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AD&D 2nd Edition MMO - how hard is it?
Galadourn
Member RarePosts: 1,813
I've always been wondering why on earth no game company has yet capitalized on the vast resources of the AD&D 2nd edition game to make a MMO.
2nd edition had everything; classes diversity, character customization options, gameplay diversity for levels 1-9 and 9+ (lord status) - would make great "endgame", and a HUGE amount of adventure modules and other add-ons that could provide a lot of AA advancement and gameplay variety.
Plus, it has some of the most iconic fantasy worlds to base that game on - Dragonlance, Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms.
It's kind of a puzzle why developers have ignored the existing resources and tried to reinvent the wheel - with no success most of the time.
Comments
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
Straight-from-the-book D&D mechanics (of any edition) are clunky and imbalanced when put in an MMO. Around a table, the DM is vital to keeping everyone engaged. In a single-player CRPG, it doesn't matter if one hero stands out or another has erratic utility. But an MMO demands a lot of your mechanics.
Reason #1. Wizards of the Coast currently owns all rights to AD&D 2nd Edition. No one really wants to pay for that IP.
Reason #2: The entire Spells/day concept would need a complete overhaul, otherwise only melee classes would ever level up. As far as a MMORPG goes (constant fights, maybe 100+ fights in a game day), keeping the AD&D systems verbatim would require massive changes to how we think of an MMORPG. Even in WotC approved implementations, the developers have chosen to ditch the spell system in favor of 3rd or 4th edition rules.
Reason #3. Some of the wonderful adventuring properties have already been sold and made into MMORPGs (Neverwinter). WotC is unlikely to sell (or perhaps legally prevented from selling -- exclusivity rights?) parts of their IP to another developer.
Reason #4. As far as WotC is concerned, AD&D 2nd edition is moving backwards. They want to push newer products.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
OR, MMOs (of almost all kinds) have failed when trying to emulate the RPG aspect in their gameplay? I mean there are two ways of looking at it, right?
If combat and PvP is everything, then what we need is an action-MMO game not an RPG one.
To give an example, I still remember my Paladin in vanilla-WoW being a DPS (yes, DPS) in our raids. Was I top? No. Did it matter? No. Perhaps my guildw as kind enough to allow it but to me, trying to play something "not intended by the game's rules" but which I liked was very satisfying. So I'm sure there are ways to soften the imbalances of the mechanics in the right MMO setting. (and with the right MMO design)
Is one class too powerful in combat? Maybe it has some hefty hindrances in other gameplay aspects. One thing is certain, AD&D 2nd edition was catering to the RPG in character development, not strict number crunching.
#1 - 2nd Edition was very popular at its time. I'm sure it has a following that would support a healthy playerbase.
#2 - The spell system in 2nd Edition was one of the most monumental game designs ever! Being a mage gave one the option to play an entirely different game, and I;m not talking about the combat spells which are the same pretty much in every game, but about all the utility spells. The gameplay option would be amazing
#3 - I'd wish Neverwinter felt like an MMO. It's fun for a few session but its really just an arcade game.
#4 - they have every right to do as they please, but i don't think a computer MMO would affect book sales.
2nd edition class balance was horribly skewed.
3rd edition tried and failed again.
D&D rules have always been murky and haphazard. Second edition was probably the most interesting version, to me. But not a good idea to directly port them to an online computer situation.
Personally I'd prefer a skill points situation where you could improve yourself in any field. Be mediocre at a lot of things, real good at a couple, or great at one.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
There's a fuzziness to the tapletop experience - things change on the fly, arbitrary rules are created for a situation, the entire plan of a campaign can change direction in ways neither players nor DM expected with a single choice, conversation or die roll. The best a computer can do is create a broad web of simulations and mechanics that allow a player the maximum freedom to persue whatever objectives cross their mind. And once you get into trying to create that sort of world, the complexity of the project makes the original book mechanics seem like almost an afterthought.
yes but what has the RPG part got to do with it? you;re still talking game-mechanics.
RPG is about, well, role playing (obviously) and character advancement. And while you cant have roleplaying rules, you can have character advancement without having to worry about class balance or game mechanics.
SWTOR has a story for each class, and that's one of the few good things this game has. You could have the fighter's story, the wizard's story etc, and couple that with the unique abilities they get when it comes to game mechanics.
Granted, you can't port EVERY rule into an MMO because MMOs can't improvise on the fly, but a good 80% or so of the character advancement and customization could be used.
I have a fond memory of pc games with 2nd edition rules, eye of the beholder, baldur's gate, Icewind Dale, etc, would be great to see a game with these rules, especially to prove to WotC subsequent edits, the "theirs ", after procure TSR, are junk, i never liked 3rd or 4th edition, and still continued playing 2nd edition with my friends.
New is not always better, and that WotC is an example, too many changes, WotC bought TSR, Hasbro bought WotC, and the final product is a doll's toymaker designing card games and RPGs rules, epic shit.
We always will dream a game with the graphics of Skyrim, set in Forgotten Realms (circa 1358), with rules of ad&d 2nd edition,
Galadourn you're not alone, pal
I would actually prefer more stylized graphics for an AD&D game, it's part of the fairytale-ish feeling.
And although FR is nice, my fondest memories were from our Dragonlance campaign, hehe.
I grew up playing AD&D 2nd edition and have a lot fond memories of it.
An mmorpg of it cannot do it any justice.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
I think you've lost me. To me, D&D is a set of generic mechanics that you then apply to a world. It has no value (to me) as an IP on its own.
It's hard. You need a GM to oversee the game. A computer just can't do it justice.
Anyway, I prefer GURPS, much more flexible in design.
^^ +100! Speak it friend! They should have made a Greyhawk Game with that wonderful continent map.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
First Edition was the best one, in the opinion of myself and my RPG friends. We didn't bother with the "X spells a day" feature though because some game sessions lasted 4 or 5 hours and a 'game day' didn't pass. This meant the casters were sort of sidelined whilst the fighter types could hog all the fun. There were quite a few Mana Point systems around (we even devised our own) and we used those. Other than the spell system we always used 1st Edition.
Everything. At lvl 1, Fighters only have an "I hit" ability and Wizards can do some nifty stuff, but not a lot of it per day. At lvl 15, Fighters have only gotten the "I hit harder" ability, while Wizards can travel between dimensions, turn invisible, fly, turn into a tentacle monster and do all kinds of other broken things almost as much as they want, because they've got a million spell slots per day.
In 3.5, WotC "fixed" melee characters by introducing the "totally not a Fighter replacement" classes like Warblade, but they screwed up again by attaching wuxia lore to them. In 4e, they tried turning D&D into an MMO with pen and papers, but apparently even that edition is pretty unbalanced.
D&D is a decent PnP system, but it's horribly broken without a DM. Rewriting it to be at least somewhat balanced requires so much effort devs are better off making their own system IMO and just using the lore like Neverwinter does. Not that Neverwinter's character development system is any good.
Even the single player games based on 2nd demonstrated how tricky it can be to make a fun game while sticking to those rules. Bioware immediately started looking at their own system after baldur's gate.
You can't say "but those are mechanics" and still suggest it is a better system. If not the mechanics then what made it better? If you are looking at the RPG elements of 2nd edition then that can be done with any system.
I personally would love to see some more Darksun in my time. . and MMO would be fantastic, or even something in Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk etc. but it seems like companies only go for a quick dev cycle and cash grab with these licenses.
The hardest part of using 2nd edition is having people, new to the system, understand what is going on with their character's stats etc. They will want to know and if you suggest that things are only 2nd edition under the hood and that players don't need to know then I ask again, so what is the need to use that system.
I love the idea overall and I love 2nd edition. I would love to see that old world come alive again, a simpler world without players being machines or warforged etc. but I think that can be done with any system. You just need a lower fantasy setting. Everyone that has made a game based on 2nd edition has said how poorly it has translated into a PC game - and these were huge fans of the system.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
If they really wanted to do AD&D right they should allow for human players to be DM. Neverwinter did a really good job with foundry but they left out one key part: the human element. You cannot replace human DM and still keep the AD&D feel. If a game company would provide human DMs the tools to host live AD&D games online this would be huge. It would NOT be a MMO but it would be the most amazing game ever made. Imagine a live DM being able to host their module and any one could join it online like you were going over the DMs house to play a real pen and paper table top game of AD&D.
Instead of dungeon finder queue you would have DM queue. The DM would pre-make their module in a foundry like setting and then host it live in the DM queue. Players could then enter the queue and play the module. When the DM logged off their module would disappear from the DM queue because it would be designed to be hosted by a live DM.
It all boils down to how you design your game; if you design a game where ingame 'gratification' comes by beating 40-man raids and getting the best gear, then you have to take into consideration raid dynamics, how each class contributes to the raids, etc.
If, however, the game was designed around building your character in a unique way, then no imbalance would hurt. A poster above said that fighters are only getting stronger when leveling while wizards get to travel to other dimensions; yes, but Wizards can do that only a few times a day, they need a high Int score to be able to cast the high level spells, they need to roll to see if they learn the spells that they find (and they can only do that once per level or when their Int increases), and of course they need to find the spell; spells were not instant abilities that you got with leveling, at least not the uncommon and rare ones.
So you have an adventure opportunity right off the bat there, a unique Wizard path that will keep him involved through most of his playing time trying to find the places/mobs that provide rare spells and, most importantly, is a path unique to the Wizard.
NWN?
To the topic of AD&D (my favourite), it'd be pretty hard to make an mmo out of it. The hardest wouldn't even to implement the system, it'd be the selling part. As OP wrote in a later post:
"OR, MMOs (of almost all kinds) have failed when trying to emulate the RPG aspect in their gameplay? I mean there are two ways of looking at it, right?
If combat and PvP is everything, then what we need is an action-MMO game not an RPG one."
That's exactly the trend of the last few years, as it seems. Easy, fast, action games are the ones that sell. Most of the near future's playerbase (since development takes years, you have to aim 2-3 years in the future) would fall asleep over an AD&D game, regardless of how great the implementation is. There's the option of kickstarter, aiming the former AD&D fans from the pen'n'paper era - that's not an option either, there are wizards somewhere alongside the coast who wouldn't allow or support it.
I don't think we'll see any online D&D games below 3.5 in the future.
May be devs don't think the old 2nd edition rules will be good for a MMO?
You know, computer games are different from pnp games and a direct translation of the rules may not be appropriate anyway.