Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
[Column] General: 5 Books that Would Make Great MMOs
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
For the past year, my day job has required that I commute about 2 hours, each way, every single day. A necessary result of this is that I often end up spending 20 hours or more in my car every week just driving. This leaves a lot of time for thinking, listening to music, and, most recently, listening to audiobooks. This newfound idle time has rekindled my interest in fictional fantasy, something I stopped really reading over the last several years.
Read more of David Jagneaux's The List: 5 Books That Would Make Great MMOs.
)
Comments
I think Kevin Anderson's Saga of the seven suns and Hugh Howey's Molly Fyde would make great Sci fi MMOs.
Nalini Singh Psy /Changeling books also make great world for a mix of sci fi and fantasy.China Mieville Bas Lag absolutely wonderful rich world of steampunk would be another candidate.
If a great story is all you needed to make a great MMO, we wouldn't have so many so-so MMOs out there. Problem is, it's not the lore or setting that makes the MMO, it's the whole package. And right now, the whole package is not what it used to be... or more importantly, not what we really want to see.
I can say with absolute certainty that there is not one MMO slated to be released in the next 5 years that will be great. They will merely be yet another addition to the pile of rehashes that garnered your attention for a month or two and then fell completely off the radar.
The MMO genre doesn't need a new story... it needs a complete do over. Because anyone can turn the WoW lore into Star Wars lore or LOTRO lore or any number of other lores and it will still be the same damn game when all is said and done. That's the problem with MMOs today... not the lore, setting or story... the actual core game has been done to death.
As we used to say in Architecture... the facade is only skin deep. And the story is merely the facade.
If there was a world to use for a new mmorpg one of the best series to pull from is Raymond Feists Midkemia series Magician apprentice through Death of A Magician like 28 books in all but he has something in his books that would allow new expansions very easily the "hall of worlds" its a fantasy setting and various classes/races available to pull from. Love the series of books sad it came to a end =/
Game of Thrones!!!!!
Chose a family, and GO! Screams pvp possiblities too!
Three pretty unique, big name books that are never mentioned in this discussion. Riverworld, by Philip Jose Farmer. Ringworld by Larry Niven. Dinotopia by James Gurney.
Good luck on getting rights to these IPs, though.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
TBF, HP series would fail because it WILL be a fan service rather than an MMO, furthermore at which part it'll be in? Before or after voldemort?
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
No. Just..., no. To all of the ones mentioned in the article and in the comments.
We can discuss whether any of these would make a good RPG.
NONE would make a good MMO.
How can you tell? How many books involve a cast of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people doing significant things? Books need a hero, maybe a small cast of heroes. Not a horde of heroes.
What an MMO based on these books would allow you is to run some story that is only tangentially related to the story in the books. Think SWTOR.
Unless... Did you actually want to talk about an MMO set in the universe represented in the books?
Here are my 5:
1. A song of Ice and Fire
2. The Riftwar Saga
3. The Dresden Files
4. The Earthsea Cycle
5. The Witcher
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I will only comment on Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.
The rights to making a game out of the series has been sold.
The ONLY way it would work is if they fully embraced a buff class. Rioters and Soothers would have to be debuffing and buffing full time, maybe poking things, but not to the effect that a Coinshot would.
And there is the issue of the source of the abilities, the most common way to get your "mana" back is by drinking metal dust solutions, that would be fun if you run out. Unless you rolled a race that can pull them from bracelets of a sort, after storing it all up for a while, or if you were an inquisitor
I can fly higher than an aeroplane.
And I have the voice of a thousand hurricanes.
Hurt - Wars
Wheel of Time: Lots of potential. Hopefully it would not take as long to make as it did for me to read the entire series (20+ years)
The Hunger Games: Would make a better CoD/Counter strike type PVP game or a single player RPG.
Robopocalypse: Never heard of it.
Mistborn: My favorite story of the 5, but it screams alpha-class much like early SWG jedis. Not everyone could be Mistborn.
Harry Potter: I am likely the only person on the earth that didn't like this series. That being said, would be a difficult conversion to MMO imho.
I loved reading the Mistborn Trilogy and thought many times how awesome of an MMO it could be. There are others as well that might be a perfect "base" like:
Shadows of the Apt (A. Tchaikovsky) - loads of races which possess specific abilities, huge world and interesting political system. One of the widest worlds you can find anywhere with mass pvp approach would be worth checking out.
The Painted Man (Peter V. Brett) - again, amazing world with a cool backstory and a nations trying to conquer one another. Imagine a non-target combat system with that and you have yourself an awesome MMO
Hand-to-hand fighting, entire body covered in tattoos, day-night system where everything becomes more demonic and stronger when the sun hides below the horizon. Oh yeah!
The Age of the Five Trilogy (T. Canavan) - split 2 factions into the new gods' followers and the old gods' ones and you have yourself a nice game with a rich storyline. Pick your god instead of a class to make it more interesting.
The Night Angel Trilogy (B. Weeks) - much darker, much more brutal approach here. Obviously for more mature audience but I could see that game as a counterbalance to all the shiny/cartoony MMOs we have right now. Dirt, blood and evil rulers all around the place, that's what I want, not maid outfits and bunny mounts!
I personally would love to see old school Dragonlance done into an MMO. Though not a fan of the D & D settings normally, I think Krynn has a lot of potential. Especially if done right after the Catacalysm - would be a very dark time period to set a game in.
Now, which one of you will adorn me today?
and what exactly would make harry potter a good mmo?
those spells in the movies are a joke, bascially NO ONE is of ANY danger to the evil side but harry and his few friends, even their master wizzard guys completely failed.
i dont see how that would make up a good mmo... that squiddich thingie is NOTHING an mmo would care about either (unless you are into instanced battlegrounds of cors)
seriously, if i play a wizzard, it is a REAL wizzard, and not some screwed up boywonder waving around his little wand.
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
I can think of a couple books or book series that would make great MMO's, but the one at the top of the list:
The Death Gate Cycle
by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
This is a Fantasy series of seven books that were written in the mid to late 90's and remain one of my all time favorite book series. (Spoilers incoming) The series focuses on a world made up of six unique realms/worlds, the inhabitants of each, and how they are all connected. The world the series takes place in would be a perfect setting for an MMO as there is a realm for each main Element (Air, Water, Fire, and Earth) where the large majority of the "common" races or "mensch" reside, and two more realms beside, the Labyrinth and The Nexus. The residents of this world are the common High-fantasy races; Humans, Elves, Dwarfs, Dragons (intelligent and feral), various types of Beastmen/monsters, as well as two races of god-like beings called the Patryn and the Sartan who can be likened to wizards.
I always thought this series would make an excellent RPG, and there were a few computer games made based on the series, but being a product of the early to mid nineties they were mostly point-and-click adventure types and that was that. The books aren't enduring enough it seems for a modern game based off of them, but they really would be an awesome setting for a well-done modern MMO.