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A Game of Thrones mmorpg? It's time for a grown up mmo...
Comaf
Member UncommonPosts: 1,150
It's time for a grown up mmorpg (I don't mean that E-sport gamers in SW:ToR, GW2, etc aren't grown up. The level of depth of those titles is severely lacking once you get to the meat of end game (nice intros though in SW). But now that all the FPS, and E-Sport gamers have something to play, how about something for the older crowd? There are folks that grew up on EQ and Dark Age of Camelot, Asheron's Call, etc. We deserve a title as well, do we not? Or are companies only going to cater to mass audiences ala a McDonald's model of mmorpg fabrication? How can they call their products epic in depth and breadth? It's time for an mmorpg we few remaining gamers can sink our educated teeth into.
I'm talkiing about a Game of Thrones mmorpg! (If you aren't familiar with this title, feel free to watch the HBO series or better yet, read the novels by George R.R. Martin). Googling the synopsis via Wikipedia will let you in on an amazing, poitically driven world that takes one part fantasy, and four parts 100-years-war, tosses in some Dune, and good old fashioned fantasy legendry, and you have A Game of Thrones (Song of Ice and Fire, etc).
As a quick rant, how do developers loook at a series as in depth and politically rich as A Game of Thrones (George R.R. Martin), and still go on to make an E-Sport game, and then have the plastic (reproductive organ) to call what they have made epic. Madden 2012 is a great football game - it's not epic. That's a word set aside for something fantastic, like The Lord of the Rings novels and movies, or X-Men First Class, or just something complex and world consuming in breadth and depth ( I won't point out the brilliance of Game of Thrones, you either know of it or can look it up).
For some strange reason, in the entire Western hemisphere, there is not one medieval mmorpg that has more than 2 factions, dozens of classes and races per faction, and the kind of warfare that existed in the middle-ages (not unless it's a decade old and swept under a rug by a major company that does football games very well)
I'm tired of dummed down/simplified to meet the needs of a mass population mmorpgs. I enjoy complexity, a living breathing world where instanced pvp does not occur, a world where my enemies are different than I am (why is that too much for developers to deal with??), andfolks that are my enemies that did NOT spawn on the same beach or corn field next to a hill filled with dogs and rats.
I want the worship of gods to mean something, and to give even more edge to the blades that each realm brings to battle. I want to fight for things that can be built and destroyed, castles, towns, walls, towers, cities, ala Shadowbane and Dark Age of Camelot.
I want more than what's on the shelf at Best Buy.
So, instead of plugging for a Dark Age of Camelot 2 again, I will vote for a Game of Thrones mmorpg. No flying reindeer during Christmas at the cash shop, no Tauren paladins (FFS!), no field of light saber duels where everyone looks the same, no silly E-Sports where three servers can play fantasy tag with the same copy paste races and classes. I'm all grown up, and I want an mmoRPG.
Let folks defend mmorpgs that have only a few classes and E-sport pvp. The majority of players apparently want E-Sports, mmoVGs (video game mmo's), not RPG mmo's. Good for them! There is, however, another population. One that is being ignored by the
One would thing that by now, ONE developer would had the $$ and a love for such an mmorpg and get it together. How about a Game of Thrones mmorpg? I see at least three factions in that.
Oh well, dream on. Power to the SW:ToR my sith looks like your jedi during huttball 5 race guildwars copy paste mirrored classes video game E-sport "elf-needs-food" Gauntlet style gaming companies.
I just wish the rest of us had something to play as well, I vote for Game of Thrones.
Comments
seems like a good idea if executed properly....
There actually is a GoT mmorpg coming out, sadly it's browser based. I would love if a real developer made "A Song of Ice and Fire" into a real mmorpg, but sadly it's not going to happen.
EDIT:
IGN recently talked about the upcoming GoT games.
http://pc.ign.com/articles/121/1211960p1.html
"Bigpoint, the developer of Battlestar Galactica Online, is developing a free-to-play Game of Thrones MMORPG. Separately, a social networking game based on Game of Thrones is also in the works, though a developer has yet to be revealed."
Wasn't AoC billed as an "Adult" MMO?
I do agree, Song of Fire and Ice is good enough to deserve something nice, but I think the current MMO industry isn't able to do it justice.
Well, maybe if Turbine did it, LOTRO was pretty true to the lore.
I am not sure where I read this, but I believe George R. Martin has vowed to never allow GOT to be made into a MMORPG. I suspect he cares too much about his consequence/choice driven world to allow it to be turned into the Theme Park Gear/Level Grind that one of the big companies would shoehorn it into.
Sad to say, but we are reaching the point where it no longer matters what IP or era is being simulated. Every major MMORPG is a near-clone with identical business models built on mass churn and short term exploitation for maximum profit. Game of Thrones Online would be no exception.
Read my post. ^
I would really like to see any of the great fantasy epics of our time turned into an mmo, Wheel of time, Game of Thrones or Sword of Truth.
Game of thrones would be great as an mmo, if done right. Each faction struggling to take or hold the Iron Throne (PvP junkies could have a field day with that concept). But what would the factions be? Each great house could almost be its own faction. Then the wildlings and the Night guard.
It would have to be gritty too, in my oppinion. If you slash someone with a sword there has to be some blood on the ground at least, lol.
I think Wheel of Time would be the better choice. It could have a pretty revolutionary magic system.
The problem with GoT is it would be *very* tough to have it within the confines of the world Martin has created. Maybe if it was Westeros only. But you cant really have people running around as red priests or wargs. Would have to mix fighting and politics and craftsmanship as its main skill areas (classes wouldnt work)
Hmm another problem would be, in most MMO's you do a lot of fighting, and that's the main driver for your character development.
In GRRM's series, there is a lot of fighting, but the vast majority of it is diplomatic. Characters spend a lot of time and effort in political maneuvering. The actual fighting that does take place is large scale battles between armies, and doesn't take place all that frequently. The real interesting part is in his character development: finding out that characters that are too rigid get snapped like twigs in the game, that when you think you have someone figured out an entire new dimension to their personality comes to light, that there are two sides to every story and most of the time neither of them is entirely the truth. The fighting and paranormal aspects are just there as catalysts for his characters to interact with. The real engine of the series is just having all of these personalities clashing with each other in very real, plausible, and utterly humanly unpredictable ways.
It's like the tectonic plate theory: there is a whole lot of shifting and sliding around that occurs. Most of it isn't terribly exciting, but every now and then one breaks loose and we end up with something large on the Richter scale.
Unless you could model a really robust political and diplomatic intrigue game, Song of Fire and Ice would make for a pretty poor MMO. "Stand guard on the Wall - again". "Run from assassins - again" - etc.
Now a game I would LOVE to play would be letting Sid Meier get his hands on Game of Thrones. That could be an amazing game.
Yeah but then they made it exactly like WoW and marketed to kids.
No, hell no. Game of Thrones is mainly about intrigue and schemes; not about having an interesting lore and background. I don't think it would translate well into a mmo; maybe decent as a single player game, but even as such the strength from the books wouldn't translate well into a game.
There is absolutely nothing "grown up" about the song of ice and fire.
Its a classic, generic, low magic fantasy setting. Thats all. No more grown up than, for example, Lord of the Rings.
The storywriting itself is interesting, but that will be lost once the game turns into a MMO. What remains is then only the setting, which really doesnt differ that much from other classic fantasy MMOs.
The political intrigues and the lack of archetypical evil and good characters is what makes it more grown up. Most mature people realises that the whole good vs evil is just fairytales and that the real world is in shades of grey.
That is why it is more grown up than LOTR and even more so than TERA and other fantasy games with cutesy childish races and oversized weapons.
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Yep, I read the first book roughly 14 or 15 years ago, and they are excellent. I must get the latest one... The problem is that what makes a tightly-scripted, exciting narrative set in a richy-detailed world of (quite rare) magic, warfare and intricate political intrigue turns to ratshit the moment a game is made about it. We can't all be a member of the Lannister family, or be the king, or his scheming wife, or a leader in the Night's Watch and thus take part in the events we read about. We will hear NPCs talking about these events, but WE won't see them or take part in them - so basically everything we loved about the books is out of our reach.
No, what we'll get is Character Levels, XP to grind and some sort of lame excuse for magic to be commonplace all of a sudden, so that people who want to be a Mage get to throw fireballs around. Instead of an all-but-abandoned outpost at The Wall, we'll see score upon score of would-be warriors running around trying to find a mob to kill to finish the inevitable "Kill 10 wolves" quest that newbies do.
I'd rather they stayed well clear of making a Game of Thrones MMORPG, frankly. I don't want my favourite books and TV series turned into another extremely badly-implemented cash cow of a game.
As I said before - all that will be lost once the setting is turned into a MMO.
You cant have "political intrigues" with a bunch of players.
And oversized weapons will most likely be there, too.
I had such a deja vu feeling after reading this OP. I read simialr stuff before AOC was released... ' A MMO finally for grown ups'.
The setting has nothing to do with anything. All that matters is what the publisher decides the game should be like. The setting is just a translucent skin over the same old crap.
You know what is similar to ASOIAF? EvE. Loads of the same drama. FYI, adaptations to MMOs never turn out well. You would have better luck with a single player adaptation.
Did you guys know BioWare was almost made a Game of Thrones mmorpg before they made the final decision to go with SWTOR?
I wonder how the game would have been different... or if we'd pretty much have a Game of Thrones WoW clone...
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
The sad thing is that it seemed like Funcom thought "grown up" meant "has boobies and blood." Other than those two factors, AoC is pretty much just as infantile as any other MMORPG.
No complex and thought provoking gameplay, no morally ambiguous choices, no complex storylines.
Have we really got to the point where all it means to be "grown up" is that you can see an R rated movie?
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Yeah, why not War and Peace MMORPG? Fully voiced over. In Russian of course. No language barrier can stop a real grown up MMORPG connaisseur. Of course with an optional Learning Ruski in 7 days tutorial included for the not so intellectual people and some bloodski and boobski on the cover.
The single player Game of Thrones is one of the worst games I have ever bought, it was borning and just plan bad.
I want nothing to do with an MMO based on the Game of Thrones after playing that single player game.
Sooner or Later
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...
It would have been just the same exact fantasy themed and Bioware would be paying a different fat man with a white beard for licensing fees.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
You laugh, but the manual to some strategy games that I like to play like Dominions 3 or Europa Universalis probably isn't far off from War and Peace
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Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Dominions 3! Do you have the CBM installed?