Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

In the case of established IPs, I think the only thing a development team can realistically hope for is to create a game they think is fun to play that just happens to be in the world of whatever IP they're working with. If they accomplish this, they stand a reasonable chance of garnering enough fans that the screams of the "faithful" won't bring about Armageddon as they so often like to think any deviation from the source material will ensure.

Farming is never this fun in real life.

So how do you avoid the possibility of some crazed fan graphically vocalizing his preferred method of your death because you ruined his life by placing Town A thirty miles south of Town B when some obscure reference he dug up *clearly* states it was thirty miles to the southeast? Southeast!!! Yeah, it may seem like an exaggeration, but you'd be surprised. In any case, the best way to avoid incidents like this is to create your own IP.

For the sake of argument, and in the hopes of avoiding such, we'll pretend that funds are not unlimited, but that you're also not working on a miser's budget either. In that case, creating your own original world in which to host your new AAA MMOG allows you to do virtually anything you damned well please. That is, of course, if you can find or create the technology necessary to bring your vision to it's ripe fruition.

Even with an original IP though, you run the risk of it becoming too ripe, so to speak. If you've been working on a game for years and years with no end in sight, and continually push it back with the excuse of “We’re working on it” and nothing more, I personally don't think you stand a chance in hell. I'm looking at you, Huxley. The point is, players will only remain interested for so long. If you continue to drag out production, even those interested at one time will quickly find their attention waning. Something that seemed unbelievably awesome five years ago has most likely been done by someone else now, and they've probably done it better than what you were planning.

The only way to avoid such a doom and gloom scenario is to not only make your game in a normal amount of time, but to make sure your original IP is awesome. I don't mean you and your mother think it's awesome, I mean earth shattering awesome, on the scale of Mass Effect. Even though it's not an MMOG (though I *SO* wish it was), it proved that if you put the time in to make genuinely interesting characters, races, and worlds, the sky is the limit.

So which is better? An original idea or an established IP? I think the real answer is a mixture of both. If you don't have an original idea capable of absolutely flooring your audience and making the lips of your competition quiver, then you'd better start looking for a rock solid IP. In today's market, there's no other choice if you want to succeed.