Dice and Electronic Arts are sitting on a virtual gold mine with the battlefield series as a possible candidate for the next big MMO. Overall the vast majority of gamer’s fall into one of three main categories: MMORPG, FPS and Strategy. With a title like the Battlefield series that originated in the FPS and already has a huge following EA stands to open to a much broader audience of gamer if they were to turn this franchise into an MMO.
The potential for the game transforming into an MMORPG is there to a degree but that’s a whole other subject (see my other MMORPG post here). From a non-developer standpoint, it doesn’t look to much like it would be a huge leap to turn this into an MMO. Take BF2 for example, you already have a variety of maps to play on - each with it’s own spawn and capture points. Seems simple enough to just meld the maps together to form one big map for the game world, right? I mean the world would definitely need to be bigger than just the existing maps but those are a good start, and with the introduction of water based vehicles (submarines would rock!) you could make the game work nearly infinitely bigger with large bodies of water.
The FPS is not a bad game and the maps are already fairly large if you go everywhere on foot. But when you jump into a vehicle or aircraft you can cover the whole map pretty quickly. The beauty of a game like this is that the game world could truly be persistent. Certain control points or zones could give bonuses or unlock abilities for your team. For example, if you control a zone with an airfield perhaps that zone will allow you to produce helicopters for your team while another airfield may produce bombers and yet another fighters, etc.
If you really wanted you could give the game a bit of a strategy flair while opening it up to a MMORPG style in offering non-combat roles. For example, you could introduce crafting and an economy into the game. Non-combat players could craft the weapons and vehicles needed for the war effort and supply them. Instead of recklessley rushing into combat players would have to be more realistically cautious and plan their moves to avoid losing that expensive jet they bought. The economy is simple enough, just award combat characters in-game money for killing opponents or destroying objectives. Maybe even for completing missions set out by some command style character class, the possibilities are endless…well almost endless anyway.
Of course, the crafters would rake in the dough as the war raged on, but you would need something for them to buy. That’s where things like in-game housing, clothes, land or other things to buy come into play. I haven’t thought that far ahead - okay?! But you get my drift, making it as an MMORPG is possible, but even as a simple MMO shooter this game would draw loyal crowds.
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