3 fictional universes that should go MMO

It’s really easy to imagine a well-established fictional world as an MMO. Any imaginative world beyond our own has factions, races, neat archetypes and cities that could be strung together into another WoW clone. As much as we all would like to see innovation beyond that, here’s my top three “why by Odin’s raven does this not exist?” contenders for fictional universes that haven’t already been made into MMO’s. Expect the “verse” suffix attached inccorectly to many words and plenty of foolish optimism.

3. Harry Potter

I thought about excluding this one since Pottermore exists and it’s nice to see a tie-in that actually requires reading the books, but it boggles the mind that there is still no way to properly explore Hogwarts in a virtual world. With the amount of ambition, casting and pure balls it required to film eight movies of decent quality, did anyone ever say, “Hey, we’re already crazy, let’s take this ambition to the video game adaptations as well!” Then someone would say, “What if we created an online Potterverse for players to experience? They could create their own character, choose their house, explore Hogwarts and even play quidditch!” Then the first person would say, “Exactly! Except we’ll definitely not call it Potterverse.”

2. Avatar Universe

The world of the original Avatar series would not have made a great MMO. The two factions would have been the Fire Nation and everyone else. That same world seventy years or so later, on the other hand, is tailor-made for a two-faction, PVP-driven world. On top of that, it an MMO with two factions that have completely different play styles. The current series, Avatar: The Legend of Korra, is based around the conflict between element-wielding benders and Equalists; normal people who don’t like people who can conjure fire and manipulate water pushing them around. Bender players would have to be aware of their environment to be sure they could properly use their chosen element. Equalist players would have to rely on technology and most likely be more group oriented to overcome their more powerful enemies. There could even be some sort of community-driven event where one player becomes the Avatar and another ascends the new leader of the Equalists for some sort of epic, server-affecting battle.

1. Archie’s Sonic Universe

Sonic’s Archieverse isn’t unlike that of DC or Marvel. It’s got heroes with superpowers, crazy villains, ridiculous plots involving a multiverse and even convenient character resurrections. It also hits just about every item on the WoW clone checklist: established world to explore, two warring factions, plenty of possibilities for character archetypes, dozens of racial options and the pre-existing franchise bonus that gets games made. Before you ask why anyone would want to join Robotnik’s side and just be a robot, I’ll first ask what’s the matter with you before pointing out that a significant part of the fat man’s army are traitors who allowed themselves to be fitted with cybernetics. There’s also the guaranteed support of Sonic’s bizarre and completely demented online community of people with original (Tails, but grey and with sunglasses) characters just begging to exist somewhere aside from Second Life.