Saturday, July 28, 2007

Doctor Who MMO Redux

I guess one flaw with my fantasy of a Doctor Who MMO universe is that MMOs are typically centered around combat. Doctor Who, on the other hand, was usually non-violent. It was rare to see the Doctor pick up a weapon.

I guess the obvious solution would be to militarize the game in some fashion. Since you obviously can't play the Doctor anyway, players could belong to a Time Agency or some other group alluded to in the series, who wage war across time against various time travelling enemies hell bent on conquering history. Captain Jack Harkness did carry a sonic blaster instead of a sonic screwdriver after all.

Star Trek was usually non-violent too, but Perpetual seems to have taken the obvious approach of making Star Trek Online more militaristic.

Are there alternate means of providing obstacles to players that can be explored in an MMO? We've seen diplomacy in Vanguard (kind of...). That was somewhat of an card game. Would an MMO that used puzzles or card games to simulate "defeating an obstacle" interest players?

Could a game be done in a way that doesn't use loot as a means of advancement? The Doctor was rarely seen collecting anything except celery sticks and jelly babies. But, on the other hand, I don't recall Luke Skywalker upgrading his armor after a battle with the Stormtroopers either, and the current post-NGE Star Wars MMO is pretty darn loot-centric.

Doctor Who would definitely work as a single player game, and it appears that I'll at least get that part of my wish. They are going to release a Doctor Who video game this Christmas!

I would still love to see Doctor Who as an MMO, but it would require some creative thinking to present it properly.

4 comments:

Gehn said...

One idea would be a time wars mmo, time lords vrs dalek and others.

Anonymous said...

hehe i think that is a cool ideia...

Anonymous said...

Doctor who online game would be great. Very simple way to start is to start off as a time lord solider training up to fight in the time war as the "The Doctor" being an gerenal in the past leading the fight as the story goes until hes the last of his kind some how. However mean time you start off as a time lord solider training to become a Time lord once trained you will learn the basics such as how to fight and build and to update. Yes you start off with the sonic screw driver where you are able to update it with parts and magic essances which gives you a whole range of different things to do with it such as a weapon lesser? or to build your own tradis with it... its endless but i believe the sonic driver should be the main weapon where you can update it fix it up to your custuom built weapon. Find parts fit them to your sonic driver and you get more slots for more parts which enable you to add different ablities. I cant see they walking around with spears or mace weapons or even lesser guns of some sort should be the sonic driver thought out for example like a jedi lightsaver. this is just a 5 second idea this could be made much better and more depth if only there was a team and company willing to fund it and create it.

Davyd said...

One way would be to shift the focus to puzzle solving and information gathering. Maybe take the non-combat elements of games like assassins creed, where you walk around and investigate things. Another option would be to have a companion who provides the combat element. Depending on where (or when) you recruit your companion reflects their combat options. Maybe a human UNIT soldier from present day earth, or a Judoon from the Future.
Another good idea would be to give the game an 'educational' edge. For example, traveling the to the past could be historically informative, whereas alien planets could teach biology or chemistry and space based locals such as space ships and stations could cover physics.