BioWare May (Eventually) Go For A Mass Effect MMO

[DTWolfwood]

yes please. If you ask anyone what sci fi setting they want to be in a lot of ppl choose Mass Effect. I would love to play an MMO in that world. So if it happens i'll be on the bandwagon for sure

 

[WanderingFool]

Can I play the Krogan Scientist?

 

[mitchell271]

An MMO? *yawn*
Wait, I can be something other than a human? I can be anything from a Turian to a Hanar? Hmmm... this actually sounds fun!

 

[mitchell271]

'You' Sheperd number 222222737 are the universes ONLY hope. Only 'you' can stop the reapers.

Yes, you and the other 20 Shepard's in your party.

 

[BrotherRool]

1.Incredible and deep worldbuilding
2. Sense of scale
3. Feelings of epicness
4. Big large scale choices taking a long time to come into affect
5. Excellent character creations
6. Varied questing
7. Humour
8. Intricate moral choices.
9. Really really good cinematography

You just described Star Wars The Old Republic perfectly.

The KotoR games didn't have the problems that I have with Mass Effect at all though, so it was to be expected

Although actually, the I would actually say that some of those things were missing from a KotoR game. Sense of scale, choices were a lot quicker to be implemented and the cinematography wasn't anything like ME. But those are all things which can apply to the franchise and I fully expect Bioware to suceed with putting them in. The problem with TOR that will be a wait and see is simply whether they're going to make the character balance work. I can imagine more than one Shepard, heck I've never really been able to swallow the idea that Shepard is special as much as ME tried to cram that idea down my throat. S/he is cool badass (whether you want her to be or not), competent and a threat in any situation but the whole universe seems to be full of those people. In your party alone, Garrus, Mordin, Miranda, Wrex, Zaeed (and surprisingly Tali) have all shown they can/already have been Shepards of their own if they want to, and despite being special people it doesn't feel like they're the only special people. Half of Omega, high levels in the mercenary groups, the STG etc all seem to be organisations full of Shepards. So it's not jarring to think of a whole universe where everyone is Shepard level of badass with all sorts of specialisations.

And that's possible with Star Wars, but it's harder. Both the parties in the KotoR games were much more working for you and needing you than being people who could strike out for themselves and the whole Star Wars thing has always hung around a couple of special people changing everything. I'll trust them to change that, but it's harder. I mean Hans Solo was cool, but he was cool for his charm and cheeky confidence not because it felt like he could go toe-to-toe with Vadar or had the same sort of abilites as a Yoda or Luke.

Anyway I suspect a ME MMO would be free to play, so there is probably space for both and they'd think about it before making their call

 

[FEichinger]

So what? Am I the only one rolling a Prothean?

Is it bad that I want to be a reaper?

I'll take the Collector then.

At any rate, let's split this into two parts ...

a) Whether a MMO sounds likely
I'd consider it likely, given the recent interview stating ME3 would be Shepard's last installment, but not the end of the franchise. It just calls for an MMO there, as anything else would be simply melking a franchise.

b) Whether I'd like a ME MMO ...
Depends, really. If it ends up with the SW:TOR treatment, I might try it out under a free2play business model, but I certainly won't buy it. If it brings actual ME gameplay, I'll hop right on. That leads to the question, whether our infrastructure is finally ready for fully fledged MMO shooter games. Safe to say, Planetside (2), Global Agenda (Open Zones), Face of Mankind and APB have proven that we're coming closer, but except for FoM none of these have given near limitless population in one instance. (If you don't know FoM (which is likely), check it, and contact me, if you actually plan on playing. Without guidance, you will likely stop playing within a short time, as it has been crippled over the past 1.5 years, but the concept and MMO mechanics are what give me the kick ^^)

So ... yeh ... all depends on what EA BioWare does to give it a MMO treatment.

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

Ehhh, to many people would want to name there Character Commander Shepard...

 

[tzimize]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I would 100% certain NOT pick this up.

MMOs are a freaking waste of time, they are all the same. Give me a decent story any day. And any decent story has an END. MMOs do not.

Make your trilogy Bioware...and be done with it. Then make something new.

 

[StormShaun]

...hmm It depends.

I really don't want the Mass Effect universe being screwed up by an MMO that probably wouldn't make sense.

I hope instead of an Mass Effect MMO, they will make another ME game except it's sandbox and you can do anything, get a house, explore planets, get your own ship, get your own crew, make your own adventure and etc.

SO I agree with my avatar here and say WTF, NO!

Just make a sandbox RPG with limited multiplayer options.

 

[Yureina]

I'd play a Mass Effect MMO. Not sure what race i'd play... but I would play it!

I'd probably be either a human (because i'm boring) or a Turian (because Garrus is god XD).

 

[Alaster Angelo]

Right now, I really want BioWare to drop everything and make an X-Men RPG. Anything's better than Destiny. Ugh.

 

[Zulnam]

They won't be making it any time soon, that's for sure. There's at least two more titles to milk from the original franchise first.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I don't think I'd pick it up. The Mass Effect universe is rich and incredibly detailed, and part of the reason it works is because it's a deep solitary experience. Mass Effect as an MMO would involve the same tropes you'll find everywhere else in any other MMO known to man, from quests that blend together into a formless sludge of fetch quests and kill quests, to plot points that are spaced so far apart you'd have to be insane to even pay attention to the story.

I've played City of Heroes, City of Villains, Global Agenda, World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online. I lost all sense of drive or purpose for killing mobs about five minutes in each time. I just don't think the MMO model would do the Mass Effect-verse justice.

Oh, sure. It'd look cool and we could form our own crews, complete with turians and salarians and whatever else - but I just don't see how I could remain involved and invested over any serious period of time.

 

[LuzGutierrez]

Actually, I read all of them. Did you read mine? I said that a lot of their reasons seemed shallow. I think there is just as much reason to applaud and even hope for a Mass Effect MMO as to decry it. And if Bioware makes good on their promise to bring story to MMOs with TOR, than a good chunk of that will be out the window. And there's no reason to believe that MMOs have to be just like WoW.

And against my better judgment, I read your entire comment. Even the part that was directed at someone else. The idea of a pen and paper RPG set in the Mass Effect universe is no better than the idea of an MMO set in the Mass Effect universe. Your complaint about them having to choose a canon is just as valid. Unless you choose to set the story long after the events of the game (like they are doing in TOR), there's no way to account for the choices players would make to avoid playing in "someone else'" story. That being said, the idea is intriguing. And I don't see why it couldn't work out. I'm just curious as to what your intentions are. Trying to get it published by Bioware or just a fun diversion for you and your friends?

No, it was more of a thing to help my brother's girlfriend get into pen and paper RPG's, since she's never played one before, yet she LOVES the Mass Effect cannon, so we figured we'd try to make a homebrew game that we could play with her, so that she would get an idea of what a tabletop RPG is like, and so that it would be familiar to her, as opposed to something like Star Wars or DnD, which are two universes that aren't familiar to her. Me, being a frequent on /tg/, love to make homebrew things (in fact I'm helping make an Outlaw Star one right now), so I figured, why the hell not?

As for the rest of your post:

all of their reasons

No, that seems to prove that you said that all of their reasons are, not just most of them.

And of course, The Old Republic might make a new MMO, one that is mostly based on Bioware's way of making games, a very interactive narrative. But the thing is, if you're going to appeal to the the traditional MMO crowd, you're going to make a WoW clone, if you're trying to appeal to the normal gamer crowd, or hell, in this case, the Star Wars crowd, you might get a lot of people who aren't with the WoW crowd, and at the same time, get a bunch of people who hate this game already(my brother has a friend who "doesn't believe in anything before Episode 4 of Star Wars, she's funny), or even people in the WoW crowd. There are many variables in making an MMO, and the reason most MMO's aren't popularized, like WoW, is because they just aren't WoW enough, and don't have as strong a player/fan base, or they ARE WoW, just a clone of it, so whatever.

Also, with me choosing a canon in an RPG, that can be fixed by just having ONE player, or having a group of 4-7 players, and just all AGREEING on a canon. That's a reachable goal with a small group of people, but with a much larger group, like say, everyone who has played Mass Effect ever, you're gonna have a few thousand+ people who are going to drop the game right when they see that Wrex is dead in this universe (if he is dead in an MMO, I would RAGE SO HARD, he was the cutest Krogan, next to Grunt's adorable blue eyes!). It's manageable in smaller numbers, but in larger numbers, it gets too out of hand, and you'll be losing people by the thousands with even just one variable, let alone 1000 of them.

Although here's an interesting way of maybe making it work. Set it before the events of Mass Effect ever occur? The only problem is, there isn't much there, aside from "OH HUMANS HATE BATARIANS, BLUH BLUH!" and "FIRST CONTACT WAR? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? THAT WAS THE RELAY 314 INCIDENT!" That and there isn't much of a BBEG in this time frame, so I don't think it would be very advantageous to make the setting for an MMO be before the games, since the time between us finding the Mass Relay and Mass Effect 1 is pretty miniscule...

 

[Smooth Operator]

The two things MMO's can't do is story and atmosphere... this will just be a bag full of shite.

 

[Inkidu]

Mass Effect MMO? Terrible idea (but I think that about all MMOs on general principle, because not one has ever exceeded my expectations). I just spent the last near-decade tearing through the galaxy as Commander Shepard, and now you tell me I have to be some relative nobody in a mob of lewd screen names and immersion breakers by the Royal Ton? No thanks. I'd rather be Commander Shepard by my lonesome.

I mean, I save the galaxy for Christ's sake! Nowhere to go but down from there.

 

[plugav]

Say, why isn't anyone making a pen&paper RPG in the Mass Effect universe? Or are they?

Funny you should say that. My brother and I are working on one right now. He's even got his girlfriend working on the character sheet for it. We've got the 7 races (Human, Turian, Salarian, Krogan, Asari, Drell, and Quarian), the 6 classes from both games, Biotic abilities, and we're almost done with a very brief list of equipment. It's all homebrew, based off of the Star Wars D20 system.

Sounds like a serious amount of work, I applaud your effort.

I must admit I don't know a first thing about Star Wars D20, though. Is it any faster or simpler than D&D 3rd?

As for on-topic. I don't think its possible. There's just too much, too many variables (over 1000 from both Mass Effect 1 and 2) that a standardized universe for an MMO would just be too different from everyone's own personal playthroughs, that it wouldn't feel like playing in "our" Mass Effect, but "someone else's" Mass Effect."

That's a valid point.

 

[Durgiun]

Fuck it, I'm calling it right now:

The race with the largest percentage of players will be the Asari. Just you watch.