A couple of friends and I came up with the idea of Oregon Trail MMORPG (World of Oregon Trail, aka, WOOT) a year or so ago. We fleshed it out to the point where we had ideas for begining, middle and end content and 3 expansions.
In the insanity, we even had a presentation at a dinner utilizing nothing but a Nintendo DS and Pictochat to pitch the concept to "potential investors', aka our jerk friends.
We did it all during a 6 hour road trip. From what I can remember. .
- You chose between the Settlers and Native American factions.
- Each faction has a newbie quest. As a settler, you had to make a party and attempt to make it to Oregon with many inn's to logout from along the way so you can pick it up later. This is important because the trick was that if you died in your journey, you had to start from the begining.
- Native American's had quests to help expand their hold on the land. We didn't flesh this out at all.
- There would be open PVP and the ability to loot at will, old school Ultima style.
- The game would have to allow a sickening amount of freedom. Let's say, if you were "days" away from the next town and ran out of food, you could shoot one of your oxen for food, though your pace would slow. Alternately, as a Native American, you could totally grief those settlers or help them on their path for honor rewards from various tribes.
- "WTF? PVP IN OREGON TRAIL?" You gotta make that hunting game full scale baby!
- The first expansion to every MMORPG has to be worthless, so we went with the "Great Rockies" expansion which opened up the pass into the Sierra Nevada with new end game content. See: Really high level bears.
- The second expansion was "The Gold Rush", which would also open up new races to play (Chinese, African-American), as well as new professions and the ability to start your own business which leads into. .
- The third expansion, which we didn't title but was more of a civilization style approach and a focus on player run systems. Players would work together to build the railroad, colonize the rest of the country and continue to build their own business and towns.
Essentially, the idea wound up being some crazy hybrid of Children of the Nile meets World of Warcraft. Either way, you know that no matter how stupid the idea is, everyone would jump for an MMO Oregon Trail.
