THQ Hammering out a MMO deal

It looks like THQ have entered into a licensing agreement with the Games Workshop to produce a new MMO based on the venerable science fiction table top game, Warhammer 40,000. THQ and Games Workshop have already produced a successful RTS for 40K called Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War.

Unlike Warhammer Online, which is being produced by EA Mythic, and is set in the high fantasy genre, 40K Online is set in a distant future sci-fi setting with space marines. The announcement doesn’t indicate how long the game has been in production, but I understand that it has started. There doesn’t appear to be an official title for this game either.

I suspect there will be more news on this in the near future, however, it’s probably not a good idea to hold your breath waiting. It’s likely to be a few years away.

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Is Blizzard Working on a New MMO

IGN is reporting on an article in Empire Magazine where Blizzard’s Vice President of Development, Itzik Ben Bassat says:

When we announce our next MMORPG it’s not going to be another WoW - we’re not a company that tends to tread the same ground. It’ll be something innovative and new that really brings entertainment to another level.

Coupled with some other comments made recently regarding Starcraft and Diablo, the speculation is that one of these games may be the subject of this MMO. I’m not so sure about this. While I think both Diablo and Starcraft could work as a MMORPG, I’m not sure these would fit in with the innovative and new label that Mr Ben Bassat is talking about.

Diablo, undoubtedly, would work very well as a MMO. Most of the elements already exist, and the game has a strong online component. Quests, items, and the world would have to be beefed up considerably, but that wouldn’t be a problem for such a development. The lore of the world is very well developed, much as Warcraft’s lore was well developed prior to World of Warcraft.

The problem is that the gameplay in Diablo has a lot of similarities with the gameplay in World of Warcraft. A Diablo MMO, if it was to retain its Diabloness would be very similar to WoW. This would disqualify it as being new and innovative.

Starcraft could be developed much the same way as Warcraft was developed into WoW. (World of Starcraft anyone?) However, I’m not sure it would be. From what I’ve read, I think Starcraft 2 is on the way and it will be a traditional RTS style game. The original Starcraft is still pretty popular, and I think that some of the fan base would be disappointed if it wasn’t a RTS.

Of course that doesn’t mean that it can’t or won’t be made into a MMORPG. With Starcraft being set in a SciFi world, Blizzard could easily come up with gameplay that is different to WoW and Diablo. That would gel with the new and innovative tag mentioned in the quote. However, I wonder if the Starcraft universe is rich enough for a MMO. I’m not sure Starcraft would make a good MMORPG.

What I expect to see happen is that Blizzard will come up with a completely new IP for their next MMO. Warcraft was a great IP for them to use to get into the MMORPG genre since it was so well known. With the funds that will be available to Blizzard from the WoW income, it may be that they will branch out into something completely different. I hope so anyway.

Having said all that, I do wonder if we are jumping the gun a bit here. All of the language used has been somewhat fluffy, when we announce our next mmorpg, indicates they are thinking about another MMO but gives no idea if they are even in the planning stages. The comments about Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 are even more ambiguous.

Perhaps we are reading our own hopes and desires into these comments. I know that I’d love to see Starcraft 2 released, I spent many hours playing the original, and have always wondered why the sequel hasn’t been made. But, until an official announcement has been made, all we have to go on is rumour and speculation.

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Fallout and the Cost of a Modern MMORPG

Back in the day, I played a little PC RPG called Fallout. It was a game I thoroughly enjoyed, and I must have spent at least 50 hours going through the story the first time. Speaking of which, it was a decent story too.

Several years later, I was dismayed to hear that Fallouts developer, Interplay, was closing its doors.

Fast forward to December 2006. Today. I was doing my usual trawling through various news sites and I came upon a link to a document on the US Securities and Exchange Commission web site. It appears that Interplay is not as dead as it appeared to be, and is currently seeking investment to produce a Fallout MMORPG.

My first response was one of deep interest. The Fallout style of post-apocalyptic science fiction, as far as I know, hasn’t been made into a MMORPG. Fallout offers a fairly rich world as well. One well suited to an online game. As a Sci-Fi fan, I’ve always lamented that Sci-Fi takes a back seat to Fantasy, why, I’m not sure.

As I looked further, some interesting facts began to emerge. The revenue model that Interplay would be using is a subscription based model. No surprises there, subscription models are the most used models in MMORPGs. There is speculation that the MMOG market will grow to 13 billion dollars by 2011. That’s nearly half of the current 30 billion dollar computer game market. Lotsa cold hard cash!

What gets my interest most though, is that there is a budget for the development of the Fallout MMORPG listed in the document. This budget is broken into three components.

The pre-production budget of five million dollars. The production budget of forty million dollars, and the release budget of thirty million.

Pre-production would be all about setting up the facilities. The purchase of development hardware, setting up server facilities, and getting an office set up. There’d be a lot more involved here in the set up though.

Obviously, production is all about the development. From what I understand, WoW had a similar development budget, so it looks like Interplay are not going to cut corners on this one.

The Release budget would be for setting up the servers, the data center, possibly the support center. Some of that might even go into the development of the first expansions. Since this is three quarters of the development budget, I’ll hazard a guess and speculate that Interplay are planning a lot of servers.

So. With a great licence, and a boat load of cash, are Interplay preparing to take on the 800 pound gorilla of the MMORPG industry? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Three years is a lot of time in some ways, World of Warcraft could go from strength to strength and become even more dominant, or other games could start to put the pressure on. In three years, Interplay could be entering a market with a substantially different landscape.

We’ve got a lot of time to speculate on the Fallout MMORPG. According to the prospectus on the SEC site, development is not planned to start until January 2007, and the game is not slated for release until 2010. I doubt we’ll hear very much from the developers from now until 2008 or 2009. If you have the patience, it might be worth keeping an eye on.

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