO forums and elsewhere. My guess is Turbine Already has a basic game built and that may infact be what helped seal the deal with the buyout... Turbine proving that WB's investment would be a good one. Just my guess mind you, no proof.
My biggest concern of all is not the Harry Potter MMO (I am guessing it will happen) for as I see it a Harry Potter MMO will be as big or bigger than Wizard 101 and much more expansive... My biggest worry is for my beloved LotRO...
A Harry Potter MMO developed by Turbine right now will Kill Lord of the Rings Online and it's future. It will be a slow death yes, but it will be a death none the less. Turbine has already shown me that their passion is now with the secret project, Not LotRO or DDO. I fear we will not see the Black Gates of Mordor in LotRO the way we were promised and the way we should see them... as the natural planned release of content in a fashion as other content has been released for LotRO up to this point.
If I were the owner of the Lord Of the Rings IP.... I would be really angry right about now. I know I am as a Player of LotRO, and at the same time I am excited and happy for the fans of Harry Potter.
I am the Player that wonders... "What the %#*& just happened?!" ............... "I Believe... There should be NO financial connection or portals between the Real World and the Virtual in MMOs. " __Ever Present Cockroach of the MMO Verses__ ...scurrying to and fro... .munching on bits of garbage... always under foot...
If I were designing the game I would try to stand out from the holy trinity. Let your wizard schools take on various roles. A wizard student could be skilled in physical wards for example, another perhaps could charm a tank monster for awhile, or an alchemist make up a potion which can absorb lots of physical damage.
If I were designing the game I would try to stand out from the holy trinity. Let your wizard schools take on various roles. A wizard student could be skilled in physical wards for example, another perhaps could charm a tank monster for awhile, or an alchemist make up a potion which can absorb lots of physical damage.
What is all this talk about a Tank...Expecto Patronum (aka instant Tank) well ok against dementors anyway, but you get the idea. Worst case you get Crabbe or Goyle.
This game would be awesome. As stated, your Hogwarts experience could be the equivalent of Tortage. After that you could go on to become an auror or whatevrer wizard profession you want. If it turned out really well, you could join the dark side as well. You can create your own spells, like Snape did with Sectumsempra, then you tell your friends how to perform them and go wreak havok! Sounds like a lot of fun to me. You've got brooms as mounts, and maybe you could let the "really powerful" dark wizards fly.
edit*
I could care less about feeling like Harry or the main characters of the story. A sandbox wizard game sounds like good fun.
But only because Potter never hooked me. It would probably be a good cash grab if the devs liked that sorta thing (Looking at you SOE, Cryptic, EA, etc etc etc etc), or a good game... If anyone remembers how to make those?
If I had money tho, I would have put them on Wheel of Time...
How about Harry Potter RvR? Your mission as part of your school House is to infiltrate other dorms and throw buckets of water over their beds, leave frogs under the blankets etc. Meanwhile the defending house hunts you down!
How about Harry Potter RvR? Your mission as part of your school House is to infiltrate other dorms and throw buckets of water over their beds, leave frogs under the blankets etc. Meanwhile the defending house hunts you down!
Harry Potter MMO, well for starters this would potentially bring in alot of players who have never played a single MMO before, (If they where already playing we would be seeing alot bigger numbers in the current MMO's than we currently see) literally millions of players, those that have been hooked on the books and films who just haven't been interested in EQ or WoW or any of the multitude of MMO's out there right now.
WB have the chance to create something that could easily eclipse everything else out there due to the sheer amount of ppl that are hooked on the franchise, unless they take the easy route and produce something like Wizard 101, then it's going to be nothing spectacular at all.
The HP franchise to date has made $5.4 bliion and it still has 2 films to go, no matter what the naysayers have to say $5.4 billion is alot of money that many an investor won't turn their nose up if offered the chance to help fund an MMO, look at Bioware who have reportedly invested over $100 in SWTOR, the money is out there for good IP's and investors know that they can get potentially astronimcal returns if the developers get it right.
Even at 40 yrs of age I would be interested in playing a HP MMO, I've thoroughly enjoyed watching the series of films with my children over the years, and I would love to see how WB would be able to turn that into an evolving MMO, probably follow the same course as LoTRO with the main story happening off in the distance and with the rest of us as the backstory helping the main characters stay on course.
Seems that everyone's forgetting Turbine has only had mild success in the industry. Unfortunately I think they lost their magic (the magic that made AC) in exchange for greed.
LOTRO was completely changed from what it was going to be simply because WoW was successful.
Both DDO and LOTRO are merely shadows of what they should have been. The writer says the Harry Potter universe lends itself to become an MMO game. Really? More than Dungeon's & Dragons? I don't think so.
DDO, possibly the worst design for a P2P MMO game to-date, was a bad idea for a P2P game. It kind of works as a F2P game with the item mall, but DDO could have been so much more. Just look at NWN or Icewind Dale for what a good D&D RPG looks like.
LOTRO wasn't much better. It really shows that Turbine can't think outside the box any longer when they couldn't think of a more creative way to stick to the IP other than changing "Health" to "Morale" and adding tons of particle effects just because it would be boring, or people expect them or something.
There are other ways to develope a game. Look at AoC, take out the magic classes and you basically have what LOTRO could (or should) have been. Fun combat, unique classes, not a lot of flashy particle effects.
The only reason I'm bringing this all up is because no MMO game is easy to develope and unfortunately Turbine has a proven track record I would place slightly below mediocare.
So do not kid yourselves into thinking that a Harry Potter MMO would be "easy" for Turbine to make.
*FYI: I've been a LOTRO player since closed beta and also occasionally dabble in DDO.
"There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
Harry Potter Online? A good idea? Really? Really?!
The Harry Potter IP most be one of the most narrow fantasy worlds you can find. Sure I bet you can earn some money on it. But would it make a good game? No, not if you want to stay true to the IP.
Here are some IP's that would suit a MMORPG better. Any book serie that David Eddings, Robert Jordan, Tad Williams, Raymond E Feist, Robin Hobb, Jorge R R Martin have written. Not to mention the work of Laura and Tracy Hickman.
Yes those names might only be known to fantsy nerds and not so mush to the idiot masses, also known as the mainstream audience. But they have done allot better job then J. K Rowling in painting a living universe surrounding there story line and characters witch is needed to use a IP for a MMORPG tittle.
The real game should be what isn't in the books. I would love it if this game had Hogwarts as merely a tutorial, for say, 20 levels of the game like AoC. It would be where you become the sort of wizard you grow up to be. Now the real fun to me would be the good path becoming Aurors and whatnot, the dark path Death eaters, and some would be neither and a bit neautral. I then would like to see human muggle cities and something like pressence, where the muggle world catches onto you if you are not careful with your powers. Those who cause death and destruction to normal humans would face consequences from both human law enforcement and wizarding. It could be like a gta online but for the Harry Potter IP. The other half would be more fantasy, and take place in their world, with dungeons and curses and tales and adventures that we have only caught glimpses of so far. It could be alot of fun this game, if it went beyond the Hogwarts experience!
Make the setting either well before or well after the books.
Make the game first person. This will stop it from being yet another standard 3rd person mmo and will give an all over different feel to the game.
Make the game skill based (maybe something along the line of Black and White type of spellcasting?)
I have a preference of well before the books as in the middle ages. Just take the school back in to a midevil setting, you know.. when magic was real
Grapics will be important. People almost direct affiliate magic with wonderous and beatuful (even if its in a ugly way, sick and demented way like necromancy).
The world in itself would have to be open, free with dungeons with random contact and even location. I for one I'm sick and tired of the "lets do dungeon x again tonight!" kind of shit.
Make rare, rare. Unique items, quests, monsters and dungeons that only happen once in the game. So you can actually have a magic staff or robe or what not that no one will ever have in the game again.
Sort of like a Mortal Online meets wizard101 with a little snuf of black and white :d
I think there are several ways to understand an ip. You could take a look at what actually happens in the story, the places, settings, characters and so on. That is quite on the surface and you would not be able to really capture the "spirit" of the franchise. That's what Verant/SOE did with Star Wars for SWG back then. They made set-pieces from the Star Wars universe but otherwise completely ignored what the franchise was about.
Fans back then claimed that it was about "being like Uncle Owen". This would bring us to another way to look at the ip: understanding the governing rules of the ip setting, like what's different from our world/universe? What do the people do during their day? Are laws of physics different and how? It`s also the way Justin looks at Potter, like they play Quidditch so it could be an activity for the game. The creative direction certainly starts there already. With that in mind you can make a game about World War II in the Harry Potter universe, or choose another setting that`s closer to the known set pieces, like a timeframe during the late 1980ties, before potter was born etc. This would be a fairly good way to make an MMO, because you have enough room to fit all the players in, and it doesn`t interfere with the canonical events.
There is a problem though. If you make a game about the franchise universe, even being very true to all the rules and everything but ignoring what the "ip was about", fans are going to be disappointed. People like the universe not only because they thought that wizards hiding in plain sight are cool. They maybe liked the structure of the stories even more and that may be a defining factor more important than getting the color of Hedwig's feathers right.
And that's where SWG for example failed. It did not show the life of "Uncle Owen" as fans would claim often. Star Wars is not about colonializing Tattooine and Uncle Owens life isn`t either. Harry Potter is not about playing quidditch or about taking lessons in fighting dark arts. It's about young mages who have similar problems as everyone else had in school, about growing up, about friendship, about a year in a boarding school. For what matters for a game: it's about intrigue and fundamentally social.
The stories in the books are typically embedded in the cycle of one school year. Events unfold slowly. There is a great deal of mystery and detective story. The lessons and the events during the school year, like quidditch league, holidays etc. are kind of the "medium" for mystery and intrigue. This only works so ingenously, because readers (and viewers) know the characters and suspects like in any old school crime story, and like in clueso, the places are familliar as well. Very few places are introduced over the course of the books and they can be summed up to a handful entirely different locations (or zones in a MMO context).
The Potter Game, in my opinion, would have to stick to a strict "school year cycle" structure. Where developers would usually create many different zones to explore, the Potter Devs would create the same places in different settings and situations (i.e. event driven). You do not travel through space, but time.
You are familiar with the somewhat counter-intuitive way "time" is handled in MMOs. Day and night change, but the "date" doesn`t if someone would track it with a calendar. You would do the same here, so any number of days and nights can happen until it's christmas "in the world". The game basically knows a number of different "timeframes" (or scenarios) and each can be as long as the developers want, but they would switch based on real world time or some other arcane rule. So an in-game day may be 3 hours long, but christmas in the game world is still timed with real world christmas and summer is timed with real world summer, and the quidditch season starts in spring and ends in autumn etc.
Players advance over real world time. Their characters graduate and like in usual MMOs they see new content and events in every given timeframe. The avatar could level up to a certain cap for each timeframe/year. If you don't level or if you suck at playing, you`re going to be a poor pupil but with the next year it would be brought to "average" again (where the same happens again but on a different level of avatar progression). The game is limited to a number of years. At the end, you may start over (it will be a different experience). Maybe you keep your toon, but you are magically young again, you forgot what happens, but maybe not. There is time travel, there is meddling with memories within the ip, conveniently. Expansions, likewise, make the game deeper and wider. They add new events, minigames and the like over the course of the school years and not glue new years on top of it.
The events are crucial, since it`s very event driven. They are also social. The events and story arcs imbue all years and are indepenend of your avatar. The trimagic tournament may happen when you are still "too young", then you play a different role there. It will be a different trimagic tournament the next time, because people are different, dynamics are different. The story of Harry Potter may be a part as well, but doesn't need to.
It's not about Potter, but about the spirit. If you take that direction or make something else in the same universe, like WW2 with wizards, is a creative direction. Making WW2 with Wizards or a game where you are wizard enforcer hunting down dark sorcerers in the Potter Universe may be true to the franchise universe, but may not capute the spirit of the IP. And the spirit of an IP is not "being harry Potter" either — and it wasn't "being Luke Skywalker" either. That`s what they failed to understand as well.
Make the game first person. This will stop it from being yet another standard 3rd person mmo and will give an all over different feel to the game.
I don't think this would do well in an mmo. One of the biggest draws in mmo's is the ability to customize how your character looks, thus all mmo's have to invest heavily into many different appearances for clothes, armor, weapons, etc.
In first person view you can't even see your character or what they're wearing and thus an important connection to your character is removed. I don't think most people would bother putting much into their character's appearance if only other people can see yours. After all do you really care what someone else's character looks like?
In third person view that we currently have you spend hours at a time looking at your character, thus what you're looking at becomes more important. Remove that and you might as well remove half the loot in mmo's cause they're all about changing how you look.
Make the game first person. This will stop it from being yet another standard 3rd person mmo and will give an all over different feel to the game.
I don't think this would do well in an mmo. One of the biggest draws in mmo's is the ability to customize how your character looks, thus all mmo's have to invest heavily into many different appearances for clothes, armor, weapons, etc.
In first person view you can't even see your character or what they're wearing and thus an important connection to your character is removed. I don't think most people would bother putting much into their character's appearance if only other people can see yours. After all do you really care what someone else's character looks like?
In third person view that we currently have you spend hours at a time looking at your character, thus what you're looking at becomes more important. Remove that and you might as well remove half the loot in mmo's cause they're all about changing how you look.
Perhaps with mirrors placed relatively often, would be enough for players to be satisfied with 1st person... While I would be extremely happy to the point where i'de pay $20 a month even to play a MMORPG based on the HP world regardless of 1st or 3rd person, or being able to switch between both at will (probably best path moneywise)... Being reminded of 1st person MMO's made me feel nostalgic for a moment about being a mage in 1st person MMO's of the past.. ah... Nostalgia.. so pleasurable yet so cruel..
Seems that everyone's forgetting Turbine has only had mild success in the industry. Unfortunately I think they lost their magic (the magic that made AC) in exchange for greed.
LOTRO was completely changed from what it was going to be simply because WoW was successful.
Both DDO and LOTRO are merely shadows of what they should have been. The writer says the Harry Potter universe lends itself to become an MMO game. Really? More than Dungeon's & Dragons? I don't think so.
DDO, possibly the worst design for a P2P MMO game to-date, was a bad idea for a P2P game. It kind of works as a F2P game with the item mall, but DDO could have been so much more. Just look at NWN or Icewind Dale for what a good D&D RPG looks like.
LOTRO wasn't much better. It really shows that Turbine can't think outside the box any longer when they couldn't think of a more creative way to stick to the IP other than changing "Health" to "Morale" and adding tons of particle effects just because it would be boring, or people expect them or something.
There are other ways to develope a game. Look at AoC, take out the magic classes and you basically have what LOTRO could (or should) have been. Fun combat, unique classes, not a lot of flashy particle effects.
The only reason I'm bringing this all up is because no MMO game is easy to develope and unfortunately Turbine has a proven track record I would place slightly below mediocare.
So do not kid yourselves into thinking that a Harry Potter MMO would be "easy" for Turbine to make.
*FYI: I've been a LOTRO player since closed beta and also occasionally dabble in DDO.
Good post.
I've a similar gut feeling that a Potter MMO would be seriously difficult to pull together, and I just don't think the IP suits an MMO environment.
Turbine is frustrating, they clearly have a lot of techinical talent and many of their systems are truly excellent, but I think the suits running the show are complete idiots and we tend to get mediocrity because of their decisions. It could be a very good thing that WB has taken over.
I just hope this secret MMO is NOT Potter... largely because I'd like to play the next Turbine game and I just cannot see myself playing a Potter MMO. Very selfish of me really.
Oh my gosh this would totally rock!!! I'm not a huge fan of Harry Potter but I'm a huge fan of magic/wizardry and the whole idea of attending class and being able to interact with your peers opens-up a whole new door. It's a virtual world like no other.
I'm a fan of harry potter... I haven't ever been a fan of the video games from it though.
But I will give it a try just because I'm a total dork for Harry Potter stuff (my lady and I are both fans and going to universal stuids world of harry potter for our honeymoon for god sakes lol).... I won't pay for it until I try it though, I don't buy into it being a legitimate MMO, usually when things like this happen companies are just trying to sell off of its name ):
I agree that most people would not want to go spend time in a classroom with their characters. There is a pretty easy solutions for that though. Use a system similar to EVE Online for your classroom training. Allow each student to study one subject at a time. Each subject times a certain amount of time per level it is trained. You can build up a tierd subject system so that there are pre-reqs before getting to the advanced classes.
Unlike EVE, I would put a cap an the total amount of training allowed in school. At Hogwarts, students only had 7 years with what, 5-6 classes per year?
For me, the draw of this would be using the 'school years' to work out a character build. This might take weeks/months for completion. Then finally, go explore the *world* or Harry Potter, not just Hogwarts. Yes, Hogwarts should be front and center to the game, but it is by no means the rest of the wizarding world within the novels.
Want a pet Dragon? Head to one of the breeding areas, but make sure you have enough levels in Magical Creatures (or some advanced subject).
This right here is why it will never happen, The mega corp that is J.K. Rowling had enough issues with the announcement that Dumbledore was gay which was a short drive to reasonably assume that he was also a closet pedophile (I don't agree with it but many do) a HP MMO would imeaditaly become a Pedobears playground or at the very least attract every troll that wants to pose as a pedobear for shock value. The only way they could do this is to have very very draconian parental controls and then what would be the point.
I'm pretty sure Rowling didn't have any issues with the announcement Dumbledore was gay... where you got the closet pedophile thing from I have no flipping idea.. but one idiot randomly throwing the words "nude patch" into their post isn't a decent reason to say a game with this much potential shouldn't be made.
And it's an MMORPG, they stick a "online interactions may vary" sticker on it, give the option for a parental control setting to censor gore, language, ect... just like everyone else does, and moves on.
People that add illegal add-ons to their game would be banned just like everyone else, and that would have no effect whatsoever legally or morally on the game itself.
Comments
LFTank!
Need a Tank!
Lvl 15 group of wizards LFTank.
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
Samuel Adams
In response to the Article;
"Spot On" as I see it. The Harry Potter IP is a very agreeable IP to base a MMO upon, and in the end the IP itself will receive less "damage" from such a MMO as compared to what has happened with other IPs. If I were an Investor and I happened to also be versed in MMOs I would be excited about this.
WB buying out Turbine has been quietly in the works for many months we have come to realise now. Turbine's LotRO Development Staff have indeed appeared to be "distracted" these last 18 months, and rumors of a secret project have surfaced numerous times on the LotRO forums and elsewhere. My guess is Turbine Already has a basic game built and that may infact be what helped seal the deal with the buyout... Turbine proving that WB's investment would be a good one. Just my guess mind you, no proof.
My biggest concern of all is not the Harry Potter MMO (I am guessing it will happen) for as I see it a Harry Potter MMO will be as big or bigger than Wizard 101 and much more expansive... My biggest worry is for my beloved LotRO...
A Harry Potter MMO developed by Turbine right now will Kill Lord of the Rings Online and it's future. It will be a slow death yes, but it will be a death none the less. Turbine has already shown me that their passion is now with the secret project, Not LotRO or DDO. I fear we will not see the Black Gates of Mordor in LotRO the way we were promised and the way we should see them... as the natural planned release of content in a fashion as other content has been released for LotRO up to this point.
If I were the owner of the Lord Of the Rings IP.... I would be really angry right about now. I know I am as a Player of LotRO, and at the same time I am excited and happy for the fans of Harry Potter.
I am the Player that wonders... "What the %#*& just happened?!"
...............
"I Believe... There should be NO financial connection or portals between the Real World and the Virtual in MMOs. "
__Ever Present Cockroach of the MMO Verses__
...scurrying to and fro... .munching on bits of garbage... always under foot...
If I were designing the game I would try to stand out from the holy trinity. Let your wizard schools take on various roles. A wizard student could be skilled in physical wards for example, another perhaps could charm a tank monster for awhile, or an alchemist make up a potion which can absorb lots of physical damage.
Finally - Best site for Chuck Norris
http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/
What is all this talk about a Tank...Expecto Patronum (aka instant Tank) well ok against dementors anyway, but you get the idea. Worst case you get Crabbe or Goyle.
This game would be awesome. As stated, your Hogwarts experience could be the equivalent of Tortage. After that you could go on to become an auror or whatevrer wizard profession you want. If it turned out really well, you could join the dark side as well. You can create your own spells, like Snape did with Sectumsempra, then you tell your friends how to perform them and go wreak havok! Sounds like a lot of fun to me. You've got brooms as mounts, and maybe you could let the "really powerful" dark wizards fly.
edit*
I could care less about feeling like Harry or the main characters of the story. A sandbox wizard game sounds like good fun.
die.
Great potential but more likely to fail epically due to stupidity and lust for money.
... if you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you.-Friedrich Nietzsche
My money would not be on Potter.
But only because Potter never hooked me. It would probably be a good cash grab if the devs liked that sorta thing (Looking at you SOE, Cryptic, EA, etc etc etc etc), or a good game... If anyone remembers how to make those?
If I had money tho, I would have put them on Wheel of Time...
How about Harry Potter RvR? Your mission as part of your school House is to infiltrate other dorms and throw buckets of water over their beds, leave frogs under the blankets etc. Meanwhile the defending house hunts you down!
Hufflepuff panty-raid!!!
Harry Potter MMO, well for starters this would potentially bring in alot of players who have never played a single MMO before, (If they where already playing we would be seeing alot bigger numbers in the current MMO's than we currently see) literally millions of players, those that have been hooked on the books and films who just haven't been interested in EQ or WoW or any of the multitude of MMO's out there right now.
WB have the chance to create something that could easily eclipse everything else out there due to the sheer amount of ppl that are hooked on the franchise, unless they take the easy route and produce something like Wizard 101, then it's going to be nothing spectacular at all.
The HP franchise to date has made $5.4 bliion and it still has 2 films to go, no matter what the naysayers have to say $5.4 billion is alot of money that many an investor won't turn their nose up if offered the chance to help fund an MMO, look at Bioware who have reportedly invested over $100 in SWTOR, the money is out there for good IP's and investors know that they can get potentially astronimcal returns if the developers get it right.
Even at 40 yrs of age I would be interested in playing a HP MMO, I've thoroughly enjoyed watching the series of films with my children over the years, and I would love to see how WB would be able to turn that into an evolving MMO, probably follow the same course as LoTRO with the main story happening off in the distance and with the rest of us as the backstory helping the main characters stay on course.
Seems that everyone's forgetting Turbine has only had mild success in the industry. Unfortunately I think they lost their magic (the magic that made AC) in exchange for greed.
LOTRO was completely changed from what it was going to be simply because WoW was successful.
Both DDO and LOTRO are merely shadows of what they should have been. The writer says the Harry Potter universe lends itself to become an MMO game. Really? More than Dungeon's & Dragons? I don't think so.
DDO, possibly the worst design for a P2P MMO game to-date, was a bad idea for a P2P game. It kind of works as a F2P game with the item mall, but DDO could have been so much more. Just look at NWN or Icewind Dale for what a good D&D RPG looks like.
LOTRO wasn't much better. It really shows that Turbine can't think outside the box any longer when they couldn't think of a more creative way to stick to the IP other than changing "Health" to "Morale" and adding tons of particle effects just because it would be boring, or people expect them or something.
There are other ways to develope a game. Look at AoC, take out the magic classes and you basically have what LOTRO could (or should) have been. Fun combat, unique classes, not a lot of flashy particle effects.
The only reason I'm bringing this all up is because no MMO game is easy to develope and unfortunately Turbine has a proven track record I would place slightly below mediocare.
So do not kid yourselves into thinking that a Harry Potter MMO would be "easy" for Turbine to make.
*FYI: I've been a LOTRO player since closed beta and also occasionally dabble in DDO.
"There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
Harry Potter Online? A good idea? Really? Really?!
The Harry Potter IP most be one of the most narrow fantasy worlds you can find. Sure I bet you can earn some money on it. But would it make a good game? No, not if you want to stay true to the IP.
Here are some IP's that would suit a MMORPG better. Any book serie that David Eddings, Robert Jordan, Tad Williams, Raymond E Feist, Robin Hobb, Jorge R R Martin have written. Not to mention the work of Laura and Tracy Hickman.
Yes those names might only be known to fantsy nerds and not so mush to the idiot masses, also known as the mainstream audience. But they have done allot better job then J. K Rowling in painting a living universe surrounding there story line and characters witch is needed to use a IP for a MMORPG tittle.
The real game should be what isn't in the books. I would love it if this game had Hogwarts as merely a tutorial, for say, 20 levels of the game like AoC. It would be where you become the sort of wizard you grow up to be. Now the real fun to me would be the good path becoming Aurors and whatnot, the dark path Death eaters, and some would be neither and a bit neautral. I then would like to see human muggle cities and something like pressence, where the muggle world catches onto you if you are not careful with your powers. Those who cause death and destruction to normal humans would face consequences from both human law enforcement and wizarding. It could be like a gta online but for the Harry Potter IP. The other half would be more fantasy, and take place in their world, with dungeons and curses and tales and adventures that we have only caught glimpses of so far. It could be alot of fun this game, if it went beyond the Hogwarts experience!
i wanna it to be like wizard101 but harry potter and no cards
better make learning in the schools like if u pass a test and pass it good u get skill points
or better make teachers (past pupils) teach new pupils becuz of it the game will grow and grow like our life
cuz untill u finish school u choose profession and that profession can be a Teacher
I'd definately play a Harry Potter MMO.
Make the setting either well before or well after the books.
Make the game first person. This will stop it from being yet another standard 3rd person mmo and will give an all over different feel to the game.
Make the game skill based (maybe something along the line of Black and White type of spellcasting?)
I have a preference of well before the books as in the middle ages. Just take the school back in to a midevil setting, you know.. when magic was real
Grapics will be important. People almost direct affiliate magic with wonderous and beatuful (even if its in a ugly way, sick and demented way like necromancy).
The world in itself would have to be open, free with dungeons with random contact and even location. I for one I'm sick and tired of the "lets do dungeon x again tonight!" kind of shit.
Make rare, rare. Unique items, quests, monsters and dungeons that only happen once in the game. So you can actually have a magic staff or robe or what not that no one will ever have in the game again.
Sort of like a Mortal Online meets wizard101 with a little snuf of black and white :d
Wall of Text is coming right for you!
I think there are several ways to understand an ip. You could take a look at what actually happens in the story, the places, settings, characters and so on. That is quite on the surface and you would not be able to really capture the "spirit" of the franchise. That's what Verant/SOE did with Star Wars for SWG back then. They made set-pieces from the Star Wars universe but otherwise completely ignored what the franchise was about.
Fans back then claimed that it was about "being like Uncle Owen". This would bring us to another way to look at the ip: understanding the governing rules of the ip setting, like what's different from our world/universe? What do the people do during their day? Are laws of physics different and how? It`s also the way Justin looks at Potter, like they play Quidditch so it could be an activity for the game. The creative direction certainly starts there already. With that in mind you can make a game about World War II in the Harry Potter universe, or choose another setting that`s closer to the known set pieces, like a timeframe during the late 1980ties, before potter was born etc. This would be a fairly good way to make an MMO, because you have enough room to fit all the players in, and it doesn`t interfere with the canonical events.
There is a problem though. If you make a game about the franchise universe, even being very true to all the rules and everything but ignoring what the "ip was about", fans are going to be disappointed. People like the universe not only because they thought that wizards hiding in plain sight are cool. They maybe liked the structure of the stories even more and that may be a defining factor more important than getting the color of Hedwig's feathers right.
And that's where SWG for example failed. It did not show the life of "Uncle Owen" as fans would claim often. Star Wars is not about colonializing Tattooine and Uncle Owens life isn`t either. Harry Potter is not about playing quidditch or about taking lessons in fighting dark arts. It's about young mages who have similar problems as everyone else had in school, about growing up, about friendship, about a year in a boarding school. For what matters for a game: it's about intrigue and fundamentally social.
The stories in the books are typically embedded in the cycle of one school year. Events unfold slowly. There is a great deal of mystery and detective story. The lessons and the events during the school year, like quidditch league, holidays etc. are kind of the "medium" for mystery and intrigue. This only works so ingenously, because readers (and viewers) know the characters and suspects like in any old school crime story, and like in clueso, the places are familliar as well. Very few places are introduced over the course of the books and they can be summed up to a handful entirely different locations (or zones in a MMO context).
The Potter Game, in my opinion, would have to stick to a strict "school year cycle" structure. Where developers would usually create many different zones to explore, the Potter Devs would create the same places in different settings and situations (i.e. event driven). You do not travel through space, but time.
You are familiar with the somewhat counter-intuitive way "time" is handled in MMOs. Day and night change, but the "date" doesn`t if someone would track it with a calendar. You would do the same here, so any number of days and nights can happen until it's christmas "in the world". The game basically knows a number of different "timeframes" (or scenarios) and each can be as long as the developers want, but they would switch based on real world time or some other arcane rule. So an in-game day may be 3 hours long, but christmas in the game world is still timed with real world christmas and summer is timed with real world summer, and the quidditch season starts in spring and ends in autumn etc.
Players advance over real world time. Their characters graduate and like in usual MMOs they see new content and events in every given timeframe. The avatar could level up to a certain cap for each timeframe/year. If you don't level or if you suck at playing, you`re going to be a poor pupil but with the next year it would be brought to "average" again (where the same happens again but on a different level of avatar progression). The game is limited to a number of years. At the end, you may start over (it will be a different experience). Maybe you keep your toon, but you are magically young again, you forgot what happens, but maybe not. There is time travel, there is meddling with memories within the ip, conveniently. Expansions, likewise, make the game deeper and wider. They add new events, minigames and the like over the course of the school years and not glue new years on top of it.
The events are crucial, since it`s very event driven. They are also social. The events and story arcs imbue all years and are indepenend of your avatar. The trimagic tournament may happen when you are still "too young", then you play a different role there. It will be a different trimagic tournament the next time, because people are different, dynamics are different. The story of Harry Potter may be a part as well, but doesn't need to.
It's not about Potter, but about the spirit. If you take that direction or make something else in the same universe, like WW2 with wizards, is a creative direction. Making WW2 with Wizards or a game where you are wizard enforcer hunting down dark sorcerers in the Potter Universe may be true to the franchise universe, but may not capute the spirit of the IP. And the spirit of an IP is not "being harry Potter" either — and it wasn't "being Luke Skywalker" either. That`s what they failed to understand as well.
I don't think this would do well in an mmo. One of the biggest draws in mmo's is the ability to customize how your character looks, thus all mmo's have to invest heavily into many different appearances for clothes, armor, weapons, etc.
In first person view you can't even see your character or what they're wearing and thus an important connection to your character is removed. I don't think most people would bother putting much into their character's appearance if only other people can see yours. After all do you really care what someone else's character looks like?
In third person view that we currently have you spend hours at a time looking at your character, thus what you're looking at becomes more important. Remove that and you might as well remove half the loot in mmo's cause they're all about changing how you look.
Perhaps with mirrors placed relatively often, would be enough for players to be satisfied with 1st person... While I would be extremely happy to the point where i'de pay $20 a month even to play a MMORPG based on the HP world regardless of 1st or 3rd person, or being able to switch between both at will (probably best path moneywise)... Being reminded of 1st person MMO's made me feel nostalgic for a moment about being a mage in 1st person MMO's of the past.. ah... Nostalgia.. so pleasurable yet so cruel..
Good post.
I've a similar gut feeling that a Potter MMO would be seriously difficult to pull together, and I just don't think the IP suits an MMO environment.
Turbine is frustrating, they clearly have a lot of techinical talent and many of their systems are truly excellent, but I think the suits running the show are complete idiots and we tend to get mediocrity because of their decisions. It could be a very good thing that WB has taken over.
I just hope this secret MMO is NOT Potter... largely because I'd like to play the next Turbine game and I just cannot see myself playing a Potter MMO. Very selfish of me really.
Oh my gosh this would totally rock!!! I'm not a huge fan of Harry Potter but I'm a huge fan of magic/wizardry and the whole idea of attending class and being able to interact with your peers opens-up a whole new door. It's a virtual world like no other.
I'm a fan of harry potter... I haven't ever been a fan of the video games from it though.
But I will give it a try just because I'm a total dork for Harry Potter stuff (my lady and I are both fans and going to universal stuids world of harry potter for our honeymoon for god sakes lol).... I won't pay for it until I try it though, I don't buy into it being a legitimate MMO, usually when things like this happen companies are just trying to sell off of its name ):
I really hope it's good. (:
I agree that most people would not want to go spend time in a classroom with their characters. There is a pretty easy solutions for that though. Use a system similar to EVE Online for your classroom training. Allow each student to study one subject at a time. Each subject times a certain amount of time per level it is trained. You can build up a tierd subject system so that there are pre-reqs before getting to the advanced classes.
Unlike EVE, I would put a cap an the total amount of training allowed in school. At Hogwarts, students only had 7 years with what, 5-6 classes per year?
For me, the draw of this would be using the 'school years' to work out a character build. This might take weeks/months for completion. Then finally, go explore the *world* or Harry Potter, not just Hogwarts. Yes, Hogwarts should be front and center to the game, but it is by no means the rest of the wizarding world within the novels.
Want a pet Dragon? Head to one of the breeding areas, but make sure you have enough levels in Magical Creatures (or some advanced subject).
This right here is why it will never happen, The mega corp that is J.K. Rowling had enough issues with the announcement that Dumbledore was gay which was a short drive to reasonably assume that he was also a closet pedophile (I don't agree with it but many do) a HP MMO would imeaditaly become a Pedobears playground or at the very least attract every troll that wants to pose as a pedobear for shock value. The only way they could do this is to have very very draconian parental controls and then what would be the point.
I'm pretty sure Rowling didn't have any issues with the announcement Dumbledore was gay... where you got the closet pedophile thing from I have no flipping idea.. but one idiot randomly throwing the words "nude patch" into their post isn't a decent reason to say a game with this much potential shouldn't be made.
And it's an MMORPG, they stick a "online interactions may vary" sticker on it, give the option for a parental control setting to censor gore, language, ect... just like everyone else does, and moves on.
People that add illegal add-ons to their game would be banned just like everyone else, and that would have no effect whatsoever legally or morally on the game itself.