If You Owned The Matrix Online

**Procurator**

I don't mean a copy of the game, I mean the whole thing. What if you bought MxO off SOE the way they bought it off Warner Brothers/Monolith? Say you came into a fortune (won the lottery, whatever) and had enough money to buy the whole thing and comfortably support it for a few years. I'm talking $100 million here, which has been on offer in the EU lottery (in pounds SMILEY

) a few times. What would you do with the game?

I'd buy MxO off SOE. I'd try to hire the current Devs (who knows, they may want to stay with SOE even if I owned the game and offered them higher salaries), some of the old ones if I can track them down and more besides. Some of the Devs would be tasked with keeping the game running at a basic level (cinematics, missions, occasional LE appearances), while the majority of the team would be assigned to start the game from scratch. A better engine would be built which wouldn't scare any future Devs from tampering with it, so all those lovely features people have been suggesting would be possible. Instanced dungeons, new fighting style, melee weapons, faction/org hideouts, real White Hallways, complex crafting, out-of-game chat etc. We wouldn't release the game until we had all those features. This isn't ever the case in other games because they don't have so much money they're willing to spend on just the initial development.

All it takes are enough developers and the right staff to manage them. Imagine all those professionals working on the game, but a gamer like myself in charge, knowing full well what I/we want from the game.

Then we'd splash out on mass marketing and reel in the subscribers. The game would be so good we'd have at least 100,000 subscribers (minor compared to what other games get). What's that? £1 million a month? Easily enough to pay for staff and servers, I'd've thought. But we'd have more subscribers than that eventually, 'cos this would be better than any of the other MMORPGs - the only reason an MMORPG'er wouldn't want to play the game would be because it's not their favourite genre. Heck, I'd halve the subscription cost, and hold regular competitions to win free months.

What's more, I'd personally oversee the different departments, watching all the little things like making sure CSRs are friendly and fair, the Web team apologises if they botch things up, keep players informed as to what's going on, etc.

Bearing in mind, of course, that this wouldn't be run like a normal business: they want profit. After the initial expenditure, I'd only be after enough money to keep it rolling indefinitely.

It's all reliant on a miracle like winning $100 million on the lottery, but still... one can dream. SMILEY

**PBlade**

Well if we both win the Euro lottery we can pool it together and roll that idea into action, cos I agree with it syllable for syllably.

Obitus_

PBlade wrote:

Well if we both win the Euro lottery we can pool it together and roll that idea into action, cos I agree with it syllable for syllably.

Can i have a couple of million too?

**Theorydust**

Wow, I've actually given thoguht to this recently. Weird...

The top priority would be Mission System Revision 2.0.

I'd also bring back in-game engine cinematics.

**imax**

[TGS wrote:

Procurator]I don't mean a copy of the game, I mean the whole thing. What if you bought MxO off SOE the way they bought it off Warner Brothers/Monolith? Say you came into a fortune (won the lottery, whatever) and had enough money to buy the whole thing and comfortably support it for a few years. I'm talking $100 million here, which has been on offer in the EU lottery (in pounds ) a few times. What would you do with the game?

I'd buy MxO off SOE. I'd try to hire the current Devs (who knows, they may want to stay with SOE even if I owned the game and offered them higher salaries), some of the old ones if I can track them down and more besides. Some of the Devs would be tasked with keeping the game running at a basic level (cinematics, missions, occasional LE appearances), while the majority of the team would be assigned to start the game from scratch. A better engine would be built which wouldn't scare any future Devs from tampering with it, so all those lovely features people have been suggesting would be possible. Instanced dungeons, new fighting style, melee weapons, faction/org hideouts, real White Hallways, complex crafting, out-of-game chat etc. We wouldn't release the game until we had all those features. This isn't ever the case in other games because they don't have so much money they're willing to spend on just the initial development.

All it takes are enough developers and the right staff to manage them. Imagine all those professionals working on the game, but a gamer like myself in charge, knowing full well what I/we want from the game.

Then we'd splash out on mass marketing and reel in the subscribers. The game would be so good we'd have at least 100,000 subscribers (minor compared to what other games get). What's that? £1 million a month? Easily enough to pay for staff and servers, I'd've thought. But we'd have more subscribers than that eventually, 'cos this would be better than any of the other MMORPGs - the only reason an MMORPG'er wouldn't want to play the game would be because it's not their favourite genre. Heck, I'd halve the subscription cost, and hold regular competitions to win free months.

What's more, I'd personally oversee the different departments, watching all the little things like making sure CSRs are friendly and fair, the Web team apologises if they botch things up, keep players informed as to what's going on, etc.

Bearing in mind, of course, that this wouldn't be run like a normal business: they want profit. After the initial expenditure, I'd only be after enough money to keep it rolling indefinitely.

It's all reliant on a miracle like winning $100 million on the lottery, but still... one can dream.

In short your saying if you were a millionar you would build a tottaly new MxO and make it free for poeple to play.

thats all you had to say.

skeptic

Not necessarily in order of importance.

I would:

1. make all servers pvp - the Matrix is/should be a hostile place;
2. change to coding system so crafters can actually be creative in making useful, stat-enhanced, items;
3. change the inventory system to a more conventional MMO banking style with storage containers;
4. increase the mission system's scope and level of story-line detail;
5. promote & continue the Matrix canon by including the players contributions to storyline missions and live events;
6. enable emotes between hostile factions;
7. make the helicopters useful - they should summon agents;
8. make event rewards unique & /or useful.
9. logrithmically increase end-game quest content;
10. fix the bugs & sploits;
11. change entrance requirements to the new organization areas to allow for easier entry by greater sized groups;
12. um - change / fix like another 10 or so smaller items that really aren't that significant but are really annoying;

yes, if I were king...

**Trayden**

1. make all servers pvp - the Matrix is/should be a hostile place;

And kiss about 25% or more of your player base good-bye as well.

RainKingX

[TGS wrote:

Procurator]I don't mean a copy of the game, I mean the whole thing. What if you bought MxO off SOE the way they bought it off Warner Brothers/Monolith? Say you came into a fortune (won the lottery, whatever) and had enough money to buy the whole thing and comfortably support it for a few years. I'm talking $100 million here, which has been on offer in the EU lottery (in pounds ) a few times. What would you do with the game?

I'd buy MxO off SOE. I'd try to hire the current Devs (who knows, they may want to stay with SOE even if I owned the game and offered them higher salaries), some of the old ones if I can track them down and more besides. Some of the Devs would be tasked with keeping the game running at a basic level (cinematics, missions, occasional LE appearances), while the majority of the team would be assigned to start the game from scratch. A better engine would be built which wouldn't scare any future Devs from tampering with it, so all those lovely features people have been suggesting would be possible. Instanced dungeons, new fighting style, melee weapons, faction/org hideouts, real White Hallways, complex crafting, out-of-game chat etc. We wouldn't release the game until we had all those features. This isn't ever the case in other games because they don't have so much money they're willing to spend on just the initial development.

All it takes are enough developers and the right staff to manage them. Imagine all those professionals working on the game, but a gamer like myself in charge, knowing full well what I/we want from the game.

Then we'd splash out on mass marketing and reel in the subscribers. The game would be so good we'd have at least 100,000 subscribers (minor compared to what other games get). What's that? £1 million a month? Easily enough to pay for staff and servers, I'd've thought. But we'd have more subscribers than that eventually, 'cos this would be better than any of the other MMORPGs - the only reason an MMORPG'er wouldn't want to play the game would be because it's not their favourite genre. Heck, I'd halve the subscription cost, and hold regular competitions to win free months.

What's more, I'd personally oversee the different departments, watching all the little things like making sure CSRs are friendly and fair, the Web team apologises if they botch things up, keep players informed as to what's going on, etc.

Bearing in mind, of course, that this wouldn't be run like a normal business: they want profit. After the initial expenditure, I'd only be after enough money to keep it rolling indefinitely.

It's all reliant on a miracle like winning $100 million on the lottery, but still... one can dream.

I'm currently calling the dream police to Baker Act you.

**zeroone506**

The question is, would a game company just sell a game to a privat person?

**CassiusX**

I'd hire back the original Dev team & LET & fire whoever is here now but wasn't in the beginning. Fire!

Fatmop

"Would a game company sell a game to a private person?"

If said person had enough money to make it worth their while, hell yeah they would. They'd drop it like a hot potato. Don't matter who's buying or why, so long as the money they get outweighs the money they would be getting if they held on to it.

There are a lot of little things I'd change on top of what everyone's said here, to make the game a bit more life-like and/or fun:

1) Opening doors - RSI animation on the door
2) Get rid of some of the blockiness in the environment - sometimes you can't shoot or knife an opponent in the simulation even though you'd clearly be able to if it were real life. Standing behind certain handrails, or on different-level platforms, or peeking through holes in the walls should all be acceptable for firing, and for the most part they currently are not. SMILEY

3) More customizable RSIs. The stock faces are getting old fast, you know?
4) More true-to-life martial arts and gun animations - "tactics" caused the devs to have to come up with stock-ish animations for the martial artists: 7 hits for speed, 5 for power, etc. The only ones I really like right now are some of the karate and aikido grab moves, and the finishing moves for aikido and kung fu. The system could be a lot more fluid and neat-looking (not that it isn't the best MMO combat animation system anyway, but anything can be improved upon). Also, DPE should be a finishing move, period. You don't get up from getting shot in the face.
5) Drivable cars - this would, of course, have the potential to completely ruin the game, but the Matrix movies had their share of car chases, and what better way to put that $100,000,000 to use than to find a way to incorporate cars into the game?
6) Better and more diverse outdoor/indoor world
7) "Real world" areas - not good for much aside from RP purposes, but being able to talk to your captain and crewmates in an instanced "hovercraft' area would be pretty sweet. Don't even get me started on the possibilities of hovercraft or city interaction - this game would take up enough hard disk space as it is.

**zeroone506**

Let's hope the buyer has the ability to run the game himself and not harm it more than SOE would ever dream to. I mean, not that I have experience in this subject, but I'd guess it's much more difficult to run a Massive Online Game than described in the OP. Lots of business understanding, connections or whatever. If anyone could just show up and run an MMO or produce a movie, heck, that would be a great world.

Feel free to bash me without mercy if I'm wrong. I'd deserve it.

4) More true-to-life martial arts and gun animations - "tactics" caused the devs to have to come up with stock-ish animations for the martial artists: 7 hits for speed, 5 for power, etc. The only ones I really like right now are some of the karate and aikido grab moves, and the finishing moves for aikido and kung fu.

I think removing obvious animation bugs and adjusting small demerits would be required. What you're suggesting... dunno, I actually can't comprehend what you only like these very particular animations you've named, and would be sad if any of the others were removed. I enjoy pretty much any kind of tactic animation, if it's performed properly (without off-setting).

6) Better and more diverse outdoor/indoor world

At least what concerns the exterior world, I find it's exactly the right balance between diversity and repetitiveness. I love it and wouldn't change a thing.

Sorry that lame comments on other's suggestion is all I'm coming up with, but there isn't anything I could particularly think of myself right now.

**[FA]Tbone**

SOE only bought MxO to gain the rights to the DC Comics MMO that Monolith was also originally going to develop with WB.

ShadowMan

If I owned the game, I would honestly ditch the engine and rebuild one. Nothing harsh to the Monolith guys, but this engine is incredibly cumbersome and laggy (not just server-side, client-side too).

**Procurator**

I know that running an MMORPG would be very complex, but I wouldn't be doing it myself. I'd just be overseeing the project. Does the CEO of SOE (or is it Sony?) have a clue about games design? Doubtful.

No, I'd hire assorted experts to deal in detail with the various affairs. We already know Walrus can manage the game development side of things. SMILEY

One thing I would be able to handle myself is the Web site. It'd be better than anything this lot has come up with.