Many in the Lotro forums, including myself, wrote that a Potter mmo from turbine was very likely after the WB buy.
But for a reason the OP is too 'polite' to mention. Lotro development has seen a huge a drop after moria and its hard for us to believe that it would take the team that did SoA and MoM a whole year to make mirkwood: 1 zone and the skirmish system that uses old game assets. And from last xmass till now we only had 1 book that took us back to the old zones. I don't see how 5 developers could not make that update in 2 weeks. And its all turbine did for lotro in 5 months! (unless you call a spring festival maze content. That couldnt take more than a couple weeks to do either)
So only thing that can explain this is they have been working on something else since after moria came out xmass 2008. The WB buy makes Potter to be the most likely thing.
Sad for lotro really, and the comunity. The chances of seeing mordor with, what feels like a 5 man dev team working on the game, are getting slimmer.
As for Potter mmo, who cares? Im not 12yo and neither is anyone in my active 50+ ppl kin in lotro
One thing you might not be looking here is DDO is now the money machine for Turbine, profits are up 500% subs have doubled since the new micro-transactions and options for free play have gone in over there and thats right from turbines home page, plus allot of the orignal dev team is now on the super secret project, which has been going on for a while, I expect to see lotro follow the same mold as DDO in about 2 years, even though I know some powers at turbine said it won't DDO is making to much money for them not to, I have been part of Lotro since alpha testing and I have seen it grow. And if there is going to be a Harry Potter MMO, Turbine should do a great job, as long as WB leaves them alone...
A little off topic but all you Harry Potter fans should be aware that a Harry Potter section at Universal Studios in Florida is opening June 18. Do a search and you will see what I mean. I was there about a month ago and from the outside it looks impressive!
things to do after school...ohh i don't know FIGHT IN THE WAR... after hogwarts which i say should take roughly a week or so of HARDCORE gaming...(rushing through all the lessons and school related events..including the wizard cup.) then after you leave school you fine tune your skills
EX.gathering mats for potions and talking with other masters to expand your skills and once a skill gets to a certain level you can do a focus path...This will limit other skills from getting high but they will be able to do more with the focused skills.
factions would be good and evil as well as a neutral faction. similar to the SWG mechanic.
This allows for open ended world PvP. world objectives would be set around towns and this can push the battle field in different directions while destruction of real world enviroments would be great. this is persistant and the world would change depending on who wins a city/town. (more like WW2 online )
spell effects would have to be really nice to add to the game.
other things could include broom races as well as quidditch (this would turn into wow areas like Justin said)
as well as instanced BGs but ones where its about advancing the war effort (this would not be done like WAR) like trying to get different races on your side. so the evil faction would be trying to great the giants (just an example from the book) to join their cause, while the good side is trying as well. This alone gives you options for PvE (quests and instances to help the race) as well as battle the other side (random battle grounds).
simple things like this should be released every month or so. this creates content and awards the side who gets the race like costumes and collectibles and other such fluff ...of course balance issues would happen but it happens in all games...these are my thoughts on the matter so far.
I see alot of people pointing out flaws and problems with the Harry Potter MMO suggestions and points...as if that is hard to do...
It's very easy to complain, but it takes some balls and intelligence to solve those problems.
The concept of daily quests, tasks, or problems is EXACTLY what a classroom setting is. Learning a spell, making a potion, or taming/battling animals is what we already do in most mmos... twist it into something for Harry Potter.
How about money/Gold... while I doubt the teachers would give money to students, they were very quick to give out points to each house. It would take some modification to the story, but suddenly you could have points being the currency between houses. Not something I personally like, but it works a little bit better than teachers giving money to students
Years, Levels. DDO did something where they took 20 levels and spread them out a bit more. Probably not that difficult to do something similar with the years.
Quidditch could definately be a form of PvP. Just cause people didn't use spells during a match in the books, doesn't mean they can't.
AND... this is just talking about the School... we could very well see a "Harry Potter Universe" MMO instead. Perhaps training/tutorial IS Hogwarts. Heck... we have multiple schools inside the universe, you could potentially have multiple training/starting areas.
I would definately want more "Harry potter Universe", but I also realize that it would need to be called something different and try to remove "Harry Potter" from the point of the game.
Sure, he was THE main character since he was a baby, but there definately other great people out there in that world.
My main concern, is that it is very easy to alienate fans of the series from the MMO. Particularly "Purists"...
The author of the article never delved into the most important question which is; what would the typical day to day gameplay consist of?
You sit down at your computer and log into the game, ok, then what is it you actually do? I can't imagine for a second that people would find it entertaining to attend classes for more than a few minutes at a time. So what else is there? Exploring Hogwarts could be fun but unless they made the school the size of an entire game world in itself you'd run out of things to explore before very long.
The devs would have to add other areas for people to explore/adventure in and pretty quickly I think they would have to depart from the existing material in the IP.
And there would have to be lots of combat. I'm afraid there's just no getting around that. What fun would it be to learn new spells if you never had occassion to use those spells?
And then that leads into the sticky question that Battleaxe touched on regarding just exactly how the magic system would work. If you learned the spell Petrificus Totalis to pararlyse people/mobs would you be able to use it repeatedly as quickly and as much as you like? No, that would trivilize any content. There would have to be some limitations which were never worked out by Rowling because she didn't have to. She could just ignore inconvenient questions like that because she was writing for children who tend to overlook that sort of thing.
In fact, other than the names and effects of some spells, the entire magic system would have to be invented by the game developers and inevitably it would end up feeling considerably different than what exists in the IP because in the IP the magic system is not clearly explained in any detail it's just whatever happened to work for that particular part of the story.
Isn't it obvious? There's the sprawling Forbidden Forest, the dragon habitats in Romania, the other two schools mentioned in the Goblet of Fire, not to mention places like Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley, the Ministry of Magic, the list goes on.
As for the spell system, there absolutely is a mechanic built in for mana. Hadn't you ever noticed that after casting some huge spell, like the Patronus spamming in the third book, Harry ends up passing out? That's called spell fatigue, it saps your strength. Of course, combat doesn't have to be the only form of PvP. I'm thinking randomly generated platformer puzzles and one student from each house, competing to be the first to solve the puzzle with the winner earning points for their house. House points will affect shop prices for the students in addition to making unique repeatable quests and items available, thus putting a huge focus on competition between houses. Of course, there's also the wizarding duels, which could be other players, computer opponents, or even wizards from the other schools of magic across the globe. You also fail to realize that the majority of spells made for the IP haven't even made it into the books, but the standalone games have created dozens of spells that show up from game to game over and over again. Flipendo, anyone?
Lastly, there's the Room of Requirement, which could be used to have players jump into the role of harry at any point across the story as a form of questing. Alternately, it could be used to run raid-style PvP or simply to practice the minigames. The possibilities are endless.
I didn't read the whole article but it def has everything it needs to be a successfull MMO.. the few things that I don't know if the are mentioned is that.. it would appeal more to casual gamers since HP appealed to families.. stay at home moms, kids, ect.. of course I liked the books too but my point is.. 1) it would have to be fairly easy 2) it would have to be free.. maybe with microtransations (which i hate) in order for it be a success.. but easily could be a success as the article pointed out.
Isn't it obvious? There's the sprawling Forbidden Forest, the dragon habitats in Romania, the other two schools mentioned in the Goblet of Fire, not to mention places like Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley, the Ministry of Magic, the list goes on.
Lastly, there's the Room of Requirement, which could be used to have players jump into the role of harry at any point across the story as a form of questing. Alternately, it could be used to run raid-style PvP or simply to practice the minigames. The possibilities are endless.
If there is no leveling but rather learning in the classroom, how would this help? Bonus points? Finding a lost magical artifact of the last dead student? Halls without walls learning?
Personally I despise the idea in general. That said, I wouldn't ever play it but it won't affect me whether it comes out or not. It's just another place that people can go spend more money on an already overspent franchise, all for the sake of a title (not saying it would be good or bad...how would I know?)
I will say this, I guess I am too old. I read the books and well not much their. My oldest child who is 21 loves harry potter, we have not missed a book or movie for her.
However I don't fit the demographic to play a harry potter mmo.
I will give you reasons why harry potter mmo will not work.
First if tubine does make it, I am not interested, they already screwed up the vision of middle earth for me with their lore breaking stuff, and total lazy code and design of a game.
Second you got to be carefull with it, if you set it durring the timeline of the books then your already limited with the things that you can and can not do, a fatal mistake that most IP's make
Third, its all teen ager stuff, so its already off limits for me, if i wanted that kind of interaction there is always wow to go play.
Sorry Harry Potter just dont cut it for me. I need something with blood and gore not some silly stupifie spell to make somebody pass out.
One thing you might not be looking here is DDO is now the money machine for Turbine, profits are up 500% subs have doubled since the new micro-transactions and options for free play have gone in over there and thats right from turbines home page, plus allot of the orignal dev team is now on the super secret project, which has been going on for a while, I expect to see lotro follow the same mold as DDO in about 2 years, even though I know some powers at turbine said it won't DDO is making to much money for them not to, I have been part of Lotro since alpha testing and I have seen it grow. And if there is going to be a Harry Potter MMO, Turbine should do a great job, as long as WB leaves them alone...
500% increase in revenues for DDO means little in absolute numbers. it's the increase from when almost no-one subscribed to it. So for example if they have 1mil ppl playing DDO and 5% of them spend say $10/month on the cash shop that is ALOT less than 200k ppl playing lotro, 100% of them paying $15/month (minus lifers but they paid a bundle of cash upfront, i doubt any1 in DDO paid $200+box+xpacs on it).
They don't release numbers so we can only go by conjecture but I am certain that LOTRO as a AAA sub based game makes an order of magnitude more money than DDO that went from bankrupt to getting in some revenue.
However the thing that makes me worry about Lotro, and the argument of my post, is that unlike other MMOs it has a specific story that we (the players) want to see through. There HAS to be rohan and gondor and mordor etc.
So the company sending most of the devs to a mmo for 12yos (floon, a lead designer just said today that he doesnt work for lotro anymore) is sad news for lotro.
My experience here is limited but has ANY mmo expanded as much as Lotro needs to expand after the company made a new mmo? Most that I know (even big ones like AoC) were left with a handfull of devs taking years to push out minor xpacs.
I will say this, I guess I am too old. I read the books and well not much their. My oldest child who is 21 loves harry potter, we have not missed a book or movie for her.
However I don't fit the demographic to play a harry potter mmo.
I will give you reasons why harry potter mmo will not work.
First if tubine does make it, I am not interested, they already screwed up the vision of middle earth for me with their lore breaking stuff, and total lazy code and design of a game.
Second you got to be carefull with it, if you set it durring the timeline of the books then your already limited with the things that you can and can not do, a fatal mistake that most IP's make
Third, its all teen ager stuff, so its already off limits for me, if i wanted that kind of interaction there is always wow to go play.
Sorry Harry Potter just dont cut it for me. I need something with blood and gore not some silly stupifie spell to make somebody pass out.
Well, you have made a nice list of why a Harry Potter game wouldn't work for you personally, but just because you aren't part of the demographic doesn't mean the game would not be successful. Your whole post is nothing but "I don't like, I don't want, I'm not interested..." and none of it has anything to do with the validity and marketability of the project as a whole.
Not to say you aren't entitled to your opinion, I don't care for Harry Potter myself, but I can look around at the MMO genre as a whole and see where a game aimed at this demographic could be a success. I don't play WoW, or Free Realms, or Runescape, or Wizard 101 for many of the same reasons that you present, but that doesn't stop those games from being huge successes. I'm afraid that a lot of us more 'mature' gamers are going to have to come to the realization that the current MMO market has very little interest in what 'we' want.
With the success of farmville and other micro-transaction based billion dollar successes, I am sure WB is truly wanting to get it's hands on a piece of that market.
Now that Turbine has done DDO they have some experience in such matters. Also it doesn't hurt to have the LotRO in with the rest of the Lord of the Rings games.movies.
There have been Harry Potter + Turbine rumors for years now and still no news, I would say that shows it is not the goal here or there would be mention of it by now.
After thinking on this a bit I could see how you could turn Harry Potter into an mmo and Hogwarts would definitely be one of the most exciting parts. With that being said I seriously doubt you could make a GOOD mmo off Harry Potter. It has tons of options but also tons of limitations.
Either way I'm no psychic and god knows I never expected WoW to be more then a random title and look at it now...
You know the internet is full of fad haters. I think the casual gamer would be much more apt to show interest in this type of game. Sure the first few novels were labeled Young Adult..but in fact the last two books were quite adult. But that is an argument for another day. Hogwarts Online was rumored a few years ago. Nothing came of it.
The appeal is going to be far different than Wizard 101. That is just a short sighted argument. The Hobbit was originally geared towards children...but no one commits the logical fallacy of saying LOTRO online has been done because WoW uses swords. It's silly.
Harry Potter would have to be something more than Hogwarts though. JK has a massive world that she has created with plenty of characters to explore :Dark wizards, vampires, werewolves and giants....and the "good" guys: elves, wizards, centaurs and such. There are plenty of jobs in the book such as Dark Wizard hunters. There is much to explore here if you open your mind.
Comments
About a year ago, there was an article, called "Is Trubine for sale" guess it was.
Turbine has been working on a super secret project, this company can keep some tight lips, because thats all we know, could it be Harry ?
If done right I could see a Potter mmo being fun, only time will tell..:)
One thing you might not be looking here is DDO is now the money machine for Turbine, profits are up 500% subs have doubled since the new micro-transactions and options for free play have gone in over there and thats right from turbines home page, plus allot of the orignal dev team is now on the super secret project, which has been going on for a while, I expect to see lotro follow the same mold as DDO in about 2 years, even though I know some powers at turbine said it won't DDO is making to much money for them not to, I have been part of Lotro since alpha testing and I have seen it grow. And if there is going to be a Harry Potter MMO, Turbine should do a great job, as long as WB leaves them alone...
A little off topic but all you Harry Potter fans should be aware that a Harry Potter section at Universal Studios in Florida is opening June 18. Do a search and you will see what I mean. I was there about a month ago and from the outside it looks impressive!
things to do after school...ohh i don't know FIGHT IN THE WAR... after hogwarts which i say should take roughly a week or so of HARDCORE gaming...(rushing through all the lessons and school related events..including the wizard cup.) then after you leave school you fine tune your skills
EX.gathering mats for potions and talking with other masters to expand your skills and once a skill gets to a certain level you can do a focus path...This will limit other skills from getting high but they will be able to do more with the focused skills.
factions would be good and evil as well as a neutral faction. similar to the SWG mechanic.
This allows for open ended world PvP. world objectives would be set around towns and this can push the battle field in different directions while destruction of real world enviroments would be great. this is persistant and the world would change depending on who wins a city/town. (more like WW2 online )
spell effects would have to be really nice to add to the game.
other things could include broom races as well as quidditch (this would turn into wow areas like Justin said)
as well as instanced BGs but ones where its about advancing the war effort (this would not be done like WAR) like trying to get different races on your side. so the evil faction would be trying to great the giants (just an example from the book) to join their cause, while the good side is trying as well. This alone gives you options for PvE (quests and instances to help the race) as well as battle the other side (random battle grounds).
simple things like this should be released every month or so. this creates content and awards the side who gets the race like costumes and collectibles and other such fluff ...of course balance issues would happen but it happens in all games...these are my thoughts on the matter so far.
I see alot of people pointing out flaws and problems with the Harry Potter MMO suggestions and points...as if that is hard to do...
It's very easy to complain, but it takes some balls and intelligence to solve those problems.
The concept of daily quests, tasks, or problems is EXACTLY what a classroom setting is. Learning a spell, making a potion, or taming/battling animals is what we already do in most mmos... twist it into something for Harry Potter.
How about money/Gold... while I doubt the teachers would give money to students, they were very quick to give out points to each house. It would take some modification to the story, but suddenly you could have points being the currency between houses. Not something I personally like, but it works a little bit better than teachers giving money to students
Years, Levels. DDO did something where they took 20 levels and spread them out a bit more. Probably not that difficult to do something similar with the years.
Quidditch could definately be a form of PvP. Just cause people didn't use spells during a match in the books, doesn't mean they can't.
AND... this is just talking about the School... we could very well see a "Harry Potter Universe" MMO instead. Perhaps training/tutorial IS Hogwarts. Heck... we have multiple schools inside the universe, you could potentially have multiple training/starting areas.
I would definately want more "Harry potter Universe", but I also realize that it would need to be called something different and try to remove "Harry Potter" from the point of the game.
Sure, he was THE main character since he was a baby, but there definately other great people out there in that world.
My main concern, is that it is very easy to alienate fans of the series from the MMO. Particularly "Purists"...
Isn't it obvious? There's the sprawling Forbidden Forest, the dragon habitats in Romania, the other two schools mentioned in the Goblet of Fire, not to mention places like Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley, the Ministry of Magic, the list goes on.
As for the spell system, there absolutely is a mechanic built in for mana. Hadn't you ever noticed that after casting some huge spell, like the Patronus spamming in the third book, Harry ends up passing out? That's called spell fatigue, it saps your strength. Of course, combat doesn't have to be the only form of PvP. I'm thinking randomly generated platformer puzzles and one student from each house, competing to be the first to solve the puzzle with the winner earning points for their house. House points will affect shop prices for the students in addition to making unique repeatable quests and items available, thus putting a huge focus on competition between houses. Of course, there's also the wizarding duels, which could be other players, computer opponents, or even wizards from the other schools of magic across the globe. You also fail to realize that the majority of spells made for the IP haven't even made it into the books, but the standalone games have created dozens of spells that show up from game to game over and over again. Flipendo, anyone?
Lastly, there's the Room of Requirement, which could be used to have players jump into the role of harry at any point across the story as a form of questing. Alternately, it could be used to run raid-style PvP or simply to practice the minigames. The possibilities are endless.
I didn't read the whole article but it def has everything it needs to be a successfull MMO.. the few things that I don't know if the are mentioned is that.. it would appeal more to casual gamers since HP appealed to families.. stay at home moms, kids, ect.. of course I liked the books too but my point is.. 1) it would have to be fairly easy 2) it would have to be free.. maybe with microtransations (which i hate) in order for it be a success.. but easily could be a success as the article pointed out.
If there is no leveling but rather learning in the classroom, how would this help? Bonus points? Finding a lost magical artifact of the last dead student? Halls without walls learning?
Personally I despise the idea in general. That said, I wouldn't ever play it but it won't affect me whether it comes out or not. It's just another place that people can go spend more money on an already overspent franchise, all for the sake of a title (not saying it would be good or bad...how would I know?)
I will say this, I guess I am too old. I read the books and well not much their. My oldest child who is 21 loves harry potter, we have not missed a book or movie for her.
However I don't fit the demographic to play a harry potter mmo.
I will give you reasons why harry potter mmo will not work.
First if tubine does make it, I am not interested, they already screwed up the vision of middle earth for me with their lore breaking stuff, and total lazy code and design of a game.
Second you got to be carefull with it, if you set it durring the timeline of the books then your already limited with the things that you can and can not do, a fatal mistake that most IP's make
Third, its all teen ager stuff, so its already off limits for me, if i wanted that kind of interaction there is always wow to go play.
Sorry Harry Potter just dont cut it for me. I need something with blood and gore not some silly stupifie spell to make somebody pass out.
500% increase in revenues for DDO means little in absolute numbers. it's the increase from when almost no-one subscribed to it. So for example if they have 1mil ppl playing DDO and 5% of them spend say $10/month on the cash shop that is ALOT less than 200k ppl playing lotro, 100% of them paying $15/month (minus lifers but they paid a bundle of cash upfront, i doubt any1 in DDO paid $200+box+xpacs on it).
They don't release numbers so we can only go by conjecture but I am certain that LOTRO as a AAA sub based game makes an order of magnitude more money than DDO that went from bankrupt to getting in some revenue.
However the thing that makes me worry about Lotro, and the argument of my post, is that unlike other MMOs it has a specific story that we (the players) want to see through. There HAS to be rohan and gondor and mordor etc.
So the company sending most of the devs to a mmo for 12yos (floon, a lead designer just said today that he doesnt work for lotro anymore) is sad news for lotro.
My experience here is limited but has ANY mmo expanded as much as Lotro needs to expand after the company made a new mmo? Most that I know (even big ones like AoC) were left with a handfull of devs taking years to push out minor xpacs.
A harry potter MMO could be loads of fun. I support this idea.
Well, you have made a nice list of why a Harry Potter game wouldn't work for you personally, but just because you aren't part of the demographic doesn't mean the game would not be successful. Your whole post is nothing but "I don't like, I don't want, I'm not interested..." and none of it has anything to do with the validity and marketability of the project as a whole.
Not to say you aren't entitled to your opinion, I don't care for Harry Potter myself, but I can look around at the MMO genre as a whole and see where a game aimed at this demographic could be a success. I don't play WoW, or Free Realms, or Runescape, or Wizard 101 for many of the same reasons that you present, but that doesn't stop those games from being huge successes. I'm afraid that a lot of us more 'mature' gamers are going to have to come to the realization that the current MMO market has very little interest in what 'we' want.
Sometimes everything is exactly as it seems.
With the success of farmville and other micro-transaction based billion dollar successes, I am sure WB is truly wanting to get it's hands on a piece of that market.
Now that Turbine has done DDO they have some experience in such matters. Also it doesn't hurt to have the LotRO in with the rest of the Lord of the Rings games.movies.
There have been Harry Potter + Turbine rumors for years now and still no news, I would say that shows it is not the goal here or there would be mention of it by now.
18 months? An IP that practically writes itself into an MMO? This project has "Cryptic" written all over it.
Just a joke! *dodges tomato* I enjoyed the column even though I don't give a rip about Potter.
I do like the OP's ideas! I'd join Hogwarts and become a wizard-course I'm already a witch in RL. hehe.
Shake it, Hermione!
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. - Marie Curie
really hate reading your articles.
After thinking on this a bit I could see how you could turn Harry Potter into an mmo and Hogwarts would definitely be one of the most exciting parts. With that being said I seriously doubt you could make a GOOD mmo off Harry Potter. It has tons of options but also tons of limitations.
Either way I'm no psychic and god knows I never expected WoW to be more then a random title and look at it now...
Harry potter as MMO....Good idea get rid of the 10-16 year olds out of the good mmos and maybe the trade channels will actualy be empty
I hear lots of people say that this would be a game aimed at younger audiences.
But you'd be suprised how many adults enjoy Harry Potter as well......at least in a lot of the areas around me, that is.
I could see this working, and could possibly give it a look myself.
OK..Here it goes again..
There already is a Potter MMO..It's called Wizard101
Adults who enjoy Harry Potter.... thats a shame when there is literally 100's of masterfully written sci - fi and fantasy books out there.
I wouldnt play it.. Harry Potter is a kids book. And if you an adult reading harry potter, you should REALLY expand your horizons .. seriously.
But then again, "If you build it, they will come" I mean, look at Star Trek online..
I would much rather see a "Harry Potter" mmo than a "Twilight" mmo...
.
You know the internet is full of fad haters. I think the casual gamer would be much more apt to show interest in this type of game. Sure the first few novels were labeled Young Adult..but in fact the last two books were quite adult. But that is an argument for another day. Hogwarts Online was rumored a few years ago. Nothing came of it.
The appeal is going to be far different than Wizard 101. That is just a short sighted argument. The Hobbit was originally geared towards children...but no one commits the logical fallacy of saying LOTRO online has been done because WoW uses swords. It's silly.
Harry Potter would have to be something more than Hogwarts though. JK has a massive world that she has created with plenty of characters to explore :Dark wizards, vampires, werewolves and giants....and the "good" guys: elves, wizards, centaurs and such. There are plenty of jobs in the book such as Dark Wizard hunters. There is much to explore here if you open your mind.