The main problem I see with a Harry Potter MMO is that it's far too centralised on the 7 years at Hogwarts.
MMO's I've played (admittedly few) do not advance through time at any rate at all: WoW's Gnomeregan plot arc being a good example of this.
The only MMO's I've heard of where time does advance are the likes of Second Life and possibly the Star Wars MMO, and in both cases they move at a pace approaching normal and there is a fairly large advantage to starting early on.

The other problem is that in a game where death is final (and I can't see how it wouldn't be in this case), PvP would have to be very carefully regulated and the timespan would have to be carefully controlled.
Too close to normal and the 7 years at Hogwarts would kill any interest, too fast and the characters are at a genuine risk of dying from old age.
The NPC's would have to be similarly regulated, and that would make any Dark Lord killing sprees(TM) extremely hard work on the dev team, as they'd have to bring in new NPC's to populate the Ministry, shops and possibly Hogwarts.


Oh, and Anubis? While £5 is too low, £10 is (I think) an exaggeration, as even on a monthly basis the likes of WoW and CoH/CoV don't charge more than £7.50, and if you buy in 6-month lots it's more like £6.50

 

There are almost too many problems, but their doesn't need to be any kind of story line after Hogwarts, or even in Hogwarts. I don't know much about that game Mordecai presented to you all bout the vampires, but gaining reputation and losing it doesn't sound like that bad of an idea. You gain friends with higher ups, try to become one yourself, and if you're killed during that time you're bumped down in the ranks. It would probably get boring after a while, but people thought the same with WoW's quests and those have never gotten boring. A 'raid' of Hogsmead or muggle areas doesn't sound that bad to me. Hell, call out the muggles and arm them with shot guns or rifles. I think it would be a blast. Maybe even no Hogwarts? Why couldn't you start out on graduation day and go from there?

 

True, it is a lot cheaper if you buy in large increments. However at per month with gamecards at £18 WoW is charging £9, FFXI charges around the same. Not saying every MMO does it, but it does seem to be a semi standard for the flat out month by month rate.

As for Hogwarts...hmmm, I think that Hogwarts would be very very difficult to make into an MMO. I could see at as an instanced tutorial really, with your character starting just before the NEWTs and re-going over the basics just to be sure with a few NPCs (both professors and students). Once you pass you maybe continue onto the idea of the first war, suits this well.

The reason I think instanced is simply people. MMOs bring three types of people. RPers who'll get annoyed at people not acting in character, normal people who will just work through the content as it suits them, and morons. Your problem comes when you're in a 'class' filled with a split between the three. RPers telling the idiots off, idiots spamming /spit and/or making stupid comments, and the normal people just telling everyone to STFU so they can play. Centralising your population in Hogwarts would make that unavoidable, and it would really turn fun into very frustrating gameplay.

 

I agree with Anubis somewhat. Make Hogwarts into the tutorial area, where you learn the basics of the game and get a few beginner spells to use. From then on you go out, do quests for your side (read guild) and gain money/knowledge. As an added bonus, if you get to a high enough 'level' (if we go with the normal scheme of rpgs) you can have access to the libraries of the various factions.

Order of the Phoenix would get access to the Restricted Section in the Hogwarts Library - specialising in very powerful Light Magic

The Ministry would have the Department of Mysteries - would specialise in Auror Grade battle magic and various other trade secrets.

And Voldemort would have a Dark Arts Library at his hideout (possibly the Riddle House) that specialised in... you guessed it... the Dark Arts.

Or you could even have the leaders of each faction teach you a few super powerful spells. Maybe have the Unforgivables be taught to you by Voldemort/Bellatrix/Mulciber. Dumbledore could have... Transmogrification (thats transfiguring your enemy in a purposefully harmful manner - e.g. turning his lungs to steel) as his special ability. The Ministry... Maybe some strange time/space magic from the Department of Mysteries... I can't think of anything at the minute.

Aekiel

 

I like the idea of library access being granted at cap a lot (or maybe cap plus the completion of an epic mission for your faction leader with your access being granted as a reward). It also provides a lot of PVE potential, as you could always have 'lost tomes' being attainable from instanced areas that teach the highest level spells.

As for faction leaders, I suppose that a commander of your faction could act as your trainer. When you choose your faction (after the tutorial) you are assigned to them and when you meet certain pre-requisites you can go to them to be taught a new spell as a result, Bellatrix teaching the Cruciatus etc. Of course they could only teach you to a certain point, then the library comes in after you complete the epic quest. I'm not sure I could see the faction leaders filling that role though, as Im sure they'd have more important things to do. But they could certainly teach you things at odd points throughout the game, if you do enough for them. Would prove an interesting system.

 

Or even better, have three game spheres or... rather, different areas. The British Isles, Western Europe and Eastern Europe utilizing the three major magical schools as the starting point. And branching out from there. It would give lots of variety and replayability. No one wants to start at Hogwarts everytime they re-roll.

 

Also all the fangirls would go to Hogwarts thus we would be rather safe at Durmstrange.

 

how bout a runescape version of Harry Potter? Something not incredibly sophisticated in terms of graphics, but cheap and fun to play.

 

Runescape... for the fail.

 

The HP-world wouldn't allow classes but a EVE like system could work. In theory you can learn everything, only it takes huge amounts of time so it makes more sense to specialize. I also like the idea of three starting areas, adding more diversity by introducing different teaching methods.

The magic system needs a lot of work as it would have to be flexible enough for players to at least modify their spells if not create them. Weapons would be rather useless.

Another thing could be a more physics based enviorment(sp?) where you can manipulate items lying around for your own use.(summoning, levitating, etc.)

The non-formal quests would be an interesting touch too. Like finding a reference to some rare tome and then searching for further clues.(would make the game more challenging)

 

This would be a 'Harry Potter' world, but it's not like you would be fighting basilisks (unless you got to a high level) or going against professors posessed by dark lords. I would want different starting places like in WoW where you can learn a different set of spells to start with.

Hogwarts-light magic*
Durmstrang-dark arts
Beauxbatons-pretty neutral magic*
*-mabye you would switch the two

After that, you start making money to try and buy more spells and armor -maybe even weapons like staves, magical swords, new wands, and rune stones- then use those to fight all the monsters out in the wilderness and in instances (banshees, sphinxes with their riddles, snakes, vampires, rouge werewolves, etc.). The higher the level, the stronger level areas you can go to and the more powerful the monsters get. Pretty much a WoW like game with a main story line that everyone can play a part in and thousands of little side quests to gain more tomes of knowledge or magic increasing objects.

 

Dark and light wouldn't come from schools. That's stupid. One vague reference to Durmstrang students being taught an additional class of Dark Arts doesn't mean it's the premier place to learn the Dark Arts or every family that's in Slytherin *would* send them there just because.

Your alignment would come from quests, and quests would come from talking to NPCs who are already aligned in certain directions. And not just the Death Eaters and Order of the Phoenix. You guys are thinking 10-15 people. If the Wizarding World has 100,000 people in Europe (assuming this from figures in GOF) and lets say it does, then no one's going to go from France to England to get a quest from Remus Lupin. No one would give a shit, just like most people in WoW who are on Night Elf or Dwarf or Gnome don't care about Jaina Proudmoore's quests for a long ass time since she's neither close nor apart of their faction.

That's where the problem comes in. The LOTR MMORPG is vastly easy to make utilizing any system in the world. Not because there's numerous classes or numerous races but because the world is filled in. Hell, there's a map. No one even knows what Diagon Alley looks like, let alone Hogsmeade or even Hogwarts. There's just descriptions and a clause that saves Rowling from ever having to pin down shit (the rooms move! bullshit bitch, you're too lazy to remember).

No one knows where Durmstrang is, no one knows where Beauxbatons is, no one really even knows where the other 2,000-2,500 wizards in England live. What I would do is create the world.

Wizarding London.
Wizarding Edinburgh.
Wizarding Liverpool.

Major muggle cities have a wizarding district. Wild Moor, Fen and various other barely hinted at fictional places would be placed on the map and have quests to them. Godric's Hollow would be a ghost village, Azkaban would be its own miniplace of many quests.

You'd have to do regions like in World of Warcraft. Wild Moor, Little Whinging, etc, etc.

Then you'd have to create professions and allow players to only specialize in perhaps only one. Such as becoming a Master of Transfiguration or a Mistress of Potions.

Alignments come from doing light-related quests and dark-related quests. For one, no killing 10 of anything. Holy fuck, what a boring thing.

 

I think that if someone made this they could definitely change a few things in the books around and make some shit up and have a good MMORPG on their hands. In WOW you start out by choosing the Horde or the Allaince/ Bad guys or good guys/ Dark side or Light side (Power to the Horde). They could easily do the same thing in Harry Potter. England, France, and Bulgaria could all be the Major European light sided countries while other countries (pick three or four) could be the Dark sided countries (and each would have the opposing side's resistance in their area. i.e. Voldemort). And they could always be fighting back and forth for dominance over Europe (and the same could work for other continents if they wanted to add that in).

A good number of things would have to be changed to make the Harry Potter world into something that would agree with all the parts to a good MMORPG, but it could be done. You start out by choosing light or dark, then you choose country affiliation, than you start on your way learning how to play the game in the rather safe school environment before going onto the big boy's world and having to actually fight creatures, do quests, and defeat the opposing faction.

All the other shit is just details that get added into the mix, but the basis of the game is already pretty much done and just the fact that it is Harry Potter will draw people in. It might bomb for a while because it is going against WOW but if it is actually worth anything other than just being Harry Potter than a lot of people that are getting bored of WOW, even after the expansion, will change over.

And BTW you really can't make a MMO world where everyone starts on the same side and the only thing that differentiates them is quest choices. It will have to be a starting decision that will effect their list of choices throughout the entire game. You just can't go into enough detail to make traitors and spies unless they are NPC's so if they did make the game the only way for it to work is if the player picked a side- light or dark- from the get-go.

And this wouldn't be centered on the world that Harry Potter saw in the books. This would be set either before or after the known events so that they could make things as huge as possible. I'm not thinking of this as a board game RPG that you play on your basement table but a MMORPG like WOW that actually feels like an entire world inside a game.

 

Actually, thats not true. Neocron does it with faction changing. It means that eventually you will be placed on one side, but not from character creation.

The way I see it, everyone would just be a wizarding citizen at the start, and once they are free of the school of their choice they could decide which NPC to visit, there being several around predefined areas that are recruiters (Diagon Alley for the Ministry, Knockturn Alley for the Death Eaters, etc) who would give you several quests until you were ready for an initiation quest (when you'd proven yourself worthy).

Traitors and Spies could work easily through a Sympathy system. When you start the game all sympathies start at 0 (neutral) and as you do quests etc for factions your sympathy increases. This sympathy would then act as a pre-requisite for certain things.

For example, you can only join a faction when your sympathy with them is above 30 (the starting quests that recruiters give would slowly raise sympathies with their faction to this level). If your sympathy is between 0 and 30 they will simply tell you 'Sorry, you aren't suitable for this particular mission' or something. And if your sympathy in the negative you would be classed as an enemy and ignored by NPCs, and possibly even fired upon by NPCs in Warzones.

Traitors and spies would work through built-in mini-quests, possibly through the Daily Prophet advert section, little errands that are too small to require an NPC to give them out (collecting certain items you could find in certain zones that the faction may need for example?) that would allow people to raise their sympathies if they changed their mind after initial faction alignment. Whilst you wouldnt be able to switch factions, you could raise your Sympathy with other factions to above a certain threshold, at which point you could contact several carefully placed NPCs who you could pass on information or intelligence to.


There are a lot of ways things can be accomplished, and funnily enough it is often the niche MMOs out there that have the really great ideas that could make things work. Just because WoW doesnt have a certain facility in it doesn't mean it is impossible to implement

 

Yeah, guess I didn't think of that one. A bit too used to the way WOW does it I guess. But there is still the same language problem that you have in WOW. Just like a human can't speak to an ork, a light sided Englishman couldn't really turn spy and give info to some dark sided German dude because all you would see was some gibberish. I guess there could be a spell for that though.

 

The main problem I can see is the killing curse where would it fit. One shotting people because there a darkwizard doesnt cut it tbh. You could not take it away from the game either, its such an integreal part of the HP series...

 

Deleting the Avada Kedavra? Never!

In cannon we see as Dumbledore blocks it (something solid should suffice), apparates out of the way, and we know that it isn't the easiest bit of spell work (it was always pissing me off, when 12 or 14 year kids where throwing Unforgivinables left and right), so:

- uses dXX (where a XX means some number) test of successful casting and hitting target with that curse, but as a DM I know that players hate being dependant on luck, so it'd suck.

- make it stoppable (we saw that a possibility of blocking it exists, so why not?). Get players to declare a way of dealing with situations like this (if there isn't a chance of blocking a spell, they choose a preferable way of dealing with danger like that - trying to get out of the way, or trying to use something solid as a shield)

- create a counter-curse - it'd benefit a balance inside of the game (light wizards wouldn't be a cannon fodder to their darker counterparts).

- Design a magic and duelling system, where players would have time to react accordingly to the situation (rounds system would kill dynamic, but for now I don't see an alternative).

E.A.

 

There is also the possibility of introducing it like Blizzard did Execute for Warriors in WoW. Meaning it can only be used when the target is less than 20% of health and make it so that the system does a random roll when it is used the result of which decides whether it hits or not (I would go for probably a 50% hit rate to be fair).

Having capped wizards running around PVP areas ganking everyone in one shot though would not work, you are right there

 

Honestly the only way a Harry Potter MMORPG would work is if they got rid of Harry Potter but made it a Harry Potter universe.

EA Games currently has the license for it and they have talked about making a MMORPG Harry Potter game but alas it doesn't seem like they are doing anything right now.

I think the best bet for them making it is a one in a millionth chance. Hopefully someone else decides to make one,but they would have to buy the rights from EA which i doubt they would give up.

As for the killing curse which i see is being talked about above my post, they would most likely disable the killing curse in pvp but enable it for pve. It would be way to unfair to use it in pvp as people would die left and right.