Giant Freakin Robot

I’m far from an expert on the subject but it seems to me that outside of Warcraft, none of these Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing games ever actually work. It’s a simply question of audience. They require a large group of interested players sticking with it over a long period of time and while your Star Trek Onlines of the world might have a brief period of popularity, they never seem to have any staying power and the people playing them invariably seem to drift back to Warcraft.

But it’s safe to say that if you’re going to try and launch an MMO that you’d better launch one with the biggest, existing fanbase possible. Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings. Making MMOs out of these make sense and yet, even those have struggled to find enough players. So what the frak are the people at a company called Bigpoint doing making a MMO out of Battlestar Galactica? I have no idea.

Don’t get me wrong, I love BSG and so did a lot of other people. But BSG’s fanbase is less then 10% the size of Trek’s or even Lord of the Rings, and that’s being generous. Turning it into an MMO seems doomed to failure, but it’s happening anyway. As long as they’re doing it, sign me up for my own Raptor.

Here’s how the press release describes it:

“Players will be able to choose to play as cylons or humans in a constant struggle to control the universe or just survive its perils… A blend of tactical space combat, exploration, and mission-based gameplay will provide a diverse experience. The dramatic missions will define the game’s overall storyline, enabling the player to delve into mysteries of the Battlestar universe.”