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If you had £40,000,000 and had to choose...
Vesavius
Member RarePosts: 7,908
... and Assumming that you wanted to invest in a MMORPG, which of the small developers would you back? And why? 
Comments
But better to work with an established team that has experience with MMOs?
Answer my question and stop being slippery!! hehe
if you had to choose one of the existing indies out there, which one and why?
mmocenter.com - Hasnt produced a product yet and even forgot to pay their dns bill :P
You want 2 things. A franchise & an experienced team. For that reason I would go with star trek online. Im not sure about perpetuals reputation but as an investor of 40mil you could dictate who gets hired and fired to ensure that a professional team is there. You dont want shitty bugs like overlapping textures that some really great games still suffer from. The Franchise will pull a million people in at launch and more will flock if you keep a great reputation.
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Note: PlayNC will refuse to allow you access to your account if you forget your password and can't provide a scanned image of the product key for the first product you purchased..... LOL
I'd wanna buy SWG but can't cause it's a license. So then i'd make my own similar game.
Sun wars galaxies
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I would have a go at the Serenity franchise myself, some good ideas there I think.
I'd start my own MMO company, invest all the money in myself, then fail to deliver a working product, and be forced to pay back my investor... which is me.. and then never work another day in my life. Duh.
Mechwarrior.
But it's not getting 40 mill. Maybe 5.
There is no question whatsoever in my mind.....Final fantasy.That game has such huge potential it's not funny.It does and has everything, every other game has ,but made some mistakes,to wich i would rectify.
Botting/broken economies would be out,option to solo or party,mentoring[eq2].Biggest problem with FFXi is its total waste of time setting up a party.Everything is party ONLY,so if your friends are not online or can't find others to do same quest as you,good luck and good night.Crafting is crap and a few other things i would fix,but the game is just too good on a whole,lots of cool ideas in the game.
My second choice would be EQ2/SOny , i like alot of what they do also.Combining looks/content/solo/party/quests battle system,pets/instances or not the choice is yours.They also tend to keep everything realistic and in sync/proportion.Uses creature/spell/craft TIEr systems.Just alot of stuff i like.
All these games need a brilliant mind to get ridda this levelling system,that encourages Botting and makes PVP a joke and not skilled at all.Make players EARN things in the game ,and by this i don't mean spending 12 hours a day or using bots to do it for you.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I'd invest in Nevrax (Saga of Ryzom Developer) and finance SoR and start a developement team for a gothic horror vampire MMO.
As far as I'm concerned Nev is one of the best development teams around, they have always been top notch towards their fan base, Jessica Mulligan has done amazing things with the development team, they have an azming coding team and some of the best enviromental artists in the game. They have imagination, inspired ideas and know what it is dig deep into lore and make it count for something.
A far away second would be mmocenter, unfortunately I don't believe they have quite enough respect for their own fan base. I would want someone who at least understands how fickle an MMO community can be and how direly important they are to succeeding in the end.
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I'd buy SOE and fire every one of them just to keep them from destroying any more games. Then I'd rebuild the company from scratch with people that got a pair.
I'll buy the company that is developing LotR Online. I would go for Star Trek Online.. but in my limited experience, more people like fantasy more than sci-fiction.
It has the name. It will attract millions at launch. That alone ensure good publicity. And if I'm hiring the right people, the game will be a gold mine unlike WoW. I mean a gold mine that stays gold
Umm..WoW IS a gold mine my friend. It has over 6 million subscribers. That to me is a gold mine.
Not sure what you are talking about.
From what I understand, Bioware is opening a new center/studio in Austin,TX and they will be developing or are already developing Fallout Online.
I think it's tough to say, especially in terms of small devs with spotty track records. Were thier games mediocre because they had mediocre ideas, poor implementation, or lack of funding? A lot of times, ideas look great as hype, but that doesn't mean the devs would do much better with the extra funding, if they've got a poor sense of the basics to making a fun game.
If I were going to invest in a pre-existing project, I'd have to wave that cash around a bit, to be given the chance to do some research into the direction various devs are going. Take Icarus and Fallen Earth, for example. Looks like a good idea, but we really haven't got a clue how the core gameplay is being designed. You'd have to meet the devs, get to know what sorts of games they've liked and why, and play with whatever preliminary build they've got. Readings interviews and info that's more like advertisement just isn't enough.
Too many good looking ideas fall very short on substance, not just funding.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
From what I understand, Bioware is opening a new center/studio in Austin,TX and they will be developing or are already developing Fallout Online.
they did buy fallout rights but the mmo rights for fallout are still at original club
Have no fear, Xru is here.
I think I'd go with BioWare too, even though they're not exactly a small company. I don't think I'd fund an MMO, though. I'd really like to see a game like Knights of the Old Republic or Jade Empire (though not necessarily those specific titles) produced like an MMO, but remain a single-player game. By that, I mean they'd retain the gameplay and morality systems of the singleplayer games, but with monthly updates that add more and more to the storylines. Basically, you'd be playing the main character (good, evil, or somewhere inbetween) in the story, but the story would keep progressing for as long as you maintained a subscription. Really, it'd be sort of like an alternate distribution system for singleplayer games; instead of buying one box for $50, then waiting a year or more to pay another $50 for the sequel, you'd pay $50 for the box, and then $15.95/month (or whatever) for endless mini-sequels. Most of the art assets would already be in place, the engine would be there, so a lot of the development cost would be in the story and text scripting. Add to the fact that there'd be significantly lower costs for bandwidth (BioWare would only have to cover expenses for patch downloads, rather than 24/7/365 activity), and it seems completely possible.
From what I understand, Bioware is opening a new center/studio in Austin,TX and they will be developing or are already developing Fallout Online.
they did buy fallout rights but the mmo rights for fallout are still at original club
Actually it was Bestheda that owns the rights to a single-player Fallout game, as stated the rights to a Fallout MMO are still in the hands of Interplay. That is if they haven't sold them and just not announced it. If Bioware do have the rights then it's in great hands and will do well.
-Hunt down designer and devlopers who created the x-wing series, wing commander, and freelancer. Hire them.
-Hunt down qualified MMO's developers who are interested in developing a game that is not fantasy and is not just killing.
-Hire some highly qualified science fiction writers. Pay them to write a good background story as well as several years worth of story progression.
After assembling my team the I would tell them the game would need to be written and designed with the following idea:
Game lanches with 9 sectors, our current solar system. The game would start with the discovery of a wormhole. Players would then have to build star gates on each side of the wormhole. They then would have to settle the new star system. That would mean naming all the planets, setting up star bases, mapping everything, cataloging all mobs. Contacting Aliens if any exist. Setting up defenses, everything.
While players were doing that development and story team would work on the next sector. By the time the players got the first system setup, new wormhole would appear.
Repeat process through the life of the game.
I would either...
Try to make WoW an actually good game (gold mine because of their playerbase)
Warhammer has incredible potential so I would try to get a piece of that action
On the moon, nerds have their pants pulled down and they are spanked with moon rocks!
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