After our last “Imagining MMOs” article, where we designed our ideal Game of Thrones MMO (you can take a look HERE), this time we wanted to delve into an equally brutal world where the danger isn't represented by swords and arrows but by something more... bestial, and we are talking about ferocious, giant sharp-toothed dinosaurs! Probably many of you have already guessed what we are talking about, and of course it is a Jurassic Park MMO! How cool would that be? We admit that the idea came to our mind thanks to the upcoming new movie in the franchise: Jurassic World, and without any other cool Dinosaur-based MMOs out there, we thought, why not?

Let's Start!

The best general structure we can think about for a game like this would be something not far away from what Defiance offers, and we are talking about a huge explorable open world (the island of Isla Nublar), third person shooter mechanics and all the perks of a full featured MMORPG. You will take the role of a mercenary sent to the main island of the Muertes Archipelago (the islands from the franchise) as a reinforcement for a military operation tasked to regain full control of the now completely wild islands filled with dinosaurs and other kinds of danger. The first thing a player would face would be a short instanced tutorial where he can learn to shoot, drive, take cover, move, explore, use the stealth mechanics and use the in-game elements such as quests, events and more. The islands would be unlocked gradually and totally explorable, full of secret areas and several elements and extras that will make the most die-hard fan of exploration and collections happy.

For the controls and gameplay style we would choose the third-person shooter set-up as you can't really go wrong with it, being absolutely intuitive and given that the majority of PC-gamers will be familiar with it. We would also add a very nice cover system that lets you take cover behind any solid objects in the environment. There would also be a full featured stealth/detection system, freely inspired by those already seen in the Metal Gear Solid series and the Elder Scrolls games, which will add another dimension to the gameplay and will further enhance the hunter/prey atmosphere that we would be aiming for.

As we would go for a game which is mainly PvE-oriented, we would absolutely feature a main storyline filled with mysteries, secrets, plot twist and charismatic characters that players can enjoy alone or with their friends. Moreover, we would scatter all around the world quest hubs and quest giver NPCs from who you can accept several kind of classic MMORPG quests that can be “retrieve this item” to “kill that giant, scary dinosaur”. All this content would be playable alone or with a group, but once a quest starts all the participants will be brought to an instanced version of the world where they can see and interact only with the group members, so they can stay focused, avoid distractions such as players running wildly here and there and showing up during dramatic cut-scenes. This will also help with immersion as players would truly feel like the main characters of an epic adventure.

Other than quests, players will also be able to enjoy other PvE contents, such as public events similar to the ones in FFXIV:ARR and GW2. Basically there would be events starting randomly all over the open world and all players that comes by join it automatically until they go too far away from the event itself. These events could be something like defend a certain settlement or escort cargo through an area which is known to be full of dangerous velociraptors and so on. Moreover the success or failure of the players in completing these events could even change the world for like one or two days. e.g. if they fail to protect the supply cargo going to camp X and the cargo is destroyed,  camp X merchants could be out of medikits and grenades for a couple of real-world days. Cool, right?

Of course even in a PvE-centric game there would be a bit of PvP, just for fun, you know... and we would offer some classic game modes along with more unique ones:

• Deathmatch and Team deathmatch: We don’t think there is any need to describe these two modes in any great depth; the first is a free-for-all carnage while in the other players are divided into two squads that have to fight until the end, a nice diversion from the main game modes and a fun way to play with your competitive friends.


• Survival: In this team based mode, a team would be composed of humans and players would be able to play with their characters, while the other one would use different kinds of dinosaurs, each one with its own playstyle and skills; after each round they would switch sides for a nice balanced match.

However, even more game modes would be able to exploit this Man vs Dinosaurs mechanics that we featured in survival, and a couple of examples would be escort missions, recover an item from a base full of dinosaurs and even more.

Being that this is just an imagination game we don't have budget limits or anything so we would just buy the best graphics engine and dish out the best looking dinosaurs ever, without forgetting the epic soundtrack that would suit the game, maybe adding the beautiful main theme from the movies.

For the character progression, we would choose a level based, free progression where players would be able to freely explore a web of stat and skills nodes making a little step in their chosen direction at every level up; something like Path of Exile or Defiance, if you know what we mean. This would allow complete build customization and a fresh breath of freedom in character development.

So these are our ideas for a nice Jurassic Park MMO, but more important we want to hear your ideas and your suggestions, so let us know with a comment what you think about it!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2015 at 11:11 am and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.