Hi Everyone,

 

Long time fan and reader of 11 of the WoT books, waiting for A Memory of Light for christmas.

 

Now I have contacted serveral sites with no responses so I thought I would go one short of contacting RJ himself and post on this forum. I know along time ago a game was created by Legend in 1999.

 

Myself and a University freind are seriously (and I mean seriously) considering attempting to create a WoT MMORPG (obviously we would need permission to do so) as a commercial venture to present to a large studio (EA etc) next summer.

 

Basicly the only doubt or question we have at the momment is if we make the book (the main story) into a playable one player game and make the worlds within the WoT an open MMORPG style environment, would it work?

 

I just wondered what people thought to the idea?

 

Neo

Hello Neo.

 

I have no idea about RP games so not qualified to answer your question, but I am sure Sirayn will come back to you on this.

 

Wish you lots of luck in any case... and if you do get the go ahead in the end... give us an update here. You never know... might get me into the realms of the game world yet

.

Hi Neo,

 

As the roleplay mod for this board, I was tipped off to check this out, but I'm thinking that my PbP experience will be of no use to you whatsoever and I suspect the Dragonmount forum-based RP will be too low-traffic to get you quick answers. The only response I can make is that I feel the storyline can easily be made into a single-player game - the Legends game managed just fine with a spinoff of the pre-book timeline. You'd stand a better chance of finding MMORPGers and other interested parties on the General Wheel of Time Discussion board - it's where a lot of Wheel of Time media talk goes on, about the existing games, long-rumoured miniseries, film and so on. It's also a comparatively high-traffic forum. You can also ping our PbP roleplayers here. Go forth and speak unto the many members of Dragonmount. :)

 

Cheers,

Sirayn

I still have the Wheel of Time PC game, and it was set as a prequel to the storyline. I thought it was... for lack of a better word... trash. It was based on an Aes Sedai that had almost no use of the power, somewhat like Queen Morgase was reported to have in the series. Her only way to use the Power as a weapon against the dark one's minions, was through Ter Angreal that she found throughout the storyline. This was trash. As far as i would say, there was absolutely NO book sense in the storyline, and the whole thing was trash...

 

As far as an MMORPG, i think that the high buy rate, and instant denial of having enjoyed the last video game venture kinda gave a big "no-no" to future installments of that style of gameplay. Honestly, it was not the series' fault. It was the animators, the game logics, and the gameplay. The storyline COULD have been better had it not had to conform around all the other's crap.

 

If you want to make an MMORPG, you are going to have to keep several things in mind.

 

1.) high playability and replayability rate. You are going to have to keep in mind the different character classes and racial classes and social classes. Someone might for instance, be a human warrior from the two rivers, and specialise in archery, with skills in tracking hunting and farming or foraging, and doing higher damage with bows and arrows or slings and pikes as that is what the two rivers men were notably named for. Or they might be a Carhienen Footman, specialising in all manner of short range weaponry, and knowing the best way to wear armor for mobility and range of motion while conforming the optimum armor, not too loose or too tight in order to gain the most Armor Class and Evasion necessary to be good at close combat. You might have an Aiel Wise Woman, and tend to wounds (druid style), and cast medium level combat spells. the possibilities and race, social, class, alignment, and appearences could be practically limitless, and the more variations you put in there, the more appealing it will be, but also the more coding will be involved. and stability issues. and 5million other things i dont have time or space to put in here.

 

2.) Non linear gameplay based on Linear Storyline Content. Everquest is a perfect example of this style of gameplay. It is set Non-Linear in gameplay, but for the groups of people banding together in Guilds, they are the one that actually progress the game forward to each next expansion. When the top level monster or boss is defeated by them, then the storyline progresses, triggering the release of a new expansion... in a "timely" manner. Examples of non-linear gameplay would be like, being able to hunt trollocs for experience on the slopes of Shayol Ghul, or instanced game scenarios where you are protecting a village of people from invaders, shadowspawn, trollocs, or aiel. make certain it is not a barebones game, but fully fleshed out. not, you completed this task, now onto another. When people play and build levels, allow them to choose a path in life. let them fish in the pond, or play at being a innkeep or a cook, allow for other means of expertise to gain money, reputation, and such so that they can help build their "children's future"... in other words, allow for people to become Tradeskill masters, in order to fund their alternate characters. things like that would be great.

 

3.) ABOVE ALL ELSE!!!!!

 

--- Keep the personalities of the people of the Wheel of Time INTACT FOR GOD'S SAKE!!!!

 

 

If you are going to venture into something like this, make for DARNED certain your writers have a firm and solid grasp of the different social and political tensions involved in the world of the Wheel of Time. Nothing spoils a game that is based off of something than to be a complete letdown regarding the spirit of the original works. i.e. ANY car driving game based off of a movie, ANY game based off of war related history, any game period that does not, and cannot live up to the expectations of die hard fans such as myself. Certainly, the Graphics and the sparklies of those games will keep people occupied, but for a high fantasy game based off of actual high fantasy, you have your work cut out for you, and not just in the programming department. you'll have my support if you do decide to stick to this venture, as i am an AVID MMORPG gamer, i will help inasmuch as i can.

 

so there you have it. reply if you want any questions answered, i have helped do many things, and point out many things to current mmorpg admins. and though i let my grammar slack when i am typing to other people for the heck of it, i have decent grammatical knowledge.

There is a good chance at this being a succesful game, but it depends on the people you have working on it. Most of the games made from books or movies are bad becuase the people creating it, as in programmers, artists, and even the money lenders, dont know anything beyond the name and setting of the story, and sometimes not even those. MMROPG would basically be the only way to play, becuase of the mass of characters, classes, and skills that would be needed in order to accomplish everything. You cant have a character that can talk to wolves, be incredibly lucky, lay out masterful battle plans, channel, use femine beauty, be cunning, use the One Power, and keep tossing everything in from there or it would be pointless and boring. It will not be too easy of a section to break into though do to the fact the series isnt finished, and WoW has a pretty nice grip on things, but it would deffinately be a playable game with alot of potential growth as it gains more popularity if it is done right. Thats my opinion :)

Heh. Well since my post here was one of the ones inadvertently wiped out, I thought I'd try to repost the essence of what it was.

 

I think a WoT MMORPG would be cool, but I don't think it would be possible to put into a game the dynamics of Saidin and Saidar. No game to date has even come close to allowing users to experiment with a very powerful, flexible and dynamic "magic" system to the point of actually creating new "spells" from whole cloth. With Saidin and Saidar, two very similar weaves might produce two drastically different results, and two very different weaves might produce very similar results. And everyone has his/her own special way of doing weaves. There is no canned "fireball" spell that you gain once you achieve a certain level of training. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that the various weaves that are taught and passed on from one Aes Sedai to the next are more like passing on a cake recipe than a mathematical formula. With a formula you get the exact same results every time. With a cake recipe, it will never turn out exactly the same way twice (though perhaps near enough the same every time that most people would see no difference), and you can try different ingredients to see how they affect the end result.

 

Personally I just think most real fans of WoT would end up very disappointed with the results of an attempt at such a game any time in the near future.