[FastJack]

There do tend to be dedicated RP servers on most of the games you mention, FJ.  Those tend to have stricter rules concerning such things.

This is true, yet I think a good chunk of people on those servers are just avoiding PvP. I don't know, I guess nothing can really replace the P&P RPGs for me...

[TranKirsaKali]

They already tried a Shadowrun game.  And messed it up royally. It was really cyberpunk.  And not very good cyberpunk.  I would hate for them to drek it up again.

[mortonstromgal]

It would have to be something like EVE mixed with City of Heros I think. And on the rigger thing the downside would be unlike spirits that can be resummoned, when they get destroyed you have to buy them all over.

[raben-aas]

Actually, I don't think a SR MMO would work (judging from what runners do and how that could be played out multiplayer-wise).

What could work (and would be neat) would be some kind of Urban Brawl multiplayer game

[Qemuel]

Or maybe a Neverwinter Nights-like format where you can customize the setting and create your own adventures, then play as a group online while one person GMs.  I think there would be a really good market and fan support for such an idea.  Developers could put up their personal scenarios for download for other groups to play with... or if they are really good, charge a fee to download.

If the game engine was good, I'd be totally up for something like that.  I'm sure my players would as well.

[Nomad Zophiel]

I think it would be very difficult to create a game that captures the feel of Shadowrun. Sure, you could create one that reflects the rules just fine. You could even make room for player run corporations and give it things to do that involve recruiting other players as deniable assets (ie Shadowrunners). You could build in skill learning times that are always ticking to give casual players the same skill growth curve as hardcore players. The old Cyberpunk CCG had some great ideas as far as abstracting the Corporations' operations.

At the end of the day, though, Shadowrun isn't about a classic hero's journey, at least to me. Contacts by themselves do a lot to change the average Shadowrun game into something more immersive than your average dungeon crawl. All of those great NPC's and plots would either have to be automated, which flattens them out and takes away a lot of the impact, or run by a dedicated NPC team, which would be hideously expensive. Even with player creatable corp plot, it tends to be reduced to game mechanics. Look at the big EVE Online corporations and you'll see that their politics have more to do with player interaction than character interaction.

Once you reduce Shadowrun to the level grinding button mashing of most MMORPG's it becomes just another face in the crowd of a genre that can't hold my interest. Ymmv

Edit: And don't get me started on what Shadowrun would be like if you could respawn a dead character. A world where everyone is effectively immortal would have some big diferences that most MMO's don't bother to account for. Even if Doc Wagon makes it in time, the consequences of getting hosed in SR should go beyond waking up in the hospital with less money.

[raben-aas]

Meh, just gimme a Second Life like community with SR (or Matrix iconography) plugin and I'd be more than happy to make my own adventure or place hidden info there for my players to hunt down

[Nomad Zophiel]

I think their server software is open source. Shouldn't be too hard to build a Matrix.

[raben-aas]

Talented programmers, unite. Let's build the matrix (or at least an ingame corner of the matrix, an ingame Shadow node)

[Wolfboy]

i think that a SRMMORPG could be done, but i think that the orriginal DDO engine would be a better coding for it, I mean you go from contact to contact and eventually you find work, (jeez if you play your downtime this is what happens a lot) i think it would be heads and shoulders better than that FPS abortion that they called a shadowrun game

[The Laughing Man]

A Shadowrun MMO isn't likely after what Microsoft did to the SR brand name after they slapped it on to that crappy generic shooter. The game didn't sell because real fans don't want to bother with it, and well it was just bad in general. I'm assuming  Microsoft saw the whole venture only in dollar signs and won't persue any more major projects with the SR name. But maybe I'm pessimistic. 

As for independant MMO projects, most of them found on the net are either in development until no return or get crushed under the boot of microsoft copyright infringement.

AwakenedMMO looked promising for a while. It's the only indy project actually licensed by Microsoft. But sadly development has slowed to a near halt in the past year.

Closest thing you'll find to an SR MMO for a while is a MUD. (text-based online multiplayer game) If you want more info check out mudbytes.net

[lonewolf23k]

2 worlds?? try 3 The meat world the astral world and the matrix. Granted not all magic types sit all day in the astral but if your gonna do Shadowrun that 3rd world has to be there too.

I'd treat the Astral World and Matrix as "Class-Specific" Instances or even mini-instances.  Could make for interesting encounters; the Decker hacks the main computer system, while the rest of the Runner team has to defend the body from attackers.

[Malex]

Hmm. Perhaps an MMORPG should be put on the backburner for now, since it sounds like it would be VERY involved to create.

What I'd really like to see then is perhaps something like the old Blizzard games (Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, etc.). Something that can really capture the feeling of the Shadowrun universe and expand upon the kind of game that was on the Sega console way back when.

[inca1980]

I'd have to agree....i just feel an MMO is just not feasible for SR at the present moment.  It would be so much better as a Half-Life type of storybook style game with Halo style game mechanics and cooperative play.  The reason the XBox SR game sucked so bad was because they basically got lazy, wanted to release it already and made it an arena game.  They originally were going to make it single player.  The reason I feel that MMO wouldn't be good is that it's really hard to maintain a setting and a feel in an MMO because human players just tend to do really silly things which kill the mood and it's impossible to not have a certain amount of grinding involved and I don't see what the fun in killing boars is....it promotes min/maxing and I feel an SR game would have to really be unique.  A story line Deux EX style game would allow an intimate detailed treatment of SR themes and really add to the whole universe by forcing developers to really make a detailed world without having to worry about the computing costs and just general logistics of MMO chaos.  A metro-plex must be many orders of magnitude more complex than a medieval city in order to be believable and exciting and the only way to get this complexity with modern day computing power would be to render it for only 1-4 players.  Otherwise you have to compromise the complexity of the setting to allow more people to experience it at once.   MMO quest plot lines tend to be rather sappy and disjointed and shadowrun already has enough working against it that would completely throw it into a world of camp.   People would be like "great WoW set in a cyberpunk future...sounds lame"....whereas if you pitched it to them like so many other very intricate Sci-fi worlds it would make sense to the average gamer who would start to follow it just like they follow other video game plot lines with all their intricacies such as Resident Evil or Halo.

By not doing an MMO and really focusing on a great plot line with love, intrigue and everything that makes this noir-fantasy-cyberpunk game great I feel that a whole new audience could be tapped and we'd get a lot more SR fans.  I also would appreciate the level of resolution that Trolls, orks and other awakened beings could be rendered in.  It would just make the whole world come to life more for me.  I always have a hard time picturing what a troll modified Pistol looks like that shoots out the same calibre bullet as a normal pistol.  SR at the present moment can be a little disjointed artisitically, which can be a good thing, between a whole bunch of different artists, but once you start bringing in the physics to detailed HD 3D representations of Trolls and such, they got to start messing with the details of the world.  How big really are a Troll's hands?  Cuz a lot of people draw them almost the size of half a man.

[Morg]

Before you would See a Shadowrun MMORPG SR needs to earn its gamer cred back

Having flash backs of the CTF debacle