Basing your MMORPG on an existing property can be an easy way to get attention for your new game and tap into a base of potential players who are already familiar with the world and its lore. It’s a wonder that more games haven’t tried it. Where’s our Wheel of Time MMO? Our Honor Harrington MMO? Our Sailor Moon MMO? (Oops, didn’t mean to mention that one….)
Well, maybe someone’s working on one of those right now (call me!)
With the help of the super-comprehensive list of MMOs at MMORPG.com, I’ve gathered together a list of all the MMOs I could find that were based (or at least “inspired by”) some other intellectual property. Since there are quite a few, I’ll be covering these in five posts. Today: Absolute Terror through Toontown Online.
Game: Absolute Terror | IP: Neon Genesis Evangelion |
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Gainax’s “Neon Genesis Evangelion” re-invented the “giant robot” genre by adding tortured teens and morally ambiguous guardians to a post-apocalyptic world where the heroes were either protecting the world from complete annihilation, or helping to bring it about — only at the end were there any real answers. Maybe.
“Absolute Terror” is a web-based strategic combat game, and is largely the work of a single designer, Liam Young. The player chooses to fight for NERV or SEELE, the two organizations charged with defending New Tokyo from attacks by the otherworldy “Angels”, giant creatures from an unknown source. By winning battles, you gain the ability to perform more actions. Although I haven’t played it, Absolute Terror seems more akin to pseudo-MMOs like Kingdom of Loathing than any of the others on this list. |
Game: Age of Conan | IP: Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian |
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Robert E. Howard’s iconic Conan the Barbarian sparked a wave of heroic sword & sorcery that predated and arguably surpassed the sort of epic fantasy Tolkein would soon make famous. With a legendary comic series in the 70s and two movies in the 80s that inspired a mini-wave of copycats, Conan has been reintroducing himself to new generations of genre lovers for seventy years.
Funcom strategically released its Age of Conan in the lull before Blizzard’s new expansion for World of Warcraft and quickly gained a huge following, a popularity that soon waned over reports of bugs, unfinished PvP, and a newbie experience that dramatically oversold the experience a player would have once they graduated to the real game. Since then, Age of Conan has essentially relaunched, filling in gaps, fixing bugs, making gear more relevant to the game and adding more PvE content. By all accounts, AoC has become a game well worth seeing for Conan fans looking to play in the legendary Hyborian Age. |
Game: Champions Online | IP: Hero Games’ Champions |
![]() Champions Online was the first MMO Cryptic Studios developed after splitting off from NCsoft, for whom they had developed the genre-leading City of Heroes superhero MMO. A last moment rebalancing and a lack of high level content made this game a non-starter in many people’s eyes. It has not drawn the kind of numbers expected; estimates have fewer people playing it than City of Heroes, and with expected competition from SOE’s DC Universe Online and Marvel’s unnamed MMO, the future is not clear for Champions Online. This is unfortunate indeed, as the “Nemesis” system, where you create your own arch-villain to bedevil you, and their famously open-ended character creation system, are unique in the industry. |
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Game: DC Universe Online | IP: DC Comics |
![]() SOE’s DC Universe Online, still in development, promises players the chance to fight alongside (or against) DC’s iconic heroes as they defend (or attack) landmark locations such as Metropolis and Gotham City. A fluid power system will let your character switch roles (such as tanking, damage, healing/buffing) at will so that any group of characters will be able to fill the necessary roles. Action-oriented, scripted missions and destructible environments will make this game at home either on the PC or the console. Appropriately, DCUO will be the first MMO produced for Sony’s Playstation 3 game system, followed at some point by SOE’s follow-up, the spy MMO “The Agency”. |
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Game: Disney’s Toontown Online | IP: Disney cartoon characters |
![]() Disney’s “Toontown Online”, loosely based on the world in their cartoons and a name courtesy of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”, is a child-friendly game that features kid-safe innovations later copied by other kid-friendly MMOs such as Wizards101. Carefully monitored chat, limited social interactions and non-threatening (but frequently hilarious) actions give kids the freedom to make and play their own cartoon character in Disney’s cartoon world. Though there’s not a lot in Toontown Online to appeal to adults, the game has enough depth to make it a satisfying game to play alongside your younger children. |
Tune in tomorrow for tales of dragons and kittens as we explore the next chapter of the IP-based gaming empire.