personally I would chow down hard on a wild west mmo. yep, thinking about it makes a bit giddy, it should definitely be made. would need some serious land ownership and building technology to make it work tho.

I'm wondering how people who want 'real world' settings for MMOs would reconcile the concept of resurrections.

I'm not that comfortable with the 'clone' excuse used by SF games, frankly.

I'm not sure if a wild west MMO would work by itself, like other poster's have mentioned it would be limited by the time period setting.  Now if you throw in an IP which allows magic, supernatural etc it would have possibilities. The first IP which came to mind was the Jerusalem man (Jon Shannow)/Bloodstone books from David Gemmell (RIP).  the IP would give a type of wild west theme but set in a post-apocalyptic world which allows the use of magic etc.

I believe the only way a Wild West theme mmo would work is if it was the IP: Firefly (Serenity). Because you would have much more as far as technology, crafting, weapons,a politically correct enemy/other faction to play, the possibilities are endless with this ip.

Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

I'm wondering how people who want 'real world' settings for MMOs would reconcile the concept of resurrections.

 

I'm not that comfortable with the 'clone' excuse used by SF games, frankly.

Probably the same way it's done in LotRo:  calling it morale instead of health, and intimating that you've been knocked out and/or are retreating from battle instead of dying.

The only people who would care about the lore behind the death system are roleplayers, and they have enough imagination to make up their own explanation regardless of the mechanics.

Incidentally, I was just thinking last night while playing Fallen Earth that it has many elements of what would make a great western mmorpg.  Scavenging, crafting, a desolate map that is a frontier in it's own way, and of course the twangy guitar music that evokes Firefly and western movies (for me at least).

Take away the sci-fi tech elements and it basically is a frontier-based game.

there is a wild west mmo in the works lemme get the link http://frontier1859.com/mmorpg/the-best-feedback-in-the-business.html

Unfortunately it's been stagnate for some time.  I used to be active on their forums, but the lead developer was never able to generate significant financial backing.

Originally posted by Jenuviel

Originally posted by ozmono

I remember reading about one about a year maybe even longer ago. It was a sandbox game and had an impressively large list of ambitious features but ofcourse it had no finacial backing. It was just someones dream but it got my imagination and hopes going well enough for me to remember now.

 

Frontier 1859, probably. I followed and participated in the forums there for quite awhile, but it just never seemed like any progress was made finding financial backers. The guy behind it had gone as far as he could on his own, and I think it's been at that point for at least four years now, maybe longer. It's really a shame, too, because it was much more than a "cowboys shooting Indians" thing, it was a chance to build an alternate history of the world, almost a roleplaying-sim hybrid, where players got to re-live the experience of settling the west, or of being one of many native peoples.

 

The game even pitched something called a "conscience inventory," where the actions you took had consequences that basically went on your permanent record; the more trains you robbed, crops you ruined, or even days you went without paying off your debt to the mercantile, the more certain it was that you'd be caught and strung up. Since permadeath was mentioned in early discussions, getting executed would be problematic for people looking to be criminals, though exciting while it lasted. The whole project was very ambitious, and very, very different. That difference, when combined with an untested theme, probably scares the heck out of potential investors.

frontier1859.com/mmorpg/

Yup that was the one.