The advent of basing an MMORPG around a popular intellectual property (IP) is nothing new to the genre as with such a competitive market it seems almost foolhardy not to include one into your game, however, recent subscription data seems to suggest otherwise. Pirates of the Caribbean, Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Final Fantasy, Star Wars; all of them have been made into MMORPGs, and yet, all of them have failed to live up to the mantra of the overall series.
Today’s top five MMORPGs (World of Warcraft, RuneScape, Lineage, Lineage 2, Dofus – in that order) are all based on either new IPs or relatively unknown IPs. While it’s easy to look at the World of Warcraft and make the claim that it is based off the Warcraft IP, allow me to remind you that amongst the mainstream society it is still relatively known outside of the MMO. I’d be willing to guess that while many of WoW’s first subscribers were fans of the series, most of them today are not, especially when comparing it to some of the truly mountainous IPs that are now MMORPGs.
The best selling, highest subbed MMORPG based off a true successful IP is Final Fantasy XI, which unto itself is not all that surprising. Just like WoW is based off a video game IP so is Final Fantasy XI, namely the Final Fantasy IP. Could this be why these two games are so successful? Despite having major disparities in their subscriber base (10 million compared to 500 thousand) the two games share a common similarity in that they both come from IPs that are based off of popular video games. If you were to look at other properties such as the Lord of the Rings Online, which currently has around 250 thousand subscribers, you’d notice that while the actual IP for the Lord of the Rings is actually stronger amongst society, the game is doing far worse that either of the previous. Why? Well when you take a popular video game IP and make a new video game out of it you already know that there is a dedicated fanbase for that game. However, when you take Lord of the Rings and make a video game out of it you aren’t guaranteed that fans of the series of books (or movies) will be all that interested in the video game and that is were the disparity lies.
Of course, the same can be said for games such as: Star Wars Galaxy, Pirates of the Caribbean Online, and The Matrix Online (amongst others). While each of these movies has enormous cult followings for their movies, each game has failed to truly live up to expectations. Whether that’s a quality issue or otherwise, however, is up to debate. Regardless, though, one has to admit the sheer difference in the size of these IPs between their perspective markets is vast, where the Star Wars series is easily the most popular movie series of all time, the MMORPG fails to show that same popularity and the same can holds true for near all of the MMO IPs released to date.
I think that using a popular IP can be a double-edged sword. If its done very well, it can be a huge benefit. But the opposite is also, if not more so true. It can also be very hard to fit an IP into a MMO. A failed attempt at using a popular IP seems to make it that much worse. (I’m looking at you Star Wars)
I think this might be why the star trek MMO keeps getting pushed back or canceled and re-tried.
I also believe that a Stargate IP could be good. The whole Stargate concept itself lends itself very well to a easy credibility to a wide variety of instances, zones, dungeon crawls and expansions. The harp part would be designing some kind of leveling system. Skills rather than distinct classes would probably work better (UO instead of EQ/WOW).
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The problem with a popular IP is that it’s always too hard to live up to expectations. With a new or relatively unknown IP, the players are unable to criticise the game’s IP per se.
Of course, if the game is rubbish then it’s not going to do well. The Matrix Online is one such game. High system requirements on release, an awkward combat system, boring environments, repetitive quest system; This game had every reason to be a success but failed to deliver on many levels.
A povorctaive insight! Just what we need!