First off I read alot and you picked some really off the wall IP's.

I don't know how in the world you missed Firefly.  There is enough fantasy out there right now and very little well done Sci-Fi..

As to the Wheel of Time MMO, don't hold your breath, the IP is owned by a completely unknown company with no known industry  names associated with it.  Chances are that you will never see a live server for this game as long as it is in the hands of these people.

I agree with some others, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance have far better IP's suited to a MMO than those you listed.  Even the Michael Moorcock seriers with Elric of Meliborne has a better IP.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

First off I read alot and you picked some really off the wall IP's.

I don't know how in the world you missed Firefly.  There is enough fantasy out there right now and very little well done Sci-Fi..

As to the Wheel of Time MMO, don't hold your breath, the IP is owned by a completely unknown company with no known industry  names associated with it.  Chances are that you will never see a live server for this game as long as it is in the hands of these people.

I agree with some others, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance have far better IP's suited to a MMO than those you listed.  Even the Michael Moorcock seriers with Elric of Meliborne has a better IP.

...books, man. Firefly was a TV show. And I believe it may have been on some previous list Jon did (although I could be wrong).

Sorry to say this, but the author did not do a lot of reading in his lifetime. It's mostly big hits or hearsay titles.

How about these:

Philip Jose Farmer - Riverworld series setting and idea. Would be a top-notch sandbox mmo.

Serge Brussolo - you pick a title, they're all equally disturbing.

Philip K. Dick - The Man in the High Castle (or Fatherland by Robert Harris).

Not to mention Shogun, The Long Ships, Winnetou, The Three Musketeers, even the Illiad ffs!!

And what happened to the SciFi genre? Have you seen the polls on mmorpg lately? Most voted for a SciFi MMO. So how about giving some credit to Asimov? And Van Vogt? Carl Sagan? Arthur C Clarke anyone? They have invisioned worlds beyond EVERY game designers widlest dreams (while stoned).  Aren't you just about sick and tired of spells, wizzards, elves, pure PvP CounterStrike clones? Don't you crave for some shred of realism? 

I have put so much faith in Mortal Online just to be utterly dissapointed when I saw gameplay videos featuring some spell casting during a PvP encounter. And Fallen Earth... FPS aiming & RPG damage? 'The hell's that? "Target too far" while I'm standing 20 feet away from the target? How about some Shift-Delete on your install folder?

Don't mind me, I`m just a too-mature-bitter-gamer waiting for a real MMO.

Originally posted by Dana

Originally posted by Ozmodan

First off I read alot and you picked some really off the wall IP's.

I don't know how in the world you missed Firefly.  There is enough fantasy out there right now and very little well done Sci-Fi..

As to the Wheel of Time MMO, don't hold your breath, the IP is owned by a completely unknown company with no known industry  names associated with it.  Chances are that you will never see a live server for this game as long as it is in the hands of these people.

I agree with some others, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance have far better IP's suited to a MMO than those you listed.  Even the Michael Moorcock seriers with Elric of Meliborne has a better IP.

 

...books, man. Firefly was a TV show. And I believe it may have been on some previous list Jon did (although I could be wrong).

I rescind my comment about Firefly, I most definitely got caught up in the moment.  Thanks for catching my mistake.

Beermangler has some good ones I did not think of either.

I believe The Labyrinth from the Death Gate Cycle (Weis&Hickman) would be quite nice to be turned into a MMO.

Just The Labyrinth though, the rest can't be made into an MMO at all.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

As to the Wheel of Time MMO, don't hold your breath, the IP is owned by a completely unknown company with no known industry  names associated with it.  Chances are that you will never see a live server for this game as long as it is in the hands of these people.

The producer is EA which is good and bad.  It means they have the money to complete a big budget MMO but they also have a track record of forcing games out early.  Then again it could be worse and be connected with SOE or Funcom.

I agree with some, but I think a few got left off that might be great such as the worlds of Pern, Xanth, Shannara, and Landover (to name a few).

Originally posted by Zippy

Originally posted by Ozmodan

As to the Wheel of Time MMO, don't hold your breath, the IP is owned by a completely unknown company with no known industry  names associated with it.  Chances are that you will never see a live server for this game as long as it is in the hands of these people.

 

The producer is EA which is good and bad.  It means they have the money to complete a big budget MMO but they also have a track record of forcing games out early.  Then again it could be worse and be connected with SOE or Funcom.

Was referring to the developer who's staff is completely unknown.  Does not matter how much EA funds it, if the people writing the game don't have the correct skill set.

Originally posted by n2sooners

I agree with some, but I think a few got left off that might be great such as the worlds of Pern, Xanth, Shannara, and Landover (to name a few).

Whoa! I totally forgot about Pern and the Shannara series. High fantasy both. In Pern, you get a toon, hit level 10 get a quest for a dragon, finish quest for a dragon egg and the rest of the game you and your dragon level up together. Epic Dragons FTW!

I'd trade in 1/2 of WoW, 2 AoC's, 10 runes of magics and 150 darkfall's to play that.

I have to agree, the Dragonriders of Pern would make for an awesome MMO.... battling threadfalls and each other....

For Sci-Fi/Fantasy mix with endless worlds to discover, Golden Queen by Dave Wolverton is hard to beat, already setup with a world will skills can be purchased, worlds where technology is dominant, and worlds where it is shunned and cannot be used without penalty.

I agree with the other posters. Fantasy has been done and done.  However I would add the Shadow Dawn Series (Chris Claremont / George Lucas) as a Fantasy world.

How about

World of Tiers - Piers Anthony
Dresden Novels - Jim Butcher
Honor Harrington Series - David Weber
Warlord of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
Helmsman Series - Bill Baldwin
Gor Series - John Norman
Myth Series - Robert Asprin
Magician - Raymond Feist

There are tons of interesting settings, some moreso than others.

I'd like to see a lot more Sci-Fi/modern MMO's come out in the future. All this knights and magic crap has turned me away from mmo's for a little while.

I think Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game series would be fantastic.

Hell, I think a Harry Turtledove MMO regarding the 2nd civil war in America would be fantastic. Southern Confederates and Britons versus Yankees and Germans!

Originally posted by Reizla

Books to be MMOs...

To me it'd be the DragonLance saga by Weis & Perin, and Forgotten Realms by Greenwood & Salvatore (the best 2 writers for FR IMO)

....yeah... AD&D player here ;-)

I concur, there so much to work with, would be quite easy to continue expanding on it as well.

Why the frak would you want to take a great novel like Dune or the Song of Ice and Fire books and turn them into an mmo?  Yeah, let's reduce these kick ass stories to a bunch of fedex quests, peen vs. peen, and shatting all over the established conventions and lore in the name of 'balance.'

No thanks.

I can see why game executives would want to make these games (built-in fan base), but I've no idea why any fans of the books themselves would clamor for them to be butchered as they're turned into level treadmills with only surface similarities to their source material.

This genre has already made a mockery of Tolkien and Star Wars (though LotRo is a well-made mmo, its laughable as a representation of Tolkien's work).

I'd love to play an epic single player game based on any of these IPs, or even a NWN-style persistent world shard that is controlled by players and not devs, but AAA mmo's are good for nothing more than time-sink grinding and item accumulation.  They are piss poor at storytelling, immersion, and provoking emotional involvement/response, which is why these books have been so successful.

Seeing Harry Potter there... One thing is certain, good IPs for games need not come from accomplished books. 

For example, there's this series I'm reading right now. It's called Nightside, and is written by the British author Simon R. Green. Its setting is a sort of hidden and completely weird, supernatural part of London. The place also is called the Nightside, and - interestingly, somewhat like the magical community in the Harry Potter books - is not known by the ordinary folk of the city. It has special folk, the total outcasts, freaks, weirdos, magical beings, fallen angels, crazed killers, what have ya... It's an astonishing place where anything can happen and that anything is usually horrifying.

Now, Green writes these books in the vein of old hard-boiled detective novels - the protoganist is a man named Taylor, who has the gift of finding anything - and the style is a bit overdone for my taste, but the setting would be amazing for an MMO:

A macabre fantasy setting in a hidden otherworldly pocket in the middle of a big city... All sorts of beings, all sorts of odd places and all sorts of strange phenomena. Hey, it even has an overarching story to it with a lot of "side-quests"  employing colorful characters. :)

Many good names in Sci-Fi and Fantasy have been put forth.  All very good.  Here is my choice

Larry Niven's  Known Universe

features of this are Ring World and the Kzin Wars.  Larry has written many short stories published in novel's and  journals that feature his Known Universe as the backdrop.  There is a huge source of matterial for it.

This article was really going well up until #1, then it totally killed itself by naming Harry Potter as #1 on the list. Gods there were some good choices there but harry Potter...could have just left that off there hehe.

The writings of H.P. Lovecraft would make for an interesting and rare horror based MMO, with the option for a myriad of gameplay types within the gameworld itself.

Anyone read the Dragon and the Unicorn series by A.A. Attanasio? That series would make for one unique and strange MMO set in the Authurian era, albeit with a lot more crazy fantasty elements.

Anne MacCaffery's Dragonriders of Pern books and/or the world of the Eragon books would make for some interesting MMO's, but a lot of people would probly come down with "I wanna be a Jedi" syndrome and want to play as a dragonrider in one game or another (I know I would hehe).

The best suggestion in the article I think was the MMO idea for Stephen King's "A Dark Tower" series, that would be very unique and interesting if done right and could perhaps become an alternative of sorts to the standard fantasy MMO template the is ovresaturating the market today.

Perhaps we could remove Harry Potter from the #1 position and put The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy MMo idea up as #1, because if I am going to play a silly and zany MMO then I would want it to be Hitchhiker's Guide silly zaniness...not Harry Potter goofy dumb.

 Why not Harry Potter? Dumbed down literature ftw. After all, a certain dumbed down mmorpg is currently #1 in popularity.

Nice write up.

I personally would like to see Wies and Hickman's Death Gate Cycle. I think they could do alot with that work. It's got history, lore, very different well developed characters, races and worlds, hell its even got Merlin :P. I wouldn't carry over the storyline too much just the world.

Originally posted by Beermangler

Sorry to say this, but the author did not do a lot of reading in his lifetime. It's mostly big hits or hearsay titles.

How about these:

Philip Jose Farmer - Riverworld series setting and idea. Would be a top-notch sandbox mmo.

Serge Brussolo - you pick a title, they're all equally disturbing.

Philip K. Dick - The Man in the High Castle (or Fatherland by Robert Harris).

Not to mention Shogun, The Long Ships, Winnetou, The Three Musketeers, even the Illiad ffs!!

And what happened to the SciFi genre? Have you seen the polls on mmorpg lately? Most voted for a SciFi MMO. So how about giving some credit to Asimov? And Van Vogt? Carl Sagan? Arthur C Clarke anyone? They have invisioned worlds beyond EVERY game designers widlest dreams (while stoned).  Aren't you just about sick and tired of spells, wizzards, elves, pure PvP CounterStrike clones? Don't you crave for some shred of realism? 

I have put so much faith in Mortal Online just to be utterly dissapointed when I saw gameplay videos featuring some spell casting during a PvP encounter. And Fallen Earth... FPS aiming & RPG damage? 'The hell's that? "Target too far" while I'm standing 20 feet away from the target? How about some Shift-Delete on your install folder?

Don't mind me, I`m just a too-mature-bitter-gamer waiting for a real MMO.

My English Lit professors from university would beg to differ with you. I do, in fact, have aquite a healthy list of books under my belt.

One has to consider popularity when one is looking at creating a video game based on an IP. If you make something based on an IP no one has heard of, no one will play it. What i'm trying to do with these lists is create a list of IPs that could feasibly actually be made into games both from the perspective of "wow, it'd be cool if..." and with finances in mind.

No need to insult me.

 Sword of Truth series written by Terry Goodkind

Originally posted by JYCowboy

Many good names in Sci-Fi and Fantasy have been put forth.  All very good.  Here is my choice

Larry Niven's  Known Universe

features of this are Ring World and the Kzin Wars.  Larry has written many short stories published in novel's and  journals that feature his Known Universe as the backdrop.  There is a huge source of matterial for it.

Ah, you beat me too it!  I was gonna say Larry Niven's universe has to be made into a MMO.  Someone else mentioned Aspirin's Myth series which could be cool too, also HP Lovecraft stuff.  I remember back in the day there was actually a pen and paper rpg for both Ringworld and Lovecraft's Ctulu so it wouldn't be too hard.  Also around that time I was into Steve Jackson's Car Wars and would like to see something along those lines as well but that's just me (and I know, it's not a book either, heh) tho he could bring back his Illuminati stuff into an online MMO perhaps.

HG Wells and Jules Verne had some interesting stuff that could be translated well I think...perhaps even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (tho a Holmes game might be a solo rpg at best).

Been awhile snce I read Asimov's Foundation series, so can't recall if that would make a good MMO or not.

raymond e feist, starting with the riftwar saga and other saga's as expansions imo

i wish id see a goo dune mmo more then anything else, even more then a good SW mmo. I know a few years ago there was a project guess it got scrapped. On the other hand i'm affraid they'll butcher the books if they try making a mmo