The Matrix Online was a great concept, not only because it took the living world presented in the film and transformed it onto a virtual medium that looked and felt a bit like City of Heroes, but because it presented a way to continue the series rather than simply flesh out a never-ending point in the middle of the movies. Whenever I talk of The Matrix Online, I’m obligated to point out that one of the shortcomings of the game was that it was released after the final two movies, when reception of the franchise was rather low.
I was in the process of talking about the long-forgotten Harry Potter MMO when I heard about Pottermore, an upcoming “service” that may or may not be the game we heard talk about dating as far back as the release of Goblet of Fire (and probably even further back). My original topic, which I am replanting here, was whether or not a Harry Potter MMO could release in time to capture the interest in the franchise. Then it struck me, the Harry Potter IP is massive enough that such a question is irrelevant. Unless the game is terrible, there is no reason to assume that reception would be lackluster because of disinterest in the IP. So this topic is no longer about Harry Potter.
Instead, let’s talk about some of the other games that were announced over the past year that would warrant more concern. First in line, I want to talk The Mummy Online, announced one year ago, because I know I’m not the only one who was not only surprised that the franchise warranted enough interest to create a game, but that the series was still running (The Scorpion King 3 releases this December). There is also the issue of translating the franchise into a game, done once before with rather poor results. That being said, The Mummy Online still has a good chance of finding its niche, given a low barrier of entry (free to play game).
To further this topic, I’d like to travel back in time to a game that hasn’t seen light since 2004: Tribes. With Tribes, I only need to say one word to get the fans rallied to plaster this page with graffiti: Vengeance. If the Tribes MMO launches this year, as hoped, the series will have been inactive for seven years. That’s long enough for most of the remaining community to have lost interest in any reboot of the franchise, although time will tell if that is indeed the case.
So we’ll see if some of these old-name IP’s are strong enough to stand the test of time.
MMO Fallout 