The Wheel Weaves as… Wait, What?

Oh look, news!

Red Eagle Games… or Red Eagle Entertainment… or whoever it was who announced that they had acquired the rights to make games based on the late Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series of books has… announced something!

I suppose I should be excited after having read the books so far… well, except for the new one.  But I need more that this tidbit of information to get worked up.

Not that it is bad news.

It seems that Obsidian Entertainment has signed up to help develop Wheel of Time based games.

That would be good news, in fact.  You might remember Obsidian Entertainment from such titles as  Knights of the Old Republic II and NeverWinter Nights 2, both of which draw on intellectual property developed elsewhere, along with their upcoming Fallout: New Vegas.

So they at least bring something to the table, experience with external IPs and a release or three under their belt, which contrasts them nicely with the aforementioned Red Eagle Games, about which there seems to be little written.

No news on whether Obsidian’s involvement will be an MMORPG or not, nor anything about the platform on which they might focus.  They mentioned the PC, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 in the press release, so I guess the Wii is out.

All of which begs the question as to whether or not somebody SHOULD make a MMORPG based on the Wheel of Time series, though if they do I look forward to a variety of  braid tugging and skirt smoothing emotes along with an “agelessness” slider in the character creation tool.

What else would a Wheel of Time MMORPG need?

13 thoughts on “The Wheel Weaves as… Wait, What?”

  4. dave

    There was a first person shooter for Wheel of Time in 1999 that wasn’t too horrible. I would like to see a MMORPG, but I suspect it will just be stand alone games.

    I could see a wide range of character classes, Aes Sedai, Ashaman, Whitecloaks, Trollocs, Senchean, Aeil, Ogier. It could actually be a very deep MMO property if done properly.

    I’m very happy I got my copy of Jordan’s last hardcover signed when he did the book tour and stopped in Pasadena. He was really great with the fans and I was very bummed when he died.

    I bought the latest one that Sanderson wrote and think he did a great job.

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  5. SynCaine

    So strange, I’m just about to finish the 11th book and was going to ask you if you have read 12.1 yet, and now here is this post. (btw the final few chapters of book 11 have, so far, been amazing. I think I have 50-75 pages to go, and plan to pick up 12.1 right after).

    The WoT IP really is perfect for an MMO though, whether anyone pulls it off, or does more than just slap “Aes Sedai” on a WoW mage and calls it a day, is another question.

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  7. Wilhelm2451 Post author

    @SynCaine – Yeah, things started to really pop as the story plowed through book 11. I just wish it had been more brisk at more points along the way. Mat Cauthon went from being really annoying to possibly the most interesting thread in the whole story for me.

    I don’t plan to pick up the first of the final three books until the second is out in paperback. I want to be able to get through them all in one go without having to wait a year between. I’ve been down the road of starting to read a new series of books when the first one comes out and it drives me crazy.

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  8. mbp

    Awesome material for an mmo. The one thing randland isn’t lacking is tonnes of detail. Every-time I start a new chapter of the series I have to download the WoT faq to try and remind myself who everybody is.

    I actually played the wheel of time fps pretty recently when a graphics card problem restricted me to playing old old games. It is very good actually. Despite being an old school shooter there is a lot of novelty in the way spells are used.

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  9. Bhagpuss

    Never read the series and don’t plan to, so an MMO based on them would have to stand entirely on its own merits as far as I’m concerned. I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that MMOs based on existing IPs are generically less interesting than ones based on original IPs anyway.

    The latest hardbacked tanked at our store, largely because everyone seems to be waiting for all three parts to come out before they buy any of them. Not sure the series was ever that big in the U.K. to begin with, compared to it’s rep in the States. We never seemed to sell that many of them, but then F&SF seems pretty moribund nowadays.

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  10. stnylan

    It was fairly large in the UK back in the late 90s early 00s, but books 7-8 put a lot of people off I got the impression. I stopped reading after book 9. I may go through them all when it is finally complete.

    Now Malazan, there is an IP I would love to see something done with.

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  11. Ep

    Im rereading them atm. I originally stopped on book 9 till the release of the newer ones.
    Im not sure id like the books dirtied by games devs tbh. Well not untill Hollywood soils it first. :)

    Belgariad next :P

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  12. toxic

    Might be time for a relatively classless MMO; given the number of Aes Sedai talents, wave riders, etc… might be better to have elemental trees. Then you have the potentially touchy gender issue, since women have different talents than men and men are supposed to be more powerful (in general). Whichever way you go with that someone is getting annoyed.

    You would have M/F source users, then maybe generic ass kickers of various flavors, Warders, maybe a wolf using pet class. I think the Aion one class, two subclasses thing is pretty cool and would be the way to go here, but with more sub classes.

    Also, did Age of Conan ever get spell weaving working? Cause you’d pretty much need to work collaborative magic together to make this real cool. I mean, if you want it to be anything besides FANTASY MMO w/ WOT SKIN: SHAIT’AN RISES.

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