Azaroth

During a writeup on a MMO Rountable that he moderated at the GDC last week, Damion mentioned several non-traditional settings that came up. That is, settings that have nothing to do with swords, magic, dragons and unicorns.

While I’m not interested in discussing the pros and cons of traditional fantasy versus, say, a post-apocalyptic setting of some kind (for the record, I think most futuristic settings are terrible ideas for MMOs - sort of like I think the traditional fantasy setting is inferior for a single player game… it’s a simple matter of wanting a wide variety of players to live in your world for months and years versus trying to attract more hardcore, non-social gamers to spend two weeks being interested in your game - and how those particular settings work in regard to either of those aims), one of the mentioned settings was Highlander.

Why is this interesting?

Well, I’m not a Highlander nerd. I can’t remember the last time I watched the entire length of one of the movies. So that’s not it. Although, admittedly, I’ve almost definitely spent more time watching the mid-90s TV show than I have watching the movies. Adrian Paul is just THAT dreamy. Plus it makes me want to fucking kill people with swords.

But moving on.

I found the suggestion of a Highlander MMO setting more interesting than, say, Cyberpunk or insert_dark_futuristic_setting_here MAINLY because I’m not sure that I’ve seen it suggested before.

Yeah, everyone suggests Neuromancer/Cyberpunk. There are a million “Anime” MMOs already (you just have to speak Korean…). Hell, a Firefly MMO is in the works. And I mean no offense to Browncoats, but shit. Can you say 15k subs?

Because when a huge, international name like Star Wars gets thrown around and you max out at 250k, we learn a few things:

1) Not every fan of a particular IP is going to pick up a copy of your game because it has R2D2 on the box. Stop dreaming. Yeah, I remember the massive numbers predictions before SWG launched. I think SWG had a fine design, I’m not on a gripe about the game whatsoever.

So,

2) How in the jeezly fuck do you expect to transfer people of all walks of life from an ages-old, massive IP to a very specific type of computer game?

Obviously that was a lot harder than most people expected it to be.

So how do you figure transferring people from a “cult” IP that’s barely known to most people beyond squinting their eyes and asking “… wasn’t that a show that got cancelled years back?” is going to work out?

You’ll get your hardcore Firefly fans playing a Firefly MMO. Of course. But you’d better not make any wild predictions as to your final account holdings. As such, you’d better not design too ambitiously, because turning a profit will be a magic trick of balancing budget versus expected revenue. Which furthers hurts you, because your game is not simply incapable of wowing anyone OUTSIDE of the hardcore Firefly fan circle.

So what is the ultimate lesson? Is it that you can’t expect to use existing IP to boost sales of a MMO?

No, absolutely not. Ultima Online broke barriers. World of Warcraft smashed preconceived notions of how big the market for MMO games could possibly be.

The lesson is that taking hugely popular non-computer game IP may not cause a fanbase transfer. Especially not if you’re creating numbers based purely on wishful thinking.

But there are exceptions to this, as anything. Ever hear of The Sims Online? Probably not. And that’s no offense to its developers, either.

I remember the massive number predictions before The Sims Online launched. Numbers don’t even translate from single player social computer game > online multiplayer social computer game.

Why? Well, in the case of The Sims, I’m betting that a lot of its players were more interested in dinking around with their own character leisurely for 30 minutes whenever they wanted than they were in dealing with real assholes online, and paying a monthly fee for it. In fact, I bet a lot of people barely saw the difference between the title they had to buy to get online and the title they already had at home. Not to mention that the new box said that they have to pay EVERY MONTH.

So there’s another reason why typical fantasy settings work well. You can transfer from existing computer game fanbases, it seems, with some success.

But StarCraft Online was a douched notion, as far as I’ve heard. Is this as simple as the fact that Blizzard may not want to compete with itself, or is this because a StarCraft setting, for the simple reason that it’s futuristic and the even simpler reason that it’s NOT fantasy, wouldn’t meet numbers expectations? Do YOU honestly think that StarCraft Online would, given the exact same amount of content and polish, compete on the same level as WoW?

I don’t.

There’s a big fanbase for StarCraft. It’s existing computer game IP. It’s recent. The company even knows how to do a MMO.

But how many off-center MMO demographics are going to be drawn to the lure of the Zerg? How many 60 year old grandmothers are going to be interested in playing the all-mighty Protoss (Protoss ftw) with their 12 year old granddaughters?

Yeah see, I’m guessing not many. I’ll take a huge leap and guess that rolling up a little dwarf paladin and running around goldshire is a little more attractive to these people. And guess what - there’s a lot of them. This isn’t 1997 anymore. A successful game can’t be based largely on attracting fourteen year old boys.

And that’s a good thing. Because you can actually HAVE half of the WoW servers using a PvP+ ruleset without complete fucking chaos. The mix in demographics offsets what I like to call the “faggot factor”. Named thusly when I completed my time with IPY. IPY was a game based on those early days of heavy faggot factor. In fact, IPY was populated almost entirely by fourteen year old boys that were SO attracted to the style of gameplay that allowed them to act up, that they came back and played IPY like it was a job when they were 22, becoming so engrossed that I think I got a threat on my life once a week.

So now that we have SOMETHING akin to parity among the major demographics, can something like Highlanders Online be attempted?

Well, maybe not as a blatantly open-PvP game. Which one might expect, given the setting. See, rulesets still attract certain types of players. WoW, for all of it’s all-encompassing blackhole like suckage of MMO players, DOES mainly appeal to the Achiever crowd. By sheer volume of all types of players, one might fail to notice.

A better example is going to be something like Darkfall when it comes out. Putting aside the vaporware/not vaporware argument or the cries of “it’s been seven years, they have no idea what they’re doing, it’s going to be buggy as hell” for a moment - it’s clear to anyone who has ever looked into Darkfall even slightly that they’re buttering their bread on the PvP side. Which I suppose would be the side that’s slightly burned, because it was more hardcore and got closer to the coils.

But even with the current equality of the demographics we have going in MMOs today, you still have to be very careful what you wish for. IPY was a good example. Darkfall will be a better one.

“Hardcore” PvP players feel somewhat starved, and as much as minority as they may seem (and are), they WILL all flock en masse to the people providing the most PvP-oriented ruleset.

So there you go. Great idea for a built-in, automatic fanbase.

Right?

Well, if you believe that, etc about bridges and whatnot.

Aside from that, there are also quite a lot of examples of how you attract other specific playstyle oriented players to a game. There are especially a lot of smaller, casual, social games out there that cater to the opposite spectrum of people that Darkfall will, or IPY did (for the most part).

So let’s get back to the point, just for a moment. As much as the idea of a Highlander based MMO is intriguing, you may not want to make it as hardcore PvP oriented as some may expect it to be. In fact, you may not have to. In fact, you may not want to for actual gameplay issues that are beyond the problems PvP players bring to the table.

Obviously, “permadeath” would be a near necessity in the setting. Another immortal chops ya’ block, you die. Lightning and fire ensue. Etc.

But this may, at least for the most part, rule out random, thoughtless PvP. People will fear the deaths of their OWN characters. It’d be almost like if EVERYONE playing UO in ‘99 had statloss. But even more extreme.

They would, mostly, think of the health and safety of their own characters. First and foremost. Except, as always and under any ruleset, when in a large group of patrolling gankers.

Highlander may uniquely solve this problem without much imagination from the developers.

Most battles in the setting take place purely one on one. This is good. I love one on one, honourable PvP in a game. Especially a MMO. I can’t despise 20v1 combat any more than I do. And even group vs. group has many, many flaws to it. From WoW’s battlegrounds to random guild warfare in UO, but I’ll digress for once in my fucking life. I think I’ll write on that topic some time, but I won’t. So we’ll leave it at that. It sucks (but only for certain reasons, and sometimes it rocks). That’s my official review.

But because there IS a (albeit rather slipshod at times) code of honour in the Highlander universe between immortals, what you’ve got is an easy, “lore”-justified reason to end ganking. Now you’ve got a reason to yes, base a game around PvP to a large extent, but also include a duel system of a sort. Not exactly being a “PK switch”, but more of a “PvP Lock” like I proposed on the IPY messageboards at one time. To, of course, only be shot down furiously… the lesson being don’t ever fuck with a “classic” ruleset, even if it’s the only ruleset you have on your servers and has MAJOR flaws in need of fixing. Which I don’t disagree with, totally. IPY was what it was, and should have died like it did. It gave people what it advertised, and died for the same reasons that the original UO was changed. C’est la vie. The damn thing was classic right down to the players, the atmosphere, the problems, and the death.

Digressing again (ADD rarely helps with writing, apparently), the PvP Lock would more or less lock a single attacking player into combat with their chosen opponent. While PvP would be free, it would also have rules of conduct, to a small extent. This doesn’t prevent group warfare. It just prevents auto-targetting, mass nuke dumps, 6v1s, etc.

This also obviously wouldn’t apply when it came to monsters or NPCs. Yes, I’m sure monsters could exist. Although much questing would be focused around both “real world” storylines as well as slaying the all-powerful (but NPC) immortal.

And speaking of NPCs, the game would also have to be largely NPC driven. In fact, I think, in a way that hasn’t really been seen so far. The amount of NPC related content that coders would have to push out would be phenominal, because, as an immortal, I think you’re living in a world - able to come and go into and from different aspects of society as you please. Regular humans (NPCs) would need to provide a living, breathing world for the players (Immortals) to exist in. The game can’t simply be about 1v1 immoral r0×0ring, and it CERTAINLY can’t be about raiding Molten Core with 39 of your closest immortal buddies for leet gear.

Your world would HAVE to be populated largely by normal human beings, that perform normal human being tasks and can be interacted with on MANY different levels. You have to be able to recruit people to go on a Crusade with you, you have to be able to work your way into the King’s service, you have to be able to ruthlessly climb the ranks to become a high ranking commander in the army, you have to be able to walk into a town and watch people scrubbing pots.

You have to be able to interact with NPCs of various sorts and professions in many different ways, with many different outcomes. And, in fact, the world itself needs to be so large that Immortals aren’t gathered 100 strong in Ironforge constantly, with the odd NPC walking past. You’d really need to flip-flop the balance between PCs and NPCs, in a way.

So would it make a better single player game? Possibly.

Would it make a better LMMORPG (that is, a LESS massive multiplayer online roleplaying game) of, say, 100 people to a server?

Maybe.

But not if you have the capability to make the world massive enough to nearly allow every player his own little corner. Not that you’d want nobody to run into each other, or you’d want people to be loners. But the world needs to be large enough that you aren’t ALWAYS around 25 other immortals.

That in itself I think is a necessity that makes the creation of a Highlander setting MMO difficult. The addition of massive amounts of heavy-interaction NPCs playing the roles of regular humans makes it worse.

And it IS necessary to have all aspects of society run by NPCs and all regular humans NPCs, because you can’t EXPECT people to NOT want to play an immortal in Highlander online. You also can’t force people into a non-Immortal role. “When you open your account, it will randomly be flagged Immortal or Human. Enjoy.” or some other such nonsense would be completely unacceptable to a paying customer logging into a Highlander MMO.

So you’ve got an idea that’s truly interesting, can be expanded upon to solve some gameplay-related problems with ease, and even provide a fantastic PvP setting with the NECESSITY of an updated UO-style world. I don’t even think it’d be desirable or even possible to create the setting in a Achiever-style based MMO, which is something like EQ or WoW. Much unlike a Transformers setting, which almost demands it.

It all sounds fantastic to a guy like me, which is really why I wanted to publicly think on the idea here for a moment. But you run into many fundamental problems as well. Chiefly being how do you provide the world of humans without reducing them to the state that NPCs are currently in MMOs? NOBODY wants to play the humans - and they shouldn’t have to.

But I think a game like this would fail without an interesting non-Immortal world for the Immortals to live in. Especially since the world would have to be pretty large (being another huge development and budget strain). Not only can you not have 5 towns populated mainly by Immortals LFG Molten Core, but you can’t have a huge, huge world with a million roaming, mindless NPCs. There has to be a lot of coding time behind each one, some more than others.

The very point of the game, as I envision it (and I think it’d be a hell of a game), would be undercut by any type of large budget restriction. Which comes back to the same problem Firefly has. You have to budget for your audience. If you spend large amounts of money on a game based around IP that will have limited transfer from it’s current fanbase (and/or already has a limited fanbase), you run the distinct risk of spending more than you could ever possibly make.

On the other hand, if you had about $150 million to blow, it’d be a grand social experiment. Maybe the government would like to set it up and monitor what people act like in a world surrounded by lessers who they consider insignificant.

Oh wait. That already goes on outside.

Oh well. What would YOU do with Immortality?

…

Yeah, I’m working on a slogan already in hopes of that massive government grant.