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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celtavian" data-source="post: 6665434" data-attributes="member: 5834">I believe I could do it. I will have no chance to try. This is a thread of "what if." I figure I'd go big.Lord of the Rings was never built to be an MMORPG. I love the books, didn't touch the game. It isn't built for it. You don't play Lord of the Rings to advance in levels and gain more powerful magic. There is a fundamental misunderstanding of why a person would be attracted to a Middle Earth game. It isn't what attracts people to MMORPGs.Star Wars had exactly the same problem. You don't play Star Wars to kill and accumulate. Nothing in the Star Wars universe has anything to do with this behavior. MMORPG's thrive on the kill and accumulate mentality. The vicarious thrill of gaining power. Star War's universe was never built with this model in mind.Conan I played. Conan failed because after the 1-20 story, the game content sucked horribly. It wasn't intuitive or interesting. The artists did an extremely poor job of world creation. They reskinned their base humanoid figure into uninteresting creatures. Conan failed for other reasons.Warhammer was too much like WoW and poorly constructed comparatively. Everquest 2 was a lazily designed game. They removed aspects of the game that players liked. It was an example of a successful game that didn't realize why it was successful. It launched thinking former customers would flock to the new game. Everquest the original is a better game than WoW in nearly every way. You know why I picked WoW over Everquest 2? They didn't bother to design racial cities for EQ 2 for starting characters. The charm of EQ 1 was the feeling of starting out in a city where your race lived and leveling up in a unique area. WoW remembered how important that aspect of a game is.WoW is winning not because it appeals to casual gamers, but because it's gameplay is amazing. It's raids and new areas are interesting. It kept adding interesting questing options and providing people with countless hours of interesting areas to explore and challenging encounters with a loot system that kept that carrot hanging in front of players. WoW's gameplay is second to none. Gameplay is what makes a game great. Most new MMORPGs only do a good job with the first 10 to 15 levels of gameplay releasing the game thinking they have time to build the rest. That isn't the case. You have to have the game ready to go all the way to max level with end game content. You try to get lazy about it, the game is going to fail. It's game play at all levels that allows attracts and retains players of all types from the super hardcore to the super casual. They're looking for an experience. You have to provide it whether they're in the level 1 newbie area or max level raids. All those other games failed miserably at the gameplay part.I would not fail if I had control of D&D content. You would see unique cities built for all the racial areas. Citadel Adbar, Waterdeep, The Dalelands, Menzoberranzan. I would not launch the game without raciai cities and well-developed newbie areas. I'd start off with Myth Drannor for a raid zone in the Cormanthor Forest. I'd make sure it was built before I launched the game. I'd have a carefully constructed leveling arc from zero to max level with no weak gameplay areas. People would feel like they were adventuring in a fantasy world that provided a completely unique experience. I'm looking to take WoW's cake. I know you can't do that by half-assing it. If I didn't get funding for the full plan, I wouldn't even bother. You can't take WoW's cake by releasing a game that provides an uninteresting play experience at any point in time. You don't have time to build out raid zones and hope you've done well enough to challenge the WoW raid experience. You can't even provide an uninteresting newbie experience. You've got to have an extremely strong game from top to bottom with a team ready to make sure expansions are hitting within a time frame that retains your customer base.The big advantage D&D would have is the world content is in place. Very little time needs to be spent on story. The entire game is the original model for MMORPG's kill and accumulate paradigm. D&D is THE GAME that models what MMORPGs have been doing for years. They have all the cool magic items built up over the years to prove it. I would dangle that giant glittering gold carrot out for their MMORPG addicts to salivate over. You want Blackrazor? Look at that beautiful black sword with all the glittering stars? You want a shiny Holy Avenger? Come and get it. You want to wield the Sword of Kas or obtain the Hand of Vecna? Come and get it. You'll have to fight Vecna himself. You want to raid Undermountain and fight Halaster in his deep, dark dungeon? Here you go. The Mad Wizard himself. What's next? Planescape is next. Head to Sigil. Raid the Hells. Assail the fortress of Asmodeus and the Nine Rulers of Hell. You do D&D online right. Spend the money. WoW and every other MMORPG game that has existed will be like a pale memory. D&D is the Grand Daddy all these other games seek to emulate. It has not ascended to that position because no one has had the vision and deep pockets to make it happen. Oh, the beautiful raids, zones, and instances I could build from D&D content had the I ability. It would be amazing blending all the D&D worlds into one beautiful virtual world of endless content. Could you imagine designing a layer of the Abyss as a raid zone? Or flying by means of a fly spell? Or wielding an Orb of Dragonkind? Or fighting mind flayers?</blockquote>

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