So ive been sitting on this thought for literally years.

I love the old west, and i love epic games. I figured why not make a crazy Epic wild west game, with great graphics and what not. Allow me to explain my ideas.

Of course a full create-a-gunslinger/indian with a highly stylized, vast network of faces, hair, body type, and clothing. You pick your back ground, like whether your a bitter child whos family was murdered by outlaws, an indian trying to keep the tribal ways alive in a world of growing technological expansion, a rogue cavalry/ militia/ civil war soldier who takes to a life of crime. Maybe it sounds lame, but imagine creating characters straight outta classic westerns like The man with no name series.

Im all about customization. SO of course clothing would have an intricate yet simple mass scope. The skills would be of course western. Like draw time, stamina, duel wield, duel shotguns, speed, all the typical things, only applied to the western atmospher. It would be less armor, and more comfort, impact on others, that decide whats a good piece. And of course straight up badassness. Like what kind of holster you use depending on draw time, whether your vest or trench coat impedes movement, or conceals weapons, how suspicious you look, how harmless you look, all working in ways to get what you want to get out of the game. Example: if you walk into a bank to rob it with a posse of friends, your trench coat may get second glances from the cop posted inside, but it will be better at concealing your customed 4 barrel shotgun that you put marks on for every exploded head.

Weapons. I think this is the coolest concept. A near endless amount of PIECES. complete customization of guns. You have a rifle slot and shotgun slot, pistol slot, maybe you duel wield, or throw knives or use a bow and arrow. There are parts for all of this. Different barrels that get different result, plenty of sights, bullets, revolver pieces galore, so that no two gun is exact from player to player. Maybe you pay the cash for a crazy third barrel on your shot gun. Kill enough people with THAT add on, you gain an outlaw title, or shoot the man who made it up and decide to wait for a better name. or vice versa if your a law man, gain notoriety as an unforgiving sheriff. Limitless customization of your character, like rivaling WoW.

Of course the world itself would hae to be big. Small barren towns, ghost towns for exploration, ranches you could hustle, or own, mines you could search in, perhaps make your money being a prospector. Protect your mine from bandits.

The travel system could be train and stage coach, which are always in danger of being robbed. Some players could be riding the train just headed to another town, and never realize that that train also carries a famous chinese emperor visiting the new american states. And it just so happens that some other bandit players, who have access to this information because of their bandit ways, would attack the train. Then you could choose to join them, run, or protect Emperor Dong. Or maybe you just get your own horse. You could get pets, companions like dogs, or foxes, like if your an indian.

The game itself would be beautiful FPS, but you could go third person if you wanted. like oblivion. really focus's on scenery and your own weapons and clothing.

Quests would be typical and also very different. The west was full of quests, like the obvious WANTED quests, get hired by the army for civil war battles, or get hired to bring a criminal by stage coach to his trial, and defend against bandits. I mean it could be NPCs giving you offers or it could be other payers who have put together a group of guys who are bringing in a criminal, and they are sure they need more men for the journey back when his posse attacks.Players could create factions, and do what they want. A law man circle, army buddies, a tribe, or outlaws.

Im begginging to rant, but you get the idea. The old west is near limitless in its possibilities as an MMO or hell even a non MMO RPG. I think its a genre that has seriously been left untapped, and in this age where everyone is either clad in armor, or posses magic, i think wearing a poncho and a bank tellers hate while you wield your duel shotguns in the faces of scared townies with the rest of your posse is a very exciting prospect.

Could this game be made, should it be made, and if done correctly, could it be awesome?

Add to it if you got it.

This is also an idea I have mulled around. I think done well and in an almost spaghetti western fashion would be amazing.

Would Clint Eastwood be an epic 40 man raid boss?

Just to expand on "factions"

- The Army: Depending on the time period both Union and Southern
- The Law: sheriffs, deputies and Texas Rangers
- The Anti-hero faction: retired lawmen, bounty hunter and lawful gunman
- The outlaws
- The towns people: saloon and gambling owners

- The Native Americans could potentially be a hot button issue. For the game to be successful they would either need to do this really well or simply not have them. For instance how some games will remove slave labor and slave traders despite it being a prevalent happening at the time.

Just to name a few.

uhh....YESSSSS!!???

Missions/tasks could include:

-Defending a town/outpost/stage coach. Ride a stage coach for medicine, mail, or bank deliveries or raid them.
-deliver mail ala pony express.
-telepgraph and telegram for communication
-build rail ways (then protect trains or raid them)
-Fend off cattle rustlers and poachers
-skills could include hunting, fishing, mining, medicine, camping, trapping, panning for gold, explosives, banjo playing, harmonica playing, piano playing, fence building.
-PvE against mountain lions, cougars, coyotes, etc.
-Disover/estlabish trading routes between towns, Indians, etc.
-Run a brothel or bar.
-Bank heists.
-Street showdowns.
-Native American factions.

This can go on and on. I like it!!

I'd totally buy this, especially if it had a great spaghetti western soundtrack.

I think you boys are onto something, by god.

I for one, would play this. Hopefully it'll get picked up by some decent developer. However, more likely than not, it would be ruined by poor something or other..

I think this sounds very promising, but a western themed MMO currently exists, it's free to play online, the name escapes me, but I know it hasn't had a huge uptake. Also, this sounds somewhat like "GUN Online" should such a thing ever come to pass, and GUN was a sleeper hit (literally popular to a few but ignored by the vast majority despite critical acclaim) so I don't know how well it would sell.

That said, you never know if a publisher might want to pick it up. I'd pitch it around to some development houses. I wonder if Mythic might be interested...

I'd love a Wild West MMO, or a Firefly one, 'caus that's pretty much a western in space. We need some good MMO's and some good western games, maybe they could kill two irds with one stone as it were.

I would love to see this happen but there would be alot of problems implementing that "Western" feel, I think that everything should be available at the start because i can't see this having grinding in it so it won't have leveling but maybe there could be a money system or respect e.g:get respected by a rancher or gunsmith you get free or discount items.
I also think that in towns there should be a strong sherrif/lawman presence to deter bandits and big shootouts or too many bank robberys(ill get on that later) and there could be a duel system where you can challenge people to duels and the winner can get money(if it's betted) and in bars if you start a fist fight any one can join in npcs and players alike(pick-up-able chairs and bottles which smash is a must)and you get knocked out and regain consuisness(sp) when the fight is over.
Death could be handeld very westerny per say you get shot in the chest you fall on the ground(still alive)and wait/crawl around for a allie to heal you or a enemy to kill you or you can heal yourself(if whisky or bandenges are available) or shoot yourself,if you get shot in the arm or the leg you'll have to limp or said arm won't work if you get shot in the head or die you get transported to the nearest doc' what i would love to see is if you get shot in a specific place you can get out of the docs in a few second and have a scar/eyepatch/wooden leg or you can wait extra time or pay him and be perfectly healed.
With the bank robberies you could wait for a certain time say when the lawmen are asleep(or dead!)and doing crimes would make enemies with that faction(town you did it in) if you get hated enough you get ccast out or hanged i also think gun customization and character customization would be awesome.

Needless nitpick? Please stop referring to the "Old West" duster as a trench coat? Trench coats didn't exist until the 1900s, and they didn't reach the US until after WWI.

Alone Disciple:
Missions/tasks could include:

-Defending a town/outpost/stage coach. Ride a stage coach for medicine, mail, or bank deliveries or raid them.
-deliver mail ala pony express.
-telepgraph and telegram for communication
-build rail ways (then protect trains or raid them)
-Fend off cattle rustlers and poachers
-skills could include hunting, fishing, mining, medicine, camping, trapping, panning for gold, explosives, banjo playing, harmonica playing, piano playing, fence building.
-PvE against mountain lions, cougars, coyotes, etc.
-Disover/estlabish trading routes between towns, Indians, etc.
-Run a brothel or bar.
-Bank heists.
-Street showdowns.
-Native American factions.

This can go on and on. I like it!!

I'd totally buy this, especially if it had a great spaghetti western soundtrack.

good idea id totally buy it too. maybe you should make it

you guys are forgetting one important thing. To stay interesting games need not only some kind of reward to motivate players to work on their skills. Not rewards like money and equipment, but rewards as in experiences. Unfortunately, there's really only a handful of settings you could have in the old west, any difference between towns, canyons, deserts, ranches, etc. would be minimal, and not provide much motivation for working your character up to the point they can go to these places.

Mine shafts? Oasies? I guess you're right but Im sure it could be strung out.

Maybe make your 'skills' depend on how good you are. So if you consistantly pull off long range shots the game adjusts your damage so you do slightly better range damage than close damage etc?

I would love to see a deadlands MMO. if any of you are familiar with the old pen/paper card and casino chip table top game. Basically that wild wild west movie on acid. with undead ginat tremorish worms harrowed spirits crazy weapons mad scientists and all sorts of crazy stuff. If anyone actually still tabletops i so reccomend that game.

Lvl 64 Klutz:
you guys are forgetting one important thing. To stay interesting games need not only some kind of reward to motivate players to work on their skills. Not rewards like money and equipment, but rewards as in experiences. Unfortunately, there's really only a handful of settings you could have in the old west, any difference between towns, canyons, deserts, ranches, etc. would be minimal, and not provide much motivation for working your character up to the point they can go to these places.

Maybe start them off "back east" and have them move to the west and move up through the "social ranks" of whatever group/alignment they chose? That way you have beginnier's levels in a city somewhere, you have levels along the various trails, and then you have levels when you get to wherever you were going. Pick the right trail and you can even have people playing out some of the more famous historical incidents involved in the era. (A Dahmer Pass minigame would be pretty tasteless, though. Or actually, it might taste like pork.)

This actually soudns like a really good idea. I was actually wondering a couple weeks ago why there are not many mmorpgs with a unique setting. It seems as if there are tons of ideas waiting to be explroed,a nd I hope a developer will make a game along these lines. The wild west really isnt suited well fro an fps (at least not the way games like Dead Man's Hand portrayed it). Howver, an rpg seems like the perfect fit.

This is actually a really great idea. I would certainly buy it. Im not sure how well some parts of it would work as an MMO, though. Some of the situations that you described sounded like they would be great MMO moments, however the overall game I think would be better as a single player game.

Lvl 64 Klutz:
you guys are forgetting one important thing. To stay interesting games need not only some kind of reward to motivate players to work on their skills. Not rewards like money and equipment, but rewards as in experiences. Unfortunately, there's really only a handful of settings you could have in the old west, any difference between towns, canyons, deserts, ranches, etc. would be minimal, and not provide much motivation for working your character up to the point they can go to these places.

BEing the west, yes there would be a small amount of possible scenery, but i think that could be milked too. I for one love the old west feel, and would be delighted to ride across a range and come upon a man made canyon you had to climb down into, or a sudden green valley, or a small track of woods, or maybe even forsets, and mountains with snow even. All that stuff is doable, and i think in the end there would be a good enough difference and still make everything feel so usual

That's not a bad idea. I like it.

You all have good ideas. When you think about the final outcome, im amazed someone hasent already done it. Who says there cant be a leveling system? I feel an appropriate leveling system could be thought up, like fame perhaps. You get famous enough, more opportunities would be open, and fame would be based on kills, winning chalenges, like capturing wanted men, or winning bar fights or duels, and how much money you have. You get famous enough, you start to get invited (reach minimum level) to enter bandit circles, get job offers from a town for law man, protect a roving theatre as they travel from town to town. You can buy your own place, maybe a place on the map that all players can access, like a server wide safe house that you customize, and to get a more "online" feel, there could be places in towns you could rent out in real time, real places people could buy, and the town could grow based on the fame of the people who live there, and the money they put into it.

I mean seriously the more i talk about it, the more i realize the potential.

Um, have you actually BEEN to the American west and southwest? It has some of the most amazingly varied natural grandeur to be found anywhere.

I enjoyed Deadlands as a paper-and-dice RPG and would enjoy playing it as a CRPG at some point. I'm not a fan of MMO's and would prefer to avoid them.

Also i feel i have to address weapons and ammo. It would be cool to visit a scientist in one of the towns, and learn to create like custom arrow points, with glycerin in the tip, or explosives. Or make bullets the same way. It could be like an engineering or a science skill.

Guns: Handles, hammers, barrels, inside equipment, outside equipment, sawed off, extended barrels, metal, powder, every aspect of the gun capable of being replaced, several spots for guns that do different things, and the gun slots, one each for rifles, shotgun, and pistols.

"Science Skill: Extra shotgun barrel(+1). Add a barrel to your shotgun (sawed, unsawed) which adds maximum damage from an all-barrel's-fired shot, but reduces individual barrel damage.

Damage +20
Agility -10
Melee + 5
Concielability(Sp?) - 60"
(out of 100. The lower the score, the harder it is to hide from NPCs. Clothing would affect this as well)

Classes:

Indian - Renegade: You are an indian in appearance, But you have turned your back on the ways of others. Old times are dying, and you wander in search of something that brings back that sense of familiarity. You start in a random point near Indian land. Where you go and what you do is your choice. You excel at knive use, bow and arrows, and long range rifles. You are intimidating, good in fights, but its hard for you to find work. (trustablity? As a renegade indian, white people, and your people alike dont trust you, until your fame is high enough and word of you has spread)

indian - Devotee: Your people are dying, But you must carry on the old ways. You start In a massacred camp, your family dead, and your tribe leaders captured. A lone survivor, You must seek help from the other tribes, or venture into the new world and make a name for yourself and your race alike. Good at knives, bow and arrow, pistols, mercantile. Indians trust you, and the new world sees you as a resource. It will be somewhat easy for you to find work.

Outlaw: You are scum. You have killed woman and children alike, and you enjoyed every moment. Nasty is in your blood, and others, including your own kind, are weary of you. You are skilled with duel pistols, shotguns, and knives. You start at your posse's base. You are now only a gun, a man hired to kill. Will you climb the ranks, or create your own gang?

Warman: Youve been enlisted. You fight for Uncle Sam, and you know how to kill a man. You love your country, and are expected to fight when you hear the call. Defecting is always an option, But is the price worth it? You are skilled with all guns, and excel at the rifle. However your time in service has left you rough and unsocial. Merchants try to scam you, and bandits find you easy, But towns folk always trust a man in uniform. You start on Your base. Stick around or desert, but be prepared for the consequences.

Lawman: Ever since you were a kid, you had a tin star. Now your grown, and highway men fear your name. You are a law man, on the cusp of finding your outlet for making others abide the rule of the land. Ranger, sheriff, as long as your bullets enter evil men, You don't care how you get the job done. You start as a deputy in a promising town, a new rig on a sparkling frontier, But the town attracts those who look for opportunity, and they'll get it unlawfully if they can. You are skilled with pistols, and shotguns, and trusted by the townsfolk. Will you make it as a lawman, or will the fame of your foe be too much to keep you straight?

Rancher: You know cows, and you know horses, and you know what it takes to buy and sell them. Your dad taught you how to shoot, and your pretty good at pickin off the coyotes with your rifle, but kill a man, you have not. Your intelligence and business nature are promising, but your new to man against man violence. You begin on a ranch, a new hire to drive in the new meat. Will you seek power through honest wealth, or use your wits for more?

Gunslinger: The basic Western star. You begin in your house, hidden until you hear the bandits shots fade across the range. Your family has been murdered and your house looted. You seek revenge, and you know who you want to feel it. You are skilled with most weaponry, and good at fighting, But you have little time for anything else, and because of this, your intelligence, and mercantile suffer. People trust you, if given the chance, and bad men know you as a lose cannon. Yours is an empty book, many pages and chapters waiting to be written.

Classes apply. I think after you distribute your individual talents and skills, you have a pretty good class system. I know indians are a touchy subject, but i think their crucial to complete the atmosphere. And if anyone gets offended for our red friends, just remember that i am infact an indian, and it sounds like a great idea to me.

This sounds awesome. I love the potential for wide open exploration, diversity of cities, areas, characters... I'm surprised this has not been pushed before. It would be a shame to see it done poorly though; companies always take that as a sign that people DON'T want that type of thing.

LOL @ Emperor Dong.

But, yeah, it's a sweet idea. I'd play it.

How are you going to ensure the player doesn't get tired of wandering about a severely underpopulated area?

You could spend actual real-time days on horseback getting to a small town to rob its bank only to discover someone else already had.

I don't like picking holes in things without offering some kind of a fix, but the best I can come up with at short notice is this:

Groundhog Day

The MMO would cover the period of time from dawn to dusk, a night under the stars (or in some brothel) the dawn of the following day and would end just after 'high noon'. Thus, with dynamic lighting (see Far Cry 2) you would evoke all the mood changes associated with the Old West Genre. The game would have several 'instances' running simultaneously with staggered timeframes, so that you didn't have to set your alarm clock to wake you in the middle of the night so you could experience daylight on the American server. So, depending on when you 'logged in', the MMO would set your PC's gameclock to the instance that most closely bracketed your own localized time of day. If you wanted to start playing a night mission whilst it was daylight in your locale you would have to specially select the closest temporally offset instance, but in so doing you would lose hours of gameplay from the '1st day' of the repeating day-night-day cycle.

Every time you played you could spend your 'gold' on different clothes, equipment, weapons, hired-guns (AIs), etc. as well as change your race, appearance, gender, persona, health, fatigue and initial location. To make things easier these could be defined as 'profiles' with a set of objectives attached (linked to the MMO's map) so that they could be circulated amongst the community. All this would ensure you would not commit to a life as an outlaw, spend hours/days getting to a town with a large bank in it, plan your dawn raid, only to have it be totally cleaned out by another player with the exact same modus operandi as yourself whilst you slept at the local flop-house.

You can have RPG leveling up, with the experience, skills and money gained on one day's play being put forward towards the next. It just is that as far as the MMO is concerned there is only One night under the stars and the few hours that precede and follow it. Doing this with time squeezes the action together so there is more chance of emergent gameplay and ad hoc thematic narrative (i.e. watch a lot of Westerns and keep iterating the MMO until you can tell all of their stories within the game: The Naked Spur...to...Unforgiven - as the aim should be to evoke the world of the Old West as represented by the best Hollywood films).

However, to increase tension you should have all the assets apportioned to your character be at stake when investing, gambling, in a gun fight, or quick-draw, etc. Therefore, if you deposit your money at the bank overnight for safe keeping, but it gets robbed before you can withdraw it, tough. If you get shot, even as a bystander, tough. All that you have done for that character will be wiped. Game over.

However, the next time you play you will be given the small starting sum of monies and stuff your reset skill level allows you to own and you will start again. For this reason the MMO allows you to have a roster of characters and move money between them, playing with the one that suits your mood at the time.

Ok. That's all pretty complicated to explain, but I hope I have given you some food for thought.

Alone Disciple:
Missions/tasks could include:

-build rail ways (then protect trains or raid them)
-Run a brothel or bar.

These would be really good side missions for making that extra bit of cash needed to buy rifles, upgrades, more brothels and bars etc.

I would definitely buy this game and convince all my friends to do the same!

kinda like an mmo of gun?

While I despise MMOs, I wouldn't mind seeing some originality to that genre or any other. OP, your Wild West idea is awesome. Now make it happen, because the genre needs out of its fantasy rut.