If you were given the resources to create a Harry Potter MMO....

funcon

How would you go about it? I mean if you were given 250 million and a development team and you were the head chief. I'd make a gigantic virtual reality sandbox that encompasses a modern European town and all of Harry Potter's wizarding world.

You would need oculus Rift to play it and the game engine would have the most realistic looking graphics on the market.

 

You would start off as a teenage muggle and try and find your way to become a witch/wizard.  If you're not interested in the fantasy part of the game, you could stay in the modern world and it would be like the game "Second Life" where you can go to parties, clubs, have your own store, create and build your own things and do whatever you want. If you're into fantasy, magic, dragons, monsters, werewolves, then you would find your way to Hogwarts.

 

Once you arrive at Hogwarts by train, the first time you are there, you would get sorted by the sorting hat into one of the four factions.  There is so much more I can write but it would take to long and I know some of you(me included) hate reading long ass posts. But there would definitely be pvp and pve.

 

So how would you go about making a Harry Potter MMO?

TheQuietGamer

I would probably advise that the films and books are over and the investors had missed the boat; go invest the money in something else.  

Horusra

Lego Potter...books and movies were for kids so the game should be too.

nariusseldon

I will sell the rights, cash in, and do something I actually like instead of making a Harry Potter MMO.

 

sunandshadow

Originally posted by Horusra
Lego Potter...books and movies were for kids so the game should be too.

The series aimed for an older audience as it went along - by the end it's not suitable for people under 16. (IMHO)

sunandshadow

I'd make the game be a sequel to the books, set maybe 20 years after the books end.  Then you could have potter himself as the dada professor, or something like that.  Revive all the other professors who got killed over the course of the series, rebuild hogwarts, etc.  Permanently ongoing triwizard championship, with bauxbatons and durmstrang as playable areas with their own dungeons.  A low-level major quest chain to get an owl, another to get a battle familiar (kneazel, snake, etc.) a mid-level quest chain to get an animagus form, a high-level quest chain to get a mount (dragon, thestral, hippogriff, etc.)  Basically, screw accuracy, rearrange all the cool elements to make the best game.

Adamantine

Originally posted by Horusra
Lego Potter...books and movies were for kids so the game should be too.

Movies sure, books not so much.

First two books are awesome and are for all ages.

But after that - meh.

Gyrus

I wouldn't.  I would advise the client against it and take $250 million (or a large part of that) as my 'consultants fee' ;-)

Why?

1/ Wizard 101 by KingsIsle is already a great MMO aimed at exactly the same demographic.  A Harry Potter MMO would have to take customers from that MMO and it would have to be better to retain them.  KingsIsle has a very big head start here. 

2/ Harry Potter is great if you ARE Harry Potter... but not if you are only a side kick or a minor character reduced to following Harry around.  Or worse still - one of the other students who is just background fodder.  You might think that there are still good things to do?  Wizard Chess? Quidditch?  All true - and there are already single player games that do this - and single player games are far easier to manage because...

3/ Stuff happens in Harry Potter that simply would not work in MMOs.  Even simple stuff.  Moving stair cases?  Forum Meltdown! "I want to go to my common room and the stair case moved!  This is BS devs!"  Not to mention the hard stuff like Hermoine time travelling... yeah easy in a movie and impossible in an MMO.  LotRO had trouble with the Fellowship following Bilbo (you can jump ahead and follow Bilbo through Moria then go back to Rivendell to find he just left???)  Imagine the trouble with time travel?

So no.  Just don't.  The technology just isn't there to do any sort of a good job on this.

Asariasha

I would make an unfinished WoW clone for roundabout 75kk, throw in another 75kk for marketing and use the remaining 100kk to buy a new shiny Yacht, a nice villa, a sports car and maybe spend a trip to the Maledives for the developers involved.

If there's still money left, use it as backup for future projects. xD

Zadawn

I would flee never to return.

hallucigenocide

i'm bored to death with fantasy.. but if someone payed that i'd give it my best shot.. i'd try to poach the best(imo) in the business and let them run wild

karbonista

Originally posted by Zadawn
I would flee never to return.

I was going to go with "Embezzle it and move to the Caymans".

eye_m

booze and dancing girls - 200 million

small team of meaningless staff  to sit in the front offices and look busy - 10 million

more booze and dancing girls - 38 million

money stashed in a sock and hidden from angry investors or police - 2 million

 

I watched all the HP movies and they were fine enough, but I would rake my eyes out with a rusty fork before I would ever play a HP MMO

Dibdabs

If I was given the resources to create a Harry Potter MMO... I'd make either a Firefly MMO or a Wild Cards MMO.

Betaguy

Originally posted by funcon

How would you go about it? I mean if you were given 250 million and a development team and you were the head chief. I'd make a gigantic virtual reality sandbox that encompasses a modern European town and all of Harry Potter's wizarding world.

You would need oculus Rift to play it and the game engine would have the most realistic looking graphics on the market.

 

You would start off as a teenage muggle and try and find your way to become a witch/wizard.  If you're not interested in the fantasy part of the game, you could stay in the modern world and it would be like the game "Second Life" where you can go to parties, clubs, have your own store, create and build your own things and do whatever you want. If you're into fantasy, magic, dragons, monsters, werewolves, then you would find your way to Hogwarts.

 

Once you arrive at Hogwarts by train, the first time you are there, you would get sorted by the sorting hat into one of the four factions.  There is so much more I can write but it would take to long and I know some of you(me included) hate reading long ass posts. But there would definitely be pvp and pve.

 

So how would you go about making a Harry Potter MMO?

I wouldn't play because of the Oculus Rift bit... tried it didn't like it, too gimickey for my liking.

Ardnut

tbh why bother? the world dont need one, all the kids who watched the movies and read the books would be too old to enjoy a kids game by the time it was actualy made and released.

would be a waste of money that could be spent on better things like booze, drugs (the legal kind)  and members of the opposite sex

 

besides which there are loads of better ip's out there that would make better mmo's than films that put me to sleep faster than anesthetics

iixviiiix

Harry Potter don't have enough material to make MMORPG.

You can't make the magic school grow bigger by add something don't come from the books.

2 last volumes introduce some new places but not enough.

So in this case , make MMO is extremely bad idea.

 

IMO Co-op magic FPS/TPS seem better idea than MMOs

Adamantine

Originally posted by iixviiiix

Harry Potter don't have enough material to make MMORPG.

I hope you're joking.