Ideas for a Harry Potter MMORPG

Garmalak

CONTAINS SPOILERS ABOUT THE BOOKS AND MOVIES!

Hello all,

I open this thread to discuss a Harry Potter MMO. Would you play it?

Here's an idea (The tutorial is set like the books, I.E: Year 3: Sirius black escape, Year 4 triwizard tournament...):

The tutorial is, years 1-7. Your level will be replaced by "First year". 
Year 1: Learn basic things (Walking, talking to NPC's, finishing quests, a couple of nooby spells)
Year 2: Learn about Quidditch, flying tutorial, a few more spells.
Year 3: You fight off a few dementors who are attacking Students.
Year 4: ?
Year 5: ?
Year 6: A mock instance where you fight a few death eaters alongside the other players. (The battle before Dumbledore dies)
Year 7: Your first instance! Some AI, students, the order, and Death Eaters duke it out. And some other players. Then, when Harry is supposedly dead and Voldemort beckons the students to join him, and only Malfoy comes, you can also join him by going forward. Then you officially become a Death Eater and the next part of the battle is against the AI and player students. In the end, the final boss is, let's say... Greyback? And after killing him you get a small cutscene of Harry killing Voldemort.

Then you choose your job, Auror, teacher at Hogwarts (you teach noobs in real time?), Dragon hunter, Gringotts banker, whatever.
Now, you start as a level 1 and progress to say, level 50.
It will be an open world.

Now, what everyone is thinking about: "Why don't I just Avada Kedavra the crap out of everyone?"
Well, you are correct. That's the snag.
I say we bend the lore a bit, and that Avada Kedavra has a 3 hour cooldown or something, and is a finishing move. meaning you can only use it on people with 30% of their health left. 

Then, Crucio. If you just press the skill, it's a red bolt that deals high damage. If you want, you can also hold it down, but the victim can somehow break out of it, perhaps spamming the arrow keys?

Imperio. Now this, is complicated. This turns enemy NPC's to your side, and they fight other enemy NPC's. For players, it turns them into an AI for a few seconds (I don't see that being more complicated than making a bot) and fights other players.

Ah, but of course. You can't murder people in front of everyone. You will automatically recieve a "Bounty" on your head, which will be randomly given to an Auror.

Let's say Philipp Frendlepit, a Death Eater, murders a poor newb who was AFK. I am an Auror. I go to the Ministry and ask for a Bounty, and they will randomly give me one. I get Philipp's. On the bounty it says:

"Philipp Frendlepit
Crime: Murder
Situation: Take him back Alive
Victim: George Rowling"

I defeat him, and at 1% health he is teleported to Azkaban, where he has to spend a certain time.

 

(I'm copying this from a thread from another mmorpg forum, I'll post the rest of my posts and this gets replies.)

Garmalak

No one cares?

 

Not alot of Lore was explained in HP, which is good. We could have stuff like:

MacDonalds, school for Americans
Icecream, school for Italians
Doritos, school for Mexicans

See what I'm getting at? Not those names, of course. But, why not? I doubt the only wizards are British, German and French.

As for the Day Z reference, no. Just no.

And the restrictions for the MMO, nope. Think about it. We could Potter up everything:

DPS/TANK: Defence against the dark arts specialist
HEALER: Herbology specialist

Things like that ^

And anyway, as I said, it wouldn't be

"Kill 10 death eaters to win Xp" Times 100 till you get to the endgame.

You would do things for your job (The afromentioned bounties, for example)

Now, the essential part of every MMO. Co-operation. We could have "Order"'s! 

In a few more posts I will explain the great combat.

I'm going into a bit of a non possible to make MMORPG, but what the hell. JK has a billion pounds, so do most big gaming companies. And trust me, they would win it back in 3 days.

Of course, we hit another snag.

Paying 15 bucks a month = less players
Buying it = a few dozen thousand players don't join
F2P (Completely free) = Shitty game.

If it was F2P, they would have to get money SOMEHOW. The Item Shop might get some things back, but well... You know.

Maybe have things like buyable quest packs and instances? Nothing vital to the game, that's where LOTRO f-ed up (You have to buy every area except the newbie zones)
Plus cool things in the item store.
And maybe a customizable wand (F2P wands are randomized, core and visual aspect)

^That would penalize no one.

eye_m

I have an idea for a Harry Potter MMORPG. Flush it down the toilet.

 

If a person wanted to design a similar lore, minus all the cutesy stuff from HP, then fine.  I can watch and even enjoy the movies, but I don't want to play in the world.

 

Just my opinion, but I thought I'd share.

Dibdabs

I wouldn't be interested either.   Nice films, but too cutesy and childish for any MMO I'd want to play.

WhiteLantern

"Everyone's a wizard, Harry" - Big Bearded Guy

ste2000

A good idea about a Harry Potter game is not making one.

Making themed MMOs where you CANNOT be the main character is just pointless

Razeekster

I'd actually love to see a Harry Potter MMORPG, but I would want it to have nothing to do with Harry Potter. Keep it in the same world and settings but let's have a new story for the player.

davestr1zl

Originally posted by ste2000

A good idea about a Harry Potter game is not making one.

Making themed MMOs where you CANNOT be the main character is just pointless

Like how everyone wants to be Luke Skywalker in Star Wars and no one wants to be uncle Owen?

Wizardry

I think the best market for a harry Potter MMO is to join the kids  market with SOE and KingsIlse.Taht way yo ucan make a very simple game and kids will scoop it up.

I really do not think a Harry Potter game would sell to the 20+ crowd.I would however love to see MANY more developers push into the kids market,this would create  MUCH needed competition.

To be honest even the movie series needed a high quality production just to get me to try and watch it,otherwise it was a no sell.

Yakkin

The potential issues I can see with a Harry Potter MMO, is that:

1) Most of the known Harry Potter lore occurs in a few specific places: Hogwarts and it's surrounding area, The Ministry of Magic, Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade, Privet Drive and King's Cross, and the Burrow. Sure Harry and friends might have left the boundaries on more than one occasion, and most of The Deathly Hallows took place outside of Hogwarts in some random forests, but otherwise, the Harry Potter Universe we know is very self contained.

 

If you were to try to make it an open world outside of just Hogwarts, you risk creating places that are unfamiliar and may end up being not very Harry Potterish. On the flipside, being limited to just the specific places mentioned above can make the world very limited in size, and can potentially get repetitive very quickly.

 

2) What time period is this set in? Are we talking about setting it during Voldemort's rise and inital reign of terror? Are we setting it during his resurrection? Are we setting it after Voldemort's death? Or can we go even further than that and try setting it back years before, during the rise of Grindenwald, the Dark Lord that Dumbledore defeated?

 

If we set it in the first 2 time periods, we end up potentially only being a spectator to Harry Potter's heroics; not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not going to be easy to establish your own identity when Harry Potter is saving the world. Done well however, and it could end up being how a normal wizard would be responding to Voldemort's reign of terror.

 

If we set it in the latter two periods, that's were things can get murky; it's mostly uncharted territory, with a potential to screw up or just not be very interesting.

 

3) Cosmetics. Everyone in hogwarts wears robes and uniform, not very pleasing to the eyes. That is all.

 

I think there are a lot more things I could say, but this is all I can think of at the moment.

 

 

 

Rockhide

I have nothing against "kiddie games", but to me Harry Potter fits something like Pottermore best: a social "puzzle" and minigame experience that doesn't depend on a persistent world.

ste2000

Originally posted by davestr1zl

Originally posted by ste2000

A good idea about a Harry Potter game is not making one.

Making themed MMOs where you CANNOT be the main character is just pointless

Like how everyone wants to be Luke Skywalker in Star Wars and no one wants to be uncle Owen?

Exactly

Magnetia

Putting HP names onto existing MMO mechanics is just a reskin.

You really need to think about the core experience in HP and how you want to deliver that. If you gave me a HP MMO with normal boring kill x quests I would quit in a minute.

One of the most important things to think about is progression. How is a player going to learn more spells? Buying them? Learning from books? From teachers? 

How would you make going to class fun? Those crazy things that happen at random would be a good start. One of the most entertaining things to see was spells backfiring. Spell backfire to me would be a core combat mechanic to make it slightly less boring.