MMO Adaptation Will Ruin What You Love About Your Favorite Franchise

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

MMO Adaptation Will Ruin What You Love About Your Favorite Franchise

For good or ill, the fact remains that any robust enough franchise with a loyal enough following will eventually become an MMO. Spoiler: It's rarely for good.

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[Roofstone]

This GOT mmo could be i-.. Yeah, no.

Honestly, why does everything need to be an MMO? Isn't like, every MMO but WoW a failure these days? Why do they keep tryng? It never works! We still have WoW after all. Stop trying, you will fail.

 

[Muspelheim]

Thank the Nine that the proper Elder Scrolls games are made by another studio. Losing them would've just been... No, can't really bear the thought.

While we're petitioning things, I'd like to suggest some sort of law or ordnance that effectively protect existing intellectual properties from being made in a MMO format. Every single MMO universe had to be build from the ground up, with the problems and benefits of the format in mind. Not to mention, some fresh IPs are always welcome.

This GOT mmo could be i-.. Yeah, no.

Honestly, why does everything need to be an MMO? Isn't like, every MMO but WoW a failure these days? Why do they keep tryng? It never works! We still have WoW after all. Stop trying, you will fail.

There are MMOs out there that are rather healthy on their own. However, they're portrayed as a failure since they haven't been able to reach twelve million subscribers, like World of Warcraft seems to have promised all publishers that every MMO would get.

Of course, the root problem to most failed MMOs are that they've attempted to clone WoW's success by cloning WoW itself, with predictable results. Those that do survive tend to be the ones with their own direction, that focus on a tall player group rather than wide.

 

[Steve2911]

The idea of taking a successful property and giving it an MMO is long dead. Players have realised how shite it is and they've stopped getting exciting for them or forking over millions of pounds for them.

Only the most short sighted of publishers, developers and IP holders still think it's a good idea, and any dickheads who think an ASoIaF MMO would be anything but a dismal, soulless trudge through hell need a kick in the ear. The things that make that series so brilliant and rich are the same things that would make an MMO (or a single player RPG, as seen by the existing terrible one) a bad idea.

 

[TiberiusEsuriens]

But an MMO in particular is a cruel thing to subject an intellectual property to. For one thing, it hardly seems to matter what kind of wallpaper you paste onto an MMO, sooner or later all MMO experiences are reduced to going to a place indicated on the map, touching the things you find there, and enacting endlessly repeating combat sequences until you get carpal tunnel syndrome.

Secondly, all MMOs take place in a frozen moment of time, where the status quo can never change, for the sake of all the other human players who are going to want to come along and do the same quests as you. You leave what might have once been an ever-changing political landscape of intrigues and frequent struggles (as with Warcraft pre-WoW) in a state of permanent "and things basically went on like that".

I'm going to have to boldly disagree here. It's important to remember that you're describing strictly Theme Park MMOs. They're certainly the most common right now, but a true sandbox MMO could possibly pull it off. It could work if the game design is essentially just laying out the basic world, throwing players haphazardly into it, and leaving the majority (~99.99%) of it to political posturing. EVE stands out as the glowing example, but the recently canceled World-of-Darkness MMO was going to be exactly that - a fantasy game with full anytime PvP, but with alliance and political posturing systems that discourage random ganking.

This would never happen to GoT because it's such a big property the money men will never take such a big 'risk' on what is literally a social experiment. That's the reason people even forget these types of games exist - they are so rare, because the devs take a hands off approach, hoping that the community is the reason players stay. That's dangerous because online communities often hurt more than help (this is the internet after all). Theme Park MMOs are much safer because investors and developers can see very concrete "Reasons people will buy the game."

(I do like Theme Park mmos, but too many people make them for the wrong reasons, typically leading to less than stellar products)

 

[shrekfan246]

But in that case, why was DC Universe Online so crap?

Well, because most MMOs are pretty crap on release.

I'm led to believe that it's actually pretty decent now, as far as MMOs go, not that that would be reflected by any of its media coverage because the media stops caring about most MMOs roughly a month or so after their release, and by that point they're permanently tarred by the initial reception, no matter what changes might happen.

But yes, a Game of Thrones MMO seems like it would be a silly idea.

 

[Burnouts3s3]

I want to bring The Old Republic into this discussion because I know what it did to many Kotor fans in general, especially with

Spoiler

Making Revan alive and then die/teleport in a lvl 30 flashpoint.

I think what Yahtzee says is true and for a lot of MMO's, much of the lore gets made for non-fans so the MMO, in question, can be as appealing to them more than fans of the franchise.

 

[Ken Sapp]

I think Guild Wars has been doing interesting things. Every so often they move the world forward as major events take place. I am an on-again/off-again player and it seems like every time I hit an on-again phase I have to start by learning what happened. Last phase I logged out while in Lion's Arch, a bustling central hub where all races came together as one unified force(my impression) and recently I logged back in to find that Lion's Arch had been pretty much destroyed in a recent conflict.

Guild Wars also serves to illustrate how many things that other MMOs do wrong can be fixed. You can hop in and out of fights and events without stealing credit from others allowing a loner like me to have fun and adventure without being screwed by spawn farmers who run around wiping out mooks which are still a challenge for my character and when you harvest a gather point or treasure chest it is not removed from the world for everyone else until it respawns. Add to this that they built their own world instead of trying to force some other property to function in a system it wasn't intended for and you get a fun game that is not such a static theme park.

Unfortunately I can't speak on the subject of PvP since I have no interest in having my rear handed to me constantly by the people who devote their lives to these games.

 

[Thanatos2k]

We've seen failed MMO developer kill studio after studio. It killed THQ, it killed 38 studios. These stupid executives going starry eyed when someone shows them the size of the "MMO market" never understand the important reasons why you should never make an MMO:

1. MMOs are really expensive to make.

2. MMOs are really hard to make correctly, especially if you're never made one before.

3. The MMO market is slowly falling apart.

If you ever wonder "Should we make an MMO of this" just stop yourselves before you fuck it up.

 

[red255]

dude, yatzhee you are a reviewer, we NEED you to tell us things are shit AFTER they are out, its your damn job. if we could tell before hand, we wouldn't need you.

yeah yeah I suppose if something is 20 years in development and the people working on it spent all their money on crack parties its PROBABLY going to be bad as a given but you never know.

I guess we could go with 'product' vs 'art' but since nobody wants a product and a product is designed to get people to like it...even products could be art.

anyways point is you should know you can't tell its going to be bad at this point. MOST things are going to be bad so your probably right but its not something to say at this point.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

"and eventually become better people."

Whoa, this week you're doing a PSA?
Good article as always.

 

[Evonisia]

It seems like MMOs as an attempt to grab the WoW market is much smaller now, but that was already noted in the ZP video. Still I see this as a positive as I agree with the point, MMOs are (for the most part) a bad thing for a creative series.

 

[Mahoshonen]

"It could be interesting" is a phrase I usually chalk up to Damning With Faint Praise. It's a code word for when you think something is going to be dumb but can't say it lest you hurt the feelings of the fanboys.

 

[gamegod25]

I'll go one step farther and petition that anytime someone says "hey let's make an mmo out of..." you punch them in the face before they can finish the sentence. Because no, we should not make an mmo out of anything just because it popular. Unless you have something new to add to the formula besides a change of wallpaper, then it has no reason to exist. That's why there are so many cookie cutter mmo's out there that thought that a slightly different change of scenery would hide the fact that everything else is paint by numbers dull.

 

[Under_your_bed]

Do you like playing violent games while holding a vibrating controller against the front of your trousers?

I-it was just the one time, man! I s-swear!

>_>
<_<

[sub][sub]I REGRET NOTHING![/sub][/sub]

EDIT:

Guild Wars also serves to illustrate how many things that other MMOs do wrong can be fixed. You can hop in and out of fights and events without stealing credit from others allowing a loner like me to have fun and adventure without being screwed by spawn farmers who run around wiping out mooks which are still a challenge for my character and when you harvest a gather point or treasure chest it is not removed from the world for everyone else until it respawns. Add to this that they built their own world instead of trying to force some other property to function in a system it wasn't intended for and you get a fun game that is not such a static theme park.

That sounds suspiciously like Firefall, which I myself have been on-offing into now and then. As someone who wouldn't normally go for MMO's, I have to say I'm finding the whole experience rather refreshing and enjoyable.

 

[Worgen]

I'm kinda surprised Guild Wars 2 isn't mentioned in here since unlike most other mmos, it does have an evolving landscape. The main hub city, Lions Arch was destroyed in the last living story event and now the main hub is in an adventure area at the Vigil Base but its lacking crafting stations, there are the ruins of a giant tower across the landscape in another area from an earlier living story, and that's just the stuff I noticed.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

I think Guild Wars has been doing interesting things. Every so often they move the world forward as major events take place. I am an on-again/off-again player and it seems like every time I hit an on-again phase I have to start by learning what happened. Last phase I logged out while in Lion's Arch, a bustling central hub where all races came together as one unified force(my impression) and recently I logged back in to find that Lion's Arch had been pretty much destroyed in a recent conflict.

Guild Wars also serves to illustrate how many things that other MMOs do wrong can be fixed. You can hop in and out of fights and events without stealing credit from others allowing a loner like me to have fun and adventure without being screwed by spawn farmers who run around wiping out mooks which are still a challenge for my character and when you harvest a gather point or treasure chest it is not removed from the world for everyone else until it respawns. Add to this that they built their own world instead of trying to force some other property to function in a system it wasn't intended for and you get a fun game that is not such a static theme park.

Unfortunately I can't speak on the subject of PvP since I have no interest in having my rear handed to me constantly by the people who devote their lives to these games.

See, this is why the only MMO I've really been interested in playing is "Guild Wars". (Not "Elder Scrolls Online" and certainly not "WoW", despite having played "Oblivion", "Skyrim", and every single Warcraft game and expansion since #1.) I just don't get why anybody would think those games would be improved by having more people in them.

But everybody who's played Guild Wars seems to genuinely love it. I seriously want to try it but I'm afraid of the time sink I think it would be.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

A Game of Thrones MMO sounds teeeerrrrible.

Like, probably 100x worse then ESO. If you want to make GOT a video game you either need to go the CK2 mod route and simulate the feudal politics or go the Telltale route and simulate the in-depth character interactions. A combat focused game would completely miss the point of the series.