Pokemon MMO
Most Wanted MMOs
We’ve been asking for one for years now: a Pokemon game that takes place in one massive world so that we can “Catch ‘em all”. And while a fan-made pseudo-MMO has been made using some of the basic Pokemon elements in a free-to-play Pokemon Online, I’m sure a lot of people are wondering what would an official Pokemon MMO game really be like? Well, that is what this article is all about. We’ll take concepts from our favorite games from the past, and turn them into a new game concept.
A real Pokemon MMO has been a most wanted MMO for a long time, so let’s look at what Pokemon World Online would look like in written form.
Story Premise
The story for Pokemon World Online would be quite basic, because it would simply use everything that was already created in the past but combine it all into one “Pokemon world”. The story will be about you, the player, starting out on your very own Pokemon journey. The game will allow you to choose one out of five regions for you to start in as your home town, such as:
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Kanto;
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Johto;
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Hoenn;
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Sinnoh;
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Or Unova.
From there you will meet one of the famous Pokemon professors from the video games who will serve as your mentor. Your mentor will walk you through the steps of learning how to play the game, start you off with six Pokeballs and a Pokedex, and will store all your future Pokemon in their “Pokemon bank”.
They will also allow you to choose your very first Pokemon. Each starting region will have its own group of “Beginner” Pokemon from their respective games, which will allow the players to be a bit more diverse when starting out. You will eventually be able to collect all 600 plus Pokemon, all within a single game by traveling to the other regions.
Your job will be to collect all the badges from the gym leaders so that you can enter and win one of the Pokemon leagues. Pokemon league tournaments will only be held once a year in real life time, and if you meet the level requirements and you have all the badges for that region, then you may participate in that Pokemon league tournament to attempt to defeat the elite four and earn money and special prizes.
To make things a little less overwhelming, the game will only start off with a single league which will be the Indigo plateau; all other tournaments will be released in the future as “Story Episodes” to give trainers something to look forward to.
Creating Your Trainer
Pokemon games have never given us much of a choice for when it comes to customization. You are either “Male” or “Female”, but now that you are playing with thousands of other players from around the world, that’s not going to cut it. The game could have cartoon like graphics but still be in 3D to mimic the Anime’s drawing style.
The characters will have large eyes, lines for mouths, and dots for noses, much like the characters from the popular MMO game Fly for Fun Online. Characters will be able to customize hair color and style, eye shape, mouth type, skin color, and face shape. From there you will be able to pick from a basic template of five clothing styles, one from each region of the world, and you will be able to mix and match those parts to look a bit more unique.
After you advance in the game you will be able to buy better clothing and accessories to further customize your character, with hats, shoes, and jackets. The game would then have a cash shop for special hair and clothing. For example the cash shop could give the players a choice to buy the special “Cool trainer” wardrobe set.
I always hated those guys but you have to admit, they had some pretty cool looking jackets!
Open World System
Pokemon World Online will have all the fun mini games like the casinos, bike races, and beauty contests, and it will also have every single city from the games and cartoon series, but all in one massive world.
All of the Pokemon will
roam the fields as random mobs, traveling only within their preset limits for that location. If you need to find a certain Pokemon you will use your Pokedex to locate which region it is in and which grass field within that area. Players will be able to of course PM each other, add friends to their friends list, and trade items.
The options menu will look like a Pokedex, so all your information such as battle wins, hours played, Pokemon that were captured, and friends that were made, will all be stored within your Pokedex menu. And as if it were not obvious, all Pokemon will be tradable amongst other players. Players should be able to put a price tag when trading Pokemon, that way you will have those notorious pirates out there selling Magikarp for one million dollars.
Others will choose to trade Pokemon for free, as long as they are of equal value. The game will have Pokemon centers for healing, general stores to buy items and accessories, and of course bike shops for transportation (we’ll get into that below).
Players will be able to buy and customize their houses, ranging from the tree houses and caves from Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, to real houses with furniture and appliances. Players will also be able to store their Pokemon and items at their house so that they no longer have to rely on a Professor to keep them.
Things like grooming your Pokemon and fishing will play out as fun little mini games as well, that way you don’t have to sit around all day watching your character fish in real time. The final thing for Pokemon’s life system, is crafting. You should be able to make your own health potions, PP potions, and Pokeballs. In some of the games you could pick up apricorns and craft them into custom pokeballs, the MMO will also keep this feature but all crafting will play out as a fun mini game, much like when crafting items in Allods Online.
Cash Shop Items
The cash shop will consist of special fishing rods so that you can catch more than just Magikarp. And as named above, it will also have special clothing and accessories to choose from, but not only for your trainer, but for your Pokemon as well. For example you could buy a red scarf to tie around your Pokemon’s neck, or cool shades to cover your Squirtle’s eyes, or how about a ribbon tied at the top of a Jigglypuff’s head.
You will also be able to choose custom Pokeballs, like fast balls, lure balls, timer balls, or the legendary master ball. You will also be able to buy custom furniture for your house to make it a bit more unique. And the famous HM (Hidden machines) to learn special moves like Surf, Fly, Cut, and Dig, will all be special cash shop items.
The cash shop will also have special items to boost Experience points and stats, like the calcium and protein items you could buy at the general store in the handheld games.
And of course the cash shop will have legendary Pokemon that will only be available for a limited amount of time. The cash shop will only have useful rare items and Pokemon, all the other key features of the game will be free to play. If the game is free to play with a well balanced cash shop, I think it will draw in thousands of players from all over the world and the game will stay around for years to come.
Pokemon
Pokemon battles are kind of what the game is all about. So instead of the game having classes, it will be open to the player’s playing style to stay along the lines of the original games. The MMO will be more casual, so you won’t have traditional classes and character types. Instead players can choose to be breeders, bug catchers, bird keepers, or fisherman, just based on what Pokemon they capture and how they plan out their battle tactics.
However, battles will play out differently then the handheld games.
There will not be battle scenes; the battles will always be from the perspective of your trainer and will happen wherever you are currently standing. You will always be the trainer and will choose attacks by using “Commands” assigned as hot keys, such as:
“Move here”;
“Dodge”;
“Attack”;
Or “Special”, which is for unique moves for that Pokemon type.
If you click the “Special” button, a new list will pop up allowing you to use one of your special abilities, like Thundershock. Using specials will take down your Pokemon’s PP (Power points), so you can’t keep using the same skills over and over again, just like in the handheld games. Some games have already started using a similar pet command system, such as the MMO Mabinogi online.
You will be able to choose to let your Pokemon walk around with you at all times so that it can follow you around like in the old Pokemon Yellow games. And to stick to original rules, you can only hold Six Pokemon with you at one time.
You will also be able to use special HM moves to travel or access blocked areas, allowing you to teach a flying type HM02 to “Fly”, or a water type HM03 to “Surf”, but most importantly you will be able to use these moves to wipe your opponent out in combat.
While traveling through the grass fields, there will sometimes be special red name Pokemon, these Pokemon will get aggravated if you get too close to them and will attack you on sight. If no pokemon is currently out walking about with you, your trainer will automatically throw one out to defend themselves.
But let’s say the Pokemon doesn’t see you, and you crouch down and try to sneak up on it. If you want to capture a wild Pokemon you will have to target it with one of your own Pokemon and engage it in combat, simply by clicking on it and using one of the commands up above. After getting the wild Pokemon’s life low enough, you will then throw a Pokeball to capture it. If you happen to fail, and all your pokemon die, your character will automatically faint and teleport to the last known Pokemon center you visited, and all the Pokemon that fainted will lose a small amount of experience points.
PVP And Team Battles
There could be special PK channels within the game so that players can choose to be notorious Pokemon stealers and player killers. If you are a Player killer, then your name will change to a dark red, stopping PKers will give you a blue name.
If you are in the PK channel, and you get a wild Pokemon’s life low, another player may choose to throw their own Pokeball to try and capture it before you do. Doing this though will give the player a red name, letting everyone know that they stole your Pokemon.
The system to determine who deserves the kill will be based on who dealt the most damage throughout the battle. If you don’t want a red name, then you will have to create a team and work together, or simply go to a non-PK channel.
Being a thief will have its benefits because you can finally capture a strong Pokemon that may have constantly escaped your grasp, but you will sacrifice your good name in the process. This will give players the choice to create guilds like Team rocket, or other guilds like the Pokemon rangers to try and stop them to protect other players.
If you don’t like going to the PK channels, then you can choose to challenge other players in a friendly Pokemon battle just by requesting a duel with them. All battles can take place either through single one on one battles, or team combat. Team battles will play out just like in the newer games with two on two duels, but now we are playing online, two isn’t enough so lets amp it up to four on four duels.
Team battles will play out the same way as single battles do, but will be a lot more frantic for the trainers trying to give out multiple commands. They will have to try to keep their own Pokemon alive, while at the same time trying taking their opponent’s Pokemon down.
Vehicles And Travel
For the longest time the only way to get around in Pokemon games was to walk on foot, and after playing for several hours you finally earned a bike. In newer games you can now “dash” to run from one town to the next.
Running will be a standard way of getting around in Pokemon world online, and the bikes will not have to be earned by completing a task, but will instead be inside of a Bike shop so that you can simply buy it with money. The game will have transportation stores so that you will be able to choose from bikes such as the “Mach bike” or the “Trick bike” from the Pokemon Ruby and Saphire games, along with several other variations that have better stats but higher price tags.
Bikes will be a faster way of traveling, but you won’t be able to get across water or jagged rocks with them. This is where Boats and trains come in. For a small fee the ships will take you from one region to the next so that you can get across the water to the next town. You will also need to cross large areas of land within a short amount of time; trains will be the land version of the cruise ships.
They will work the same way so all you have to do is buy a ticket to get to your next destination. Your Pokemon will also serve as mounts to take you from one area to the next. As you get higher in level you will be able to buy the Hidden machine moves from the cash shop, allowing you new ways of travel such as flying to your next destination, or be able to ride certain Pokemon to run faster, or swim across large bodies of water while out at sea.
Pokemon Gym Leagues
Last but not least, the Gym leaders. Oh, how we dreamed of running our own Gym in the game. Many MMO games now have guild houses, castles, or airships. Pokemon World Online will have Gyms. After creating your guild and saving up the proper amount of money, you will be able to buy a pass to open your own Pokemon Gym. You will choose a guild logo which will serve as the badge you hand out.
The game will start off with preset NPC Gyms located in every town of the game, but as more players create guilds, they will be able to hand out badges as well. If a player challenges that Gym and they win, then they will earn the badge so that they can compete in one of the official Pokemon league tournaments. To make sure inactive guilds are not challenged, the game will have the Guild earn points; these points will be earned just by Guild members being online.
A guild member will earn one point for every hour they play the game. Guild members can also donate money to buy certain bonuses for the guild, such as Experience buffs, or special guild clothing.
After archiving the required amount of guild points you will be able to purchase your own Gym headquarters, and finally your very own Gym league badge. Every Pokemon league has eight badges, so the badges will come in types that you can choose from to match one of the eight preset badges needed for that league. So even if you give your badge a special name, it will still be considered as a “Soul badge” for example.
After defeating all eight Gym leaders for that region and obtaining the full set of Gym badges, the final step will be to walk down victory road and battle the elite four for your spot in the hall of fame.
Have an idea on what you’d like to see in a Pokemon MMO? Feel free to drop a comment below or check out a few other top gaming franchies that would be huge as MMOs.
References
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Images by Eclipse Of Midnight, Kanto, Ai Rika
None of the information in this article is directly related to an officially licensed Pokemon MMO.
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Screenshots from Super Smash Bros Brawl and Pokemon Stadium.
This post is part of the series: Most Wanted MMOs
A list of MMOs that could happen but haven’t happened yet.