Building My Dream MMO Part 1 – Premise and Setting
This is a new little blog project I'm working on. With everyone talking about how they would better the current MMOs on the market, I wanted to try my hand at creating an semi-original idea for an MMO. This will probably be about an 8-10 post project depending on how far I expand it. This first post outlines the initial premise and basic world theme.
Fantasy is over saturated. Anyone can tell you that. Almost 75% of MMOs are fantasy based. I think that a lot of people, myself included, are getting a little burned out on fantasy. But I don't fault developers for making fantasy games because it is easy to make fantasy. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying developing a MMO is easy, I'm just saying that generally writing a fantasy story is a lot easier than any other genre. Take humans, elves and dwarves banded together to fight all the evil and ugly races of the world. Done.
Fantasy is easy to write because the world has no rules. You can just explain everything with magic. A floating city? Magic. No law of conservation of mass? Magic! Why is that water flowing up? Magic!
Beyond this, there are infinite possibilities for expansion. The areas you can create to go to are limited only by your imagination. Sci-fi MMOs also have the infinite possibilities, but when things get expanded to a cosmic scale, one individual's actions seem a lot more meaningless.
My MMO would be a steampunk fantasy setting.
I don't think having more fantasy MMOs on the market is a bad thing. In fact, I think fantasy is the best genre as it provides the best means for escapism. I'm more so just tired of medieval fantasy.
The world for my steampunk fantasy MMO would almost be a mixture of the animes Trigun and Full Metal Alchemist, with shows like Wild Wild West, and a strong influence of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.
I see it as almost an alternate reality steampunk where the world has grown up with magic along side technology, causing a constant battle between the two sides. Good vs. evil is so 2004. Technology vs magic and nature is where it is at now.
Anyway, that's just a little preview of what's to come. This will be continued in Part 2 which will be a much larger post outlining factions, races, and classes.
All I need now is a good name for this MMO. Any suggestions?