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why no wild-west mmorpg?
maji
Member UncommonPosts: 2,091
Wondered why up to now there is no single MMORPG with the topic wild west.
Like, where you could found a town, or a farm or start goldmining or become a desperado or headhunter or something. In some nice scenery where you have horses of different quality as mounts, or covered wagons or carriages.
You'd start your character with a certain amount of points that you can use to improve certain attributes (like accuracy), buy feats (like starting with an extra amount of cash or good relationships) or disadvantages (to gain more points to spend, like one-eyed or alcohol addict or old age or very young age).
Would either be without classes or have as classes merchant, farmer, sherrif, soldier, miner or desperado. Dungeons would exist for the classes, where everyone could enter but a certain class would get major benefits in the end. Like abandoned mines you'd have to clear of desperados and stuff, and if a miner or more are in the group, you could take over the miner in the end (until it collapses some day). Or a farm to take over, or a village inhabited by desperados or whatnot.
Maybe you could also play indians as second faction, where you could play medicine man or hunter or something. Or you add a steampunk theme. Or maybe three factions. Outlaws, Indiands and regular people.
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Comments
That reminds me of a sig I once seen on these forums (back in '06).
You can play a human or an Indian.
i've wanted to see a nice wildwest mmo for such a long time. it would be amazing, playing on a map like the early united states. Open plains where you could make a home or farm or big villages where you could work as a group with your friends. seriously, look at the maps of SWG or another game like that, the planets were giant, you could build a house practically anywhere, and it was so much fun. helll, you could even make the states different zones if you wanted, it wouldnt matter, it would still be a great game
I was wondering the same thing the other day. I'm not much of a wild west fan, but I've nothing against it. It would be fun to play as a 'cowboy' with his loyal steed and epic leather pants and cowboy hat >.< I think it's an awesome idea. Although I'm sure Indians would make for a touchy topic, honestly. But hey, it's just for fun.
At the moment I think that Wild West just don't have the general appeal or being very popular. If this had been the 60's when spaghetti westerns and John Wayne movies was ruling the big screen there would been Wild West MMORPGs.
Maybe this will or can change someday. There just needs to be more comics, movies and popular culture that are going in the direction of Wild West theeme. I love the wild west myself btw.. and wholeheartly support this wish. I
The country is too politically correct. But personally I love the idea. I'd also like an old school mafia mmo.
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Trigun... I would play a Trigun MMO
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A Deadlands MMO would be kinda cool.
I don't think a Wild West mmorpg is really going to work well. There are many limitations that make it difficult to be a good mmorpg.
For instance, let's start with combat. What weapons did they use? Well mostly guns and there wasn't a lot of variation between them. This limits the playstyles.
2nd. Who would you fight? Robbers, native americans, perhaps the north or south if you include the civil war and that's about it. What kind of dungeons? Mostly mines because there were no castles or dragon lairs.
I don't think the time period offers a lot of potential.
It would have to be steampunk, a world where fantasy style magic is being caught up to by technology . The problem is its allready kind of like that in WoW.
There has been no Wild West MMO because the gaming community is too full of... tinhorns and.... pilgrims. Folks don't have enough.... "sand" basically. And you can... take that.... and tell it to anyone.... you like, Pilgrim.
I remember reading about one about a year maybe even longer ago. It was a sandbox game and had an impressively large list of ambitious features but ofcourse it had no finacial backing. It was just someones dream but it got my imagination and hopes going well enough for me to remember now.
I'm not so sure that such an IP would be very hot outside the US.
Frontier 1859, probably. I followed and participated in the forums there for quite awhile, but it just never seemed like any progress was made finding financial backers. The guy behind it had gone as far as he could on his own, and I think it's been at that point for at least four years now, maybe longer. It's really a shame, too, because it was much more than a "cowboys shooting Indians" thing, it was a chance to build an alternate history of the world, almost a roleplaying-sim hybrid, where players got to re-live the experience of settling the west, or of being one of many native peoples.
The game even pitched something called a "conscience inventory," where the actions you took had consequences that basically went on your permanent record; the more trains you robbed, crops you ruined, or even days you went without paying off your debt to the mercantile, the more certain it was that you'd be caught and strung up. Since permadeath was mentioned in early discussions, getting executed would be problematic for people looking to be criminals, though exciting while it lasted. The whole project was very ambitious, and very, very different. That difference, when combined with an untested theme, probably scares the heck out of potential investors.
frontier1859.com/mmorpg/
A wild west MMORPG along the lines of Jonah Hex, or that series that used to be in Heavy Metal that mixed the occult with the old wild west would be very interesting.
Gothic steam punk would be interesting too. Actually, if you started with the steampunk genre as a whole and the general era that it expresses (with obvious differences, of course) early to mid-1800s, you could easily have zones with large industrial / pre-industrial cities and frontier town type zones more like the old west.
That mix would probably be a bit of a niche product, but undoubtedly popular enough to hold a good subscription base.
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wild west the way you describe ,it would have to be a version of mmo real time strategy
I second that. Trigun is steampunk when it is as best
I could also play a MMO based on one of the western based pen and paper RPGs (Or heck, Id play a R.I.F.T.S MMO based in the west also).
But western is kinda somewhat dubios in some cases, I rather not have indians the way there were described in the old movies with the Duke.
Hmm, a MMO based on some old Clint Eastwood movie maybe? Or Lucky luke?
A civil war based PvP game could also be fun.
Trigun MMO would be amazing, even backed by the story from anime and being able to play Plants(no, not those kind of plants, guys),Humans or even hybrids.
There was an mmo like this in development a few years ago and then the news or any info faded on it.
It was called "Priest" and here is what IGN had on it in 2003.
http://pc.ign.com/objects/550/550044.html
personally I would chow down hard on a wild west mmo. yep, thinking about it makes a bit giddy, it should definitely be made. would need some serious land ownership and building technology to make it work tho.
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I'm wondering how people who want 'real world' settings for MMOs would reconcile the concept of resurrections.
I'm not that comfortable with the 'clone' excuse used by SF games, frankly.
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I'm not sure if a wild west MMO would work by itself, like other poster's have mentioned it would be limited by the time period setting. Now if you throw in an IP which allows magic, supernatural etc it would have possibilities. The first IP which came to mind was the Jerusalem man (Jon Shannow)/Bloodstone books from David Gemmell (RIP). the IP would give a type of wild west theme but set in a post-apocalyptic world which allows the use of magic etc.
I believe the only way a Wild West theme mmo would work is if it was the IP: Firefly (Serenity). Because you would have much more as far as technology, crafting, weapons,a politically correct enemy/other faction to play, the possibilities are endless with this ip.
Probably the same way it's done in LotRo: calling it morale instead of health, and intimating that you've been knocked out and/or are retreating from battle instead of dying.
The only people who would care about the lore behind the death system are roleplayers, and they have enough imagination to make up their own explanation regardless of the mechanics.
Incidentally, I was just thinking last night while playing Fallen Earth that it has many elements of what would make a great western mmorpg. Scavenging, crafting, a desolate map that is a frontier in it's own way, and of course the twangy guitar music that evokes Firefly and western movies (for me at least).
Take away the sci-fi tech elements and it basically is a frontier-based game.