Would be something new but it wouldnt have much of a market outside North America.
Europeans dont care about cowboys.
probably because european history books tend not to omit the bits the NA history books prefer to ignore. probably best to leave it at that. all things considered.
land rush claim land make a house or a mine or a town
hire players to be shieriff's and deputies to control town
railway player constructed
bank robberies
and if you made all races the same its very difficult to do a lawsuit against that
becasuse if they took you to court they are acctualy the one making a problem with the race and trying to say one race is different from another where as you are saying everyone is the same
I'm not sure at which I would be more pissed at if I were a Native American. Being portrayed as an enemy in the video game... or not being included in a game taking place in my native homeland.
Originally posted by jusomdude I'm not sure at which I would be more pissed at if I were a Native American. Being portrayed as an enemy in the video game... or not being included in a game taking place in my native homeland.
by now their probably resigned to it, its been happening for hundreds of years after all.
Just about everyone wants to make another WoW. WoW has elves and magic. There's no magic or elves in Wild West. Besides, Westerns aren't as popular as they used to be. Maybe if somehow you could fit zombies into western setting, since that seems the rage now.
I just don't see a AAA (or anything with decent funding) Wild West MMO coming any time soon. Maybe something low budget like Darkfall or Mortal, or one of those F2P type games.
The Wild West would be a dream set for any mmo studio, actually, when you think about it :
- huge, huge terrains, without the need to populate them with cities, etc (= budget redirected to more important game features)
- the "small town" philosophy (local news, local plots, local problems etc) would be perfect for the "quest hub" classical design type
- lots of faction/social archetype possibilites (bankers, robbers, cowboys, tribe-type people *yes indians*, lawmen, outlaws, entertainers, doctors, etc)
- lots of class possibilities (shooter, brawler, alchemist, specialist, mercenary, hunter, etc)
- infinite extension possibilities (xPac 1 : region 1, xPac 2 : region 2, etc... or time based : xPac 1 : wild era, xPac 2 : industralization era, etc)
- lower need on art resources : there are fewer materials (wood, rock, sand, burnt vegetation) than in other "old times" ambiences
- lots of mini games possibilities (poker, drink, wild hunt, etc) for casual audience satisfaction
- openness to mystical stuff (indian magic, voodoo, ghosts, monsters in places where nobody goes, etc)
- can be very group oriented / dungeons / raids (outlaw den, ghost town cleaning, undermine worker rescue, etc)
- super open to sandbox (special desert region reserved for player created towns, houses, etc, à la SWG)
- the scenario could fairly avoid sensible subjects such as the indians problem, slavery etc., and even turn it to good use by proposing to rewrite history (help slaves to escape a farm, fight besides indians against invading army, etc)
- pvp could be easily implement every latest inovation in the genre (invasions by outlaws, factions growing their territory dominance across towns, politics, duels, opposite faction town infiltration missions, etc)
- etc, etc ........... And you don't need to be realistic on combat (a brawler can take out a shooter, just like in any other mmo, just give him the proper tools)
Clearly this is a perfect set for a successful mmo, targetted at several audiences. If I was leading a mmo studio with a budget, I'll definitely jump on that opportunity.
***** Before hitting that reply button, please READ the WHOLE thread you're about to post in *****
You could also leave a vast territory to let guilds of a certain size develop tiny towns (as their guild halls) that could include things such as a saloon, bank, doctor, etc.. Then allow it to generate a small amount of constant income for the guild. Then if a guild were to challenge another guild it would result in a classic gunfight (if the other guild agrees) only larger. The winner taking the income of the losing guild for 24 hours or so (i think losing the town would turn too many people off)
I've been yearning for a good historic or pre historic MMO for years. We've had a couple Roman era MMOs but they were pretty aweful (Roma Victor and later Gods and Heroes).
I think the reason we're not getting any is the same reason we're not getting any AAA sandbox MMOs: studios are broke and nobody wants to take any chances by deviating too far from the WoW format.
Originally posted by hockeyplayr Just curious what everyone thinks. I personally think that era has all the elements to make a good game for all types of players.
The answer is painfully obvious. It's because no one has made a very popular and very profitable "wild west" MMO for them to copy.
I do think it could be sort of limiting because of the limits of the time of the wild west. While I can think of a few possible classes/whatever, I'm hard pressed to be able to flesh anything but a cowboy, bandit, or lawman/bounty hunter out. How would you handle things like instances, raiding, or battlegrounds? I would guess it would have to be more open world sandbox to work and have a setting that makes some sense.
I do think it's possible to make a decent game from. Horses/horse and buggy for personal travel. Train for fast world travel. Trains, to me, would seem the best suited for load screen/transitions for world travel. Although, that would negate train robbing. Which, to me, would be a must. In the spirit of the time, it would lend itself to land purchase or getting jobs in little towns that pop up. It could have dynamic world controlled towns that spring up and die out after time or meeting of conditions. Conditions could be gang take over, financial depletion by robbery, environmental issues like climate change or a resource being exhausted, or just a random time cycle. Crafting would be easy enough to brain storm out. Community/guilds would be a little harder to me. Only thing I could think of would be a ranch of like minded people, a group of town/area law enforcement, or a gang of bandits. You could do towns for guilds, but that opens up designing your own layouts/building placement. It's been done before with castles, but not sure who would be up to the task. I think there are a few ways to make a game like this work, but it wouldn't be your conventional MMO. But, that's not really a bad thing either.
land rush claim land make a house or a mine or a town
hire players to be shieriff's and deputies to control town
railway player constructed
bank robberies
and if you made all races the same its very difficult to do a lawsuit against that
becasuse if they took you to court they are acctualy the one making a problem with the race and trying to say one race is different from another where as you are saying everyone is the same
I think you nailed it right there. It would be so much fun plus instead of guilds we would have gangs and posses.
Originally posted by Robokapp well...I imagine some are a bit hesitant to make a whites vs indians faction mmo...for the same reason there is no real race based MMO. when are all the games who have playable real races set? either in deep sci-fi world war scenarios or in antiquity. or the races are dwarves, elves, humans, goblins and orcs.make an mmo with ever-so-slight hint at stereotype and start thinking of ways to make each race unique and my, how the lawsuits will flow.example:indian racial is +1 culinary skill. -100mil in courts.whites jump height 2% less than the other races. -100mil in courts.That's why. too close to social sensitive topics. Indians are still around...and wouldn't be very tolerant and understanding about this.
I think that might be part of it, but you could easily side step issues like that. Just have 0 race based traits and have a skill based system. If someone cooks better or jumps higher, it's because they wanted to, not because they had a racial advantage.
I think you might need to avoid historical accuracy in general. You could have a game where only the white settlers were allowed to buy land, and where all the Chinese, African American and Indians were lynched or worse when they owned land or married a white person...but it wouldn't sell very well and it would just make people angry or uncomfortable. But these things are easily avoidable.
I wonder though if the reason nobody has started such a game is because it seems ideally suited to a sandbox style game. Owning and managing land, starting towns with political systems and exploration with resource management all sound like something that should be a sandbox game to me. So the problem isn't that it's a Western MMORPG, it's that the ideal style of game isn't popular enough to warrant the investment.
It's probably not the sandbox thing. It's probably just that Westerns aren't all that popular right now. Books, movies and games are mostly set in the current time, medieval fantasy times or a sci-fi setting. The people writing games look at Westerns and think nobody will buy it, no matter how good it is.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Comments
ask rockstar to make it
ill wait for a western themed mmo in the meanwhile.
Grim Dawn, the next great action rpg!
http://www.grimdawn.com/
Day 1: "This town ain't big enough for the two of us"
Day 2: "Wait ... aren't you dead?"
Day 3: "again?!"
Not only devs ... i think it is pretty boring too.
But it can be spiced up adding steam punk elements, undead .. or what-not.
Evil will always triumph because good is dumb....
Would be something new but it wouldnt have much of a market outside North America.
Europeans dont care about cowboys.
I have trouble thinking of a less appealing scenario.
1. The genocide that happends to the native americans.
2. The stealing of land by the invasion force.
3. The first form of concentration camps in history - reservations.
4. The enslavement of black people.
5. Basically no laws. Murder as "penatly" for stealing horses. Murder by mob whenever the mob feels like it.
6. All the other forms of stupidity, too.
Seriously, thanks, but no thanks.
probably because european history books tend not to omit the bits the NA history books prefer to ignore. probably best to leave it at that. all things considered.
well, thats glossing over it a bit, but yeah.. generally that reason.
this would probably make a great sand box mmo
land rush claim land make a house or a mine or a town
hire players to be shieriff's and deputies to control town
railway player constructed
bank robberies
and if you made all races the same its very difficult to do a lawsuit against that
becasuse if they took you to court they are acctualy the one making a problem with the race and trying to say one race is different from another where as you are saying everyone is the same
Perhaps because there aren't that many weapons and fighting styles for a mmorpg?
I can only really see two classes.
Gunslinger with a rifle, revolver and dynamite.
Indian with tomahawk, dagger and bow.
Fallout New Vegas had a very wild west feeling (to much in my opinion); a scifi wild west mmorpg would be a better idea. (capt. Bravestar)
by now their probably resigned to it, its been happening for hundreds of years after all.
Yeah it would have to be a sandbox MMO thats for sure..
I would love to see a wild west MMORPG.. and im from europe.. we love a good wild west film
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Just about everyone wants to make another WoW. WoW has elves and magic. There's no magic or elves in Wild West. Besides, Westerns aren't as popular as they used to be. Maybe if somehow you could fit zombies into western setting, since that seems the rage now.
I just don't see a AAA (or anything with decent funding) Wild West MMO coming any time soon. Maybe something low budget like Darkfall or Mortal, or one of those F2P type games.
The Wild West would be a dream set for any mmo studio, actually, when you think about it :
- huge, huge terrains, without the need to populate them with cities, etc (= budget redirected to more important game features)
- the "small town" philosophy (local news, local plots, local problems etc) would be perfect for the "quest hub" classical design type
- lots of faction/social archetype possibilites (bankers, robbers, cowboys, tribe-type people *yes indians*, lawmen, outlaws, entertainers, doctors, etc)
- lots of class possibilities (shooter, brawler, alchemist, specialist, mercenary, hunter, etc)
- infinite extension possibilities (xPac 1 : region 1, xPac 2 : region 2, etc... or time based : xPac 1 : wild era, xPac 2 : industralization era, etc)
- lower need on art resources : there are fewer materials (wood, rock, sand, burnt vegetation) than in other "old times" ambiences
- lots of mini games possibilities (poker, drink, wild hunt, etc) for casual audience satisfaction
- openness to mystical stuff (indian magic, voodoo, ghosts, monsters in places where nobody goes, etc)
- can be very group oriented / dungeons / raids (outlaw den, ghost town cleaning, undermine worker rescue, etc)
- super open to sandbox (special desert region reserved for player created towns, houses, etc, à la SWG)
- the scenario could fairly avoid sensible subjects such as the indians problem, slavery etc., and even turn it to good use by proposing to rewrite history (help slaves to escape a farm, fight besides indians against invading army, etc)
- pvp could be easily implement every latest inovation in the genre (invasions by outlaws, factions growing their territory dominance across towns, politics, duels, opposite faction town infiltration missions, etc)
- etc, etc ........... And you don't need to be realistic on combat (a brawler can take out a shooter, just like in any other mmo, just give him the proper tools)
Clearly this is a perfect set for a successful mmo, targetted at several audiences. If I was leading a mmo studio with a budget, I'll definitely jump on that opportunity.
***** Before hitting that reply button, please READ the WHOLE thread you're about to post in *****
I've been yearning for a good historic or pre historic MMO for years. We've had a couple Roman era MMOs but they were pretty aweful (Roma Victor and later Gods and Heroes).
I think the reason we're not getting any is the same reason we're not getting any AAA sandbox MMOs: studios are broke and nobody wants to take any chances by deviating too far from the WoW format.
The answer is painfully obvious. It's because no one has made a very popular and very profitable "wild west" MMO for them to copy.
I do think it could be sort of limiting because of the limits of the time of the wild west. While I can think of a few possible classes/whatever, I'm hard pressed to be able to flesh anything but a cowboy, bandit, or lawman/bounty hunter out. How would you handle things like instances, raiding, or battlegrounds? I would guess it would have to be more open world sandbox to work and have a setting that makes some sense.
I do think it's possible to make a decent game from. Horses/horse and buggy for personal travel. Train for fast world travel. Trains, to me, would seem the best suited for load screen/transitions for world travel. Although, that would negate train robbing. Which, to me, would be a must. In the spirit of the time, it would lend itself to land purchase or getting jobs in little towns that pop up. It could have dynamic world controlled towns that spring up and die out after time or meeting of conditions. Conditions could be gang take over, financial depletion by robbery, environmental issues like climate change or a resource being exhausted, or just a random time cycle. Crafting would be easy enough to brain storm out. Community/guilds would be a little harder to me. Only thing I could think of would be a ranch of like minded people, a group of town/area law enforcement, or a gang of bandits. You could do towns for guilds, but that opens up designing your own layouts/building placement. It's been done before with castles, but not sure who would be up to the task. I think there are a few ways to make a game like this work, but it wouldn't be your conventional MMO. But, that's not really a bad thing either.
I think you nailed it right there. It would be so much fun plus instead of guilds we would have gangs and posses.
Grim Dawn, the next great action rpg!
http://www.grimdawn.com/
I think that might be part of it, but you could easily side step issues like that. Just have 0 race based traits and have a skill based system. If someone cooks better or jumps higher, it's because they wanted to, not because they had a racial advantage.
I think you might need to avoid historical accuracy in general. You could have a game where only the white settlers were allowed to buy land, and where all the Chinese, African American and Indians were lynched or worse when they owned land or married a white person...but it wouldn't sell very well and it would just make people angry or uncomfortable. But these things are easily avoidable.
I wonder though if the reason nobody has started such a game is because it seems ideally suited to a sandbox style game. Owning and managing land, starting towns with political systems and exploration with resource management all sound like something that should be a sandbox game to me. So the problem isn't that it's a Western MMORPG, it's that the ideal style of game isn't popular enough to warrant the investment.
It's probably not the sandbox thing. It's probably just that Westerns aren't all that popular right now. Books, movies and games are mostly set in the current time, medieval fantasy times or a sci-fi setting. The people writing games look at Westerns and think nobody will buy it, no matter how good it is.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
What is WRONG with you people? Why you thinking so small?
If you want a wild west themed MMO, I say that's more reason for a Firefly-based MMO. Get the best of many worlds.
Oderint, dum metuant.