Working Title 11.29.07: Massive Effect - Harry Potter

Posted by Jordan Williams on 11.29.2007

First Avatar, then Transformers, now Harry Potter. Does the boy who lived have enough pull to make a decent MMORPG that can go heads up with World of Warcraft? He stands a better chance than one would think.

Welcome back to the #1 Column to think that killing beggars and plague victims in Assassin's Creed should be rewarded, WORKING TITLE. That's right. They should let us kill them and never look back. I beat Assassin's Creed last week and I will say that it was a fun, if not repetitive ride. Near the end of the game it started to feel like a chore and the informant missions were just painful. It wasn't the fact that I had to kill the Templar-like guards. It was the sheer fact that they always seemed to hide out in a place that was so densely populated by plague victims/drunks that no matter what I'd do I would get pushed around and my cover blown. At least I'm done with the game...for now. I still have a lot of flags and Templars to kill.


Either way, this week we are back on track with Massive Effect. In the first week we decided that if Nickelodeon actually gave it some backing that an Avatar MMORPG would work. The week after that we saw that maybe with a bit of hope, a Transformers MMORPG could work as well. So far we've had two that were pretty good, but didn't have such a wide appeal. Time for that to change today.

This week we are going to see if Harry Potter has what it takes to become a successful MMORPG. Where Avatar has somewhat of a cult following, and Transformers as just now hit a bit of resurgence. There has been one thing that has been on children's minds for the last decade to the point where it some places it's considered a sin to utter spoilers. Harry Potter is often credited with being the book series that got a whole generation reading again...but could it be credited with being the one game to dethrone World of Warcraft?

It stands a better chance than Avatar and Transformers.


Massive Effect: Harry Potter and the MMORPG


So with the Harry Potter series of books officially over. There's really not much else to look forward to or anything else to continue the continuity. What else do the Potter fans have to look forward to outside of the increasingly dull movies? What else can they possibly do? Well that's where the MMORPG comes in. It's a good thing the books have ended, too. It makes my job a WHOLE lot easier.


As with the first two, there's a standard breakdown of what I will do and how exactly this game will work out.

• Character Creation/Classes
  
• Timeline
  
• Gameplay
  
• Why it will/won't work
  
• Why it hasn't been done
  

Now, seeing as this is based off of a book series that has already completed. Most of this will be short and too the point and filled with some original thoughts. Now that that is out of the way, let's gets his show on the road.


Character Creation

Now this will obviously be the big selling point of the game. How many of you out there actually want to GO to Hogwarts? Or even better live in the general Harry Potter universe? Well, this is your chance. I'm not going to go into how you'd be able to customize your character...instead I'm going to be a little twist on the longtime staple of the Harry Potter series...

The Houses.

Now, we all know when a student first arrives to Hogwarts they are sorted into one of the four houses by The Sorting Hat. This would not change in the MMORPG world much...but what WOULD change is how it's handled. In the game I could see the houses being more of an overarching class...or a race. Similar to WoW where you have a race and THEN a class, in this game you would belong to a house and THEN have a class on top of that. Let's examine the houses and what they would bring to the table.

Gryffindor

We all know this house. It's the house of Harry, Ron, and Hermione as well as some of the other famous characters in the series. The books describe this house as courageous and heroic to a fault and the game would show that too. A Gryffindor would be the 'warrior' race. They would be better at offensive magic and the like, but such heroism would often get them into trouble...thus a lack of defensive magic and intelligence. Now, this doesn't mean that every single Gryffindor has to be an offensive wizard. It just lets you know where the stat bonuses lie. It should also be noted that the Gryffindor's resident element seems to be that of fire, which would mean that maybe only someone of the red and gold can learn some of the stronger fire based spells as well as being more versed in transfiguration due to McGonagall's influence.


The images in this issue aren't going to make sense at all.

Ravenclaw

The house of Cho Chang, and also my personal favorite house of the book. It's known for their smarts. Which would make them much better wizards overall than the other houses. Lending them better as the all around class, if not lacking a little in the defense. Due the resident element being that of air, Ravenclaws may do better on a broomstick than the other houses on top of being the only ones capable of learning higher level air based spells. This would be the ideal house for the person who isn't sure exactly if they want to be the fighter, support, or tank for the group. This way they can shift into whatever mode they wish to fit the situation, but isn't particularly gifted in any of them.

Hufflepuff

The house that Rowling forgot. You never really see the Hufflepuff that much in the books, but maybe that might change in the game due to them being the support house. They are known for loyalty and fair play, so I doubt they would like to see a teammate hurt through their inaction. This makes them the perfect house to be the support, especially with the resident element being that of Earth. Usually in most games Earth takes a backseat to fire in the attack elements, but this time around it will take over healing duties mostly because of the existence of Herbology. Something that Hufflepuffs will be better at, as well as being the only ones able to use the higher levels of earth spells as well as the highest levels of curative abilities.

Slytherin

And then there was the house that Draco built. I'm sure some of you are wondering how you could make the 'evil' house playable in the game. It's quite simple. Sure, Hagrid said that more dark wizards have come out of the silver and green than any other house, but that doesn't mean they ALL were bad. However, this statistic will have an effect on people of this house. They will have noticeably more violent spells and moves. Including the use of poisons and other 'evil' things. With the resident element being that of water, they will have a nice balance between defense and offense, leading a bit more to the defensive side rather than offensive. Slytherins are known for the cunning and resourcefulness, so they won't exactly be the first ones to arms. Along with possessing the more violent and damaging moves, they will also be higher ranked in potions (due to Snape's influence) and higher level water spells. Think of them as the 'evil good' class of the game. Similar to a Dark Elf.



Now that we have the houses out of the way we can move onto something a tad simpler, the classes.

This is pretty short and too the point. Throughout the books there's been really only four 'types' of wizards shown:

Offensive - They tend to attack more, and would be the fighter of the group. A good example of this would be none other than Harry Potter himself. Throughout the books he always seemed good at dishing out the damage but was never really skilled in deflecting it or blocking it, which led to him taking many an asskicking.

Defensive - The complete opposite of Offensive...as if I had to tell you. While they CAN attack, they do much better at countering what is done at them and sending it back. An example of this would be Severus Snape. While being a great wizard in his own right, he seems to be more at home deflecting his opponent's attacks and then capitalizing on it rather than charging headlong into battle.

Cleric/Curative - The healer. Where healing magic really didn't play much of a role in the books. It's proven to be out there. There just wouldn't be a game without this type of class to pick. I'm really having a hard time thinking of a good example of this class in the series...the only name that comes to mind here is Neville Longbottom...and even then it's a long shot. It's not that hard...just think of a random generic cleric.

Tradesmen (or Tradeswoman) - This would be the jack of all trades class. Now usually this would be where the sole spell caster would find its place...but in a game where EVERYONE is a wizard, it's kind of hard to think of there being a wizard's wizard. Instead, this is the person who isn't exactly sure WHAT they are. Thus, they can do everything. They have enough power to battle, enough defense to counter, and enough brains to cure...but the downfall is that they are spread very thinly across the three. They can do them all, but they can't be great at them all. Eventually somewhere down the line they will have to make the choice and stick with one of the earlier three classes.

Now, some might be wondering about the lack of prestige classes...well, I can't figure out how to do them. The only thing that I came up with is some sort of system where the first seven levels represent your years at Hogwarts and after that you are released into the 'real world' to become an Auror, and from there you do good deeds. It sounds fine, but I really couldn't work out more than that. So I apologize.

So now we have the general race and classes for the characters. Now here comes the part that gets a bit complicated. Now I have to somehow pick a timeline for which the game can take place.

Timeline

So, in the general Harry Potter universe there's three timelines. There's Pre-Voldemort, Harry Potter, and Post-Voldemort. The problem is that none of these timelines really give enough leeway to base a large scale game on. Well, that's not entirely true...one timeline really does lend itself to this game but first we'll talk about the ones that don't.

Post-Voldemort

This one would be the ideal choice if it wasn't so conclusive. The biggest tale of the Harry Potter series was the battle against Voldemort. Now that that evil has been removed, and all of the people who removed it are alive...it really doesn't have much of a twist. After all, why would the world have to depend on you to save it if Master Auror Harry Potter is still alive?

Harry Potter

This one is simple. It doesn't work because it takes place during the original continuity. This is BIG no-no in my book as then you have to build the game around events that you can't change to your liking. Avoiding this one.

Pre-Voldemort

This is the one that lends itself well...but we are talking PRE-PRE-Voldemort. I mean way back, before Lilly and James, before Tom Riddle...there ya go. Do you see where I am going with this? Well, let me spell it out for you. Who is the overarching bad guy you need to take down during the course of this game? Salazar Slytherin. We are going WAAAAAY back, folks.

This works well because it's so far away from any part of continuity that no matter what you do barring killing off one of the starting four, you can't mess up the continuity. This is the sort of thing that works. The game wouldn't be so much Harry Potter and the MMORPG rather than a stand alone Hogwarts game...but then again, if you wanted to play as Harry Potter you wouldn't be playing an MMORPG about the universe in the first place. Go play one of his many horrible movie games.

Gameplay

Si we gave the stage and characters set up...so how would we go about gameplay? I'm sure that everyone would love for the game to stay in Hogwarts, but that's just a bit too much, not even Harry could stay at Hogwarts for the full seven years during the book. My idea is a bit of an expansion on my prestige class idea. Somehow they could work it where your first few levels (and leading up to your first big battle) could be you at Hogwarts, and then after that you strike out into the real world as an Auror or some other type of battling wizard. This way you can explore more areas of the Harry Potter universe including other schools, other wizarding countries and all of those beasts you only hear about. We don't want to keep an MMORPG confined to one or two places. We want to let them travel and sprawl in their quest to defeat Salazar Slytherin. So let's use some of those other places we've never heard of, hell, let's make some places up. It's all groovy for this project.



Now as actually PLAYING the game, it would be a bit different from the normal MMORPG where everyone has a standard way to play. The fighters are out front and kicking ass, the support is in the back, and the casters are somewhere in the middle using mega spells. The problem here is that EVERYONE is going to be a caster. Wizards and Witches are NOTORIOUS for not being able to take a hit and this would be no different...so how would this work out? Well, given that you would be well versed in magic, one could assume there would be some sort of barrier one could make to shield them from physical damage for a bit...but not forever. That eliminates the problem about them being weak. The fighting would be just as you imagine it. A lot of ranged spell casting and a lot of countering. It may get old after awhile, but that's the price you pay when your MMORPG focuses only on one type of class. Look at Maple Story, its four classes play almost exactly the same yet it still has a TON of people playing it (for reasons I don't know. The game is horrible.).


Would it work?

In short, yes. Yes, this would work. Sure, you've got WoW out there dominating the market but there is no denying that Harry Potter has a strong market of its own and the die hard and casual fans alike would simply eat this game up if it were ever to be made. I'm not going to say it would ethrone WoW as the de faction MMORPG out there, but this would be the only one of I've done so far that stands at making a sizeable dent in WoW's market. Maybe the WoW plays get bored, or WoW is simply 'too hardcore' for the younger players to get into. This would be the perfect alternative for them and would actually serve as some sort of story building tool unlike WoW...of which I STILL don't know the story behind that one. To me the Warcraft story ended at Warcraft 3 and will resume with Warcraft 4.

Harry Potter's MMORPG is the first one so far that I can say I have confidence in standing up. Maybe not exactly how I explained it due to publishers and developers always wanting to change things to fit their vision better. But this one has the story, background, and importantly, the fan base to be a threat to World of Warcraft.

So...why hasn't it been made yet?

Why it hasn't been done

I usually have an answer to everything when it comes to this column...but I honestly do not have an answer for this. With ALL of the merchandise Harry Potter has spawned you'd think someone in the company would've thought of this game by now. I am honestly at a loss as to how this hasn't been made. We've gotten crappy releases of the movie games, shirts, shoes, candy, toys, and God knows what else...but not the one thing that stands to make them EPIC amounts of money.

Maybe there's some doubt I am overlooking but until I can figure out what it is...this is just going to sit as a big blank spot. I don't know why Warner Brothers or Rowling herself hasn't green lit this idea or at least something similar to it.

Working Feedback

Okay, this week we've got a DOOZY of a feedback from Travis Bucklaschuk. This feedback is actually two weeks old, but I decided not to use it in last week's issue because it didn't fit well. This week, however. It fits fine. Here it is:

I've been reading your column for a while now (All the way from the "Is Awesome series" and I must say your MMO one has been damn brilliant so far.) You have made me look at Avatar in a different light after reading it, and actually admit that it is the best thing Nick has put out since Rocko's Modern Life (How I miss that show.) As well you made the impossible slightly less than impossible with your idea for a Transformers Universe MMO, kudos to you.

Well to get to the point, I'm mainly e-mailing you for your thoughts on a idea I've been working on in a half assed manner for a long time but could possibly work more so than the Harry Potter idea. That's a Digimon based MMO. Now before you decide to stone me to death with possible "Pokemon Rip-off!" type responses, I think it could work wonders. There would be no classes to speak of as each Digimon has it's own type of attacks, strengths, and weaknesses (Sure you could argue size, but all in all you can just have a fun game with a ton of different Digimon and yet still not have classes.)

Now as for the Digivolutions (or Evolutions if you're not familiar) you could work it as a skill tree (I'm going with one similar to Diablo 2 as I've never played WoW.), in which it branches up the line, and you can have "Corrupted" or "Non-Corrupted" (Can't think of a better term...) as a choice for the trees and a possible third one (Maybe armor-digivolving but they'd have to make up some for the ones who don't have said form, so probably skip that).

Example (There are tons of ways you can go with it, so I'm giving a bare bones one):

Non-Corrupted: Agumon --> Greymon -> MetalGreymon
Corrupted: Agumon --> Greymon (A alternate color) -> SkullGreymon

Now I am leaving out the Mega forms as not all Digimon have one and it would unbalance gameplay I feel. The reason I'm not using it for attacks is because each Digimon has a set run of 2-4 attacks and well I figure you can set say the right-click as a Special, and the left click as a Melee (or vice versa, but I'm open to suggestions, hence my writing to you).

So my Skill Tree system I feel should rely on working up Digivolutions as you can see, and I think with the tons of different Digimon there are to choose from it would work much better that way, and the more points you put into said form, the more attacks will be added and the stronger it gets. Still this is a work in progress, so I'm shopping around for suggestions on how to refine this one, and I figured why not consult you.

Now as for Expansion Packs why not go by the seasons?
Here's how I figure it would go.
Base Game: Digimon Adventure 01 (Known as Season One to us, one could argue that you can put 02 in there, but I wouldn't as it leaves room for updates. And could give us a starting on either File Island or the Continent of Server, and the ability to travel between the two.)
Expansion Pack 1: Digimon Adventure 02 (This would open up more of the world to us, and adding more Digimon, and give the new ones a possible third tab, that being the Armor Digivolution ability.)
Expansion Pack 2: Digimon Tamer (This would be the third season; I am not sure what to add here besides more new Digimon that got introduced into the series, along with more possible digivolutions. I'd stay away from the whole card idea that they put into the show, maybe add in a possible alternate world such as the "real world"?)
Expansion Pack 3: Digimon Frontier (Really I don't know where to go with this, as I never watched much of this series. But obviously more Rookies and more Digivolution options would go here and new lands. And a new transportation ability with the train Digimon that run about.)
Expansion pack 4: Digimon Savers (This I don't know much about either, but this would go along the lines of Frontier with more Digimon and such, and new land to explore. Maybe add another transportation option.)



The one thing I really have no clue to go about with is items, sure some Digimon have accessories but not all of them do, so I'm stumped here, maybe you can have data discs that augment stats instead of clothing? Overall I have no clue on this, I suppose you can use the skill tree for ATK, DEF, and HP upgrades by plugging in stat points into certain Digivolutions (and increasing the time in which they are effective, and decreasing the time in which you can't use them.)

Now as for a fee in a perfect world it would be free ala Guild Wars, but if not, I think a fee of about 40-60 dollars a year (Works out to $3.33 to $5.00 Dollars a month, it's not likely but one can dream!) would be more than fair really.

So here's my scattered thoughts on a Digimon MMO which I think can work, and I figured you might be able to shape it into something awesome. (Add in some generic ass kissing here so you don't get too pissed off at me for imposing on you to help me out in an idea.)

Boy howdy, that's a big one. I'll tell you what. I really can't reply this one like I wanted to because I dropped off of the Digimon Bandwagon after...season...um...Adventure 2...that was the one with Armadillomon right? Anyway, let me get some research and I'll have a reply NEXT week. But honestly, it sounds pretty solid as is. Thanks for the kickin' rad feedback.

That's it

And that's that. So far we've had Avatar, Transformers and now Harry Potter. All three games that CAN be turned into MMORPGs but in the case of Harry Potter, the only one that stands the best chance of taking on WoW. Well, so far we've had three that have been pretty easy to work with. Avatar already has a great story and system set up, Transformers has the customization element and a lot of history to use, and Harry Potter has the imagination of the younger gamers as well as pop culture appeal.

Now it's time to make an MMORPG that has none of those elements...

Next week in the final Massive Effect...I'm going to make an MMORPG out of...







































Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams...and you've been warned...