Summoning the Harry Potter MMORPG

The Harry Potter series is, by all accounts, the most successful fiction in history.

With a few flicks of his magic wand, Harry Potter has turned Rowling into a billionaire (we estimate she’s worth $1 billion). She’s one of only five self-made female billionaires, and the first billion-dollar author.

This is apparent to anybody who lives within earshot of a dedicated Harry Potter fan.

“Expelliarmus!”

“Wingardium leviosa!“

And even the dreaded “Avada kedavra!”

If you’re anything like me, you’ve had imaginary versions of these Harry Potter spells flung at you by over-zealous Harry Potter children, spouses, friends, and neighbors, oh, approximately since the first book came out way back in 1997.

So in the name of all things holy, and on behalf of anyone who’s ever stared down the wrong end of a Crucio spell, I beg whoever is responsible for the Harry Potter empire to relent, and give these people a place to put their encyclopedic knowledge of Harry Potter to use.

Give us a Harry Potter MMORPG.

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Let people sign up by the millions and play together. Let them choose a name, create a character, and pick a character class House. Or, answer a few questions and let the Sorting Hat pick one for them:

Gryffindor

Slytherin

Ravenclaw

Hufflepuff

Let them choose a starting city - er, I mean a school.

Hogwarts

Durmstrang

Beauxbatons

Then deposit them in the world of non-Muggles as a Level-1 character first-year student. Force them to attend classes, sneak through the halls of Hogwarts, maybe even play the occasional Quidditch game:

As they gain experience, let them advance through the grades until one day, at Level 7 as a 7th-year student, they graduate. And that’s when the game begins in earnest.

Will you stay on at Hogwarts and become a teacher?

Break into Azkaban?

Join the Ministry of Magic?

Pursue a career as a professional Quidditch player?

Open a shop in Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley?

All of the above?

Or maybe you’ve had it with the civilized world. Maybe you yearn to study (or even hunt) Norwegian Ridgebacks in the wilderness (and it should be vast, as vast as World of Warcraft is vast, with Muggle and non-Muggle partitioning):

Oh and did I mention?

This one is important.

You should be allowed to declare your allegiance to this guy. Or to his memory.

That should spice up the game quite nicely, and allow for meaningful player-vs.-player (PVP) combat against an established backstory.

Practicioners of the Dark Arts vs. those who oppose them.

Give me tactics. Give me tricks. Give me PVP goodness.

And just to make it interesting: let there be hundreds and hundreds of spells, skills, and abilities to choose from.

Schools of Magic: Divination, Potions, etc.

Abilities such as Animagi transformation

Languages like Parseltongue

Casting without a wand (advanced)

Flying without a broomstick (also advanced)

Make players research them in libraries, learn them from teachers and friends, go on quests to procure them. Oh, and let them create new spells, new potions, new abilities. I want a fabrication system that’s the equal of anything in Everquest 2 or World of Warcraft. I want in-game, functional versions of the Hogwarts Express; Floo powder; hidden doorways between the Muggle and wizarding realms. I want Pets (owls, cats, toads, and rats) with powers that I can control in-game. I want cloaks of invisibility. And I want a plethora of wands to choose from (or to choose me, because as any Harry Potter fan knows, the wand chooses the wizard, not the other way around), each with slightly different powers.

You hear me, J.K. Rowling? Electronic Arts? Warner Bros.?

Give us a massively multiplayer, online, 3D, interactive, graphically intensive, excruciatingly deep version of Harry Potter. Make another billion dollars while you’re at it. Take World of Warcraft’s 10-million-plus subscriber base, and double it, triple it.

Break records.

And let your fans—the ones who do this…

…figure out how the story ends.

[Posted on behalf of DLD, a dedicated Harry Potter fan.]