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Hey,
was thinking to myself that since i stopped playing WoW years ago, there hasn't really been any other game that has drawn me in and nothing to look forward to. I suddenly thought that there must be some sort of MTG mmorpg in the works! It would be perfect, amazing story, amazing art work and everything that a mmorpg should be.
Quick google search of "mtg mmorpg" showed that alot of other people shared the same feelings and i though that ill post my take on what it should be like and see what other think.

First of all, it would be a relatively easy game to design and contruct as all the lore/art work/items/characters/story is already there, but for it to work, it would have to be really well planned with no corners cut. If a game like this is to work, it can't be half arsed which is why what i type might seem to detailed to work.

Warning: *I am not a Lore expert, what i type might be wrong or not fit,but you get the gist of what im saying*


My base model:

It should consist of 5 factions (one for each colour,) each faction has 2 races and 3 alliances(evil, good, neutral) and they all have there own starting town and leader.

Evil:

BLACK
Vampire - [Homeland] Zenikar
                [Leader] Sorin Markov
Demon   - [Leader] Lord of the Pit

RED
Goblin     - [Homeland] Mountains/caves
                 [Leader] Goblin King
Minotaur - [Leader] Zedruu the Greathearted

Good:

GREEN
Elf          - [Homeland] Forest
                [Leader] Eladamri
Treefolk - [Leader] Verdaloth the Ancient


WHITE
Human - [Homeland] Main human city?
              [Leader] *Is there a human king/lord?*
Kithkin  -[Leader] *Is there a kithkin king/lord?*

Neutral:

BLUE
Merfolk -[Homeland] Underwater/twilight
              [Leader] Empress Galina
Faerie   -[Leader]Oona, Queen of the fae

Each leader's story can be told and there powers revealed (Empress Galina can mind control the other leaders, Sorin has devistating power to weaken, Verdaloth can create a mass of saproling army etc,) sticking to the lore we already know.

Classes:

Each race can then choose from an array of classes, and each class has 3 paths to choose (talent tree) ranging from:

Wizard - Fire/Lighting/Control
Druid - Healing/Buffs/Nature(summons)
Cleric - Healing/Buffs/Aura
Archer - Marksman/Lore/Companion(Pet)
Soldier - Protection/Agreesive/Passive
Engineer - Tinker/Robotics/Explosives
Rogue - Assasin/Shadow/Disipline
Necromancer - Summons/Soul/Harvest
Berserker - Masteries/Bloodlust/Anger

The spells and abilities these classes can cast should resemble the ones in the trading card game e.g wizard fire casting shock/lightning bolt/comet storm etc

Items:

The items should follow the rarity order of the trading card game (Common/Uncommon/Rare/Mythic) with familiar item names being equipments such as World Slayer, Loxodon Warhammer, Kaldra set.


Story/Lore:

The story should follow closely to the existing story/lore from the books with the variety of zones and wonderous landscapes and portals that can lead to completely different maps and Times in existance which should allow most the MTG story to be portrayed.

The leader of each race should be a planeswalker and each major boss encounter should be too from Nicol Bolas to Lillana etc

The pve should be world maps and dungeon based with advanced tactics and teamplay required to complete each instance

The pvp should be world map and arena based

Each patch/expansion should go along side the new releases of the trading card game with each major standard block change being an expansion and each new set being a patch.

Payment:

For a game of this scale to be successful it will need a LARGE team behind it, especially to keep up to date with patches/expansions with the trading card game. Because of this it will either have to have a clever auction house system that uses real money and/or a monthly subscription with frequent expansions.

I would propose a monthly subscription of £4.99 + clever real money auction idea + regualar epansions costing around £20

Inbuilt Trading card game:

During the game there is a "MTG Hall" in each major Homeland. In this hall is a sub/mini game of the mtg trading card game, which will play out similar to the existing MTG online card game where you can collect and play mtg cards.

To obtain these cards you can either find from random pve drops which have a extremly low chance of dropping. Buy using real money from the auction house a Booster pack (money goes to wizard of coast) or buy other players cards that they put on the auction house (wizard of coast take a cut)

Not only does this involve another fun element to the game, but wizard will also make more money (making the game better) and its not a vital part of the game, so players are not forced to use real money, and if player wish to use real money for this trading card game, it does not effect there pve/pvp envolvment. This is better than most other games systems because it doesn't mean the rich have an advantage and shouldn't encourage "farmers"

Summary:

I pre warn you i havn't prof read this and my spelling/grammar isnt the best and this may even be posted in the wrong place, but i really think a game on this scale would not only be AMAZING but will make Wizard of the coast ALOT of money and bring more business to there trading card game.

Any thoughts?

Sorry if this was a boring read

Jan 11, 2013 -- 6:10AM, Dragon_Nut wrote:

Jan 11, 2013 -- 5:51AM, Sadaku wrote:

First of all, it would be a relatively easy game to design and contruct as all the lore/art work/items/characters/story is already there.

I stopped reading here. There's no such thing as an 'easy' MMO to construct. For an MMO to work requires millions of dollars worth of programmers, artists, quality assurance, marketing, and of course managers to ensure the whole thing doesn't implode.


And then I started reading again and realized that your plan was effectively 'WoW but MtG themed' with the card game as a minigame. Yeah, no. If there ever would be a good Magic MMO, it would be far more likely to be effectively Shandalar on a larger scale. There's no reason to just paint an existing concept with a warped version of Magic storyline.

Thats why i used the term "relatively"

I'm not going to pick this whole thing apart, but the most obvious thing is bascially exactly what Dragon Nut already said.  MMO's are incredibly expensive to create and you are drastically underestimating what is required to make an MMO.

There is also a bit of a disconnect between MMO gaming and Magic.  Certainly there is some overlap, but could we get the majority of Magic players to play a Magic themed MMO?  Probably not.

In addition, most of the MMO's created in the past several years have failed.  Lets examine that for a moment.  What have they done wrong?  They attempted to steal WoW's customers by making WoW 2.0.  You cant beat an established MMO by copying it.  No new game can possibly compete with years upon years of polish and added content.  Then add in the inertia created by friendships, forcing you to get large groups of friends to all switch to your game simultaneously.

And none of this is even touching on the fact that WOTC is not a digital company.   It takes only a cursory glance at the digital products they've put out to see this failing.  They are forced to outsource these products to external developers, which has not historically gone very well for them.

In the end, here is the key thing about game development:  Everybody has an idea.  Even people who dont play games can probably pitch you a decent sounding game if pressed for an idea.  The hard part of game development is not coming up with the ideas.  The really hard part of making a game is actually making those ideas work.

That's a terrible idea.

One of the best things about magic is how open ended it is. Many of the great decks and broken combos that players have created over the years are things that just slipped through, because R&D underestimated the creativity of players. You're suggesting a game model that subverts that creative freedom by neatly fitting each of the 5 colours into alliances based around good, evil and neutral, and then creating classes for players to run around with? I would rather take a staple to the eye than watch Wizards destroy such a well crafted and deep franchise like that.

If MTG ever were to become an MMO, the only way they could ever do it justice would be by having it be an open-ended, classless MMO, based around the collection of skills and abilities, each of which fits into its own particular colour of magic. If you created some form of karma system for punishing griefers, you could have a heaven and a hell, summon players as ghosts to fight for you, and do all kinds of crazy stuff. Personally, I think a game like this could feasibly be done, and there's already a colossal library of game verbs that could be used (i.e., the cards). But of course the hard part is the programming, the modeling, and actually realizing a fully fleshed out world. But what you suggested? No. Just... just no.

As a software engineer, I will tell you ideas are worth 0.000000001 cents. Implementation of a well thought out idea is where all the value is. Most software developers have enough ideas of their own to last them several lifetimes.