Why the Firefly MMO won't work

Michael Zenke, the editor of Slashdot Games, explains on GameSetWatch why he believes a Firefly MMO "just won't fly."

• The Firefly universe isn't violent enough for an MMO. There just isn't enough fighting going on and killing rats won't cut it.
  

• Because "life is precious" in Firefly, it's going to be strange that an emphasis needs to be put on combat, which is important to an MMO -- thus the non-combat portions will be "waylaid and pushed outside the scope of the original launch."

• Joss Whedon's Firefly was clever and witty. How do you put that into something "narratively dead as a quest in a MMOG"?

• Um, you aren't one of the Serenity crew.

Here's hoping that Firefly ends up working, for the simple fact that it would be nice to have a successful sci-fi MMO where your existence isn't ship-bound. Joss Whedon's "'verse" didn't even get a full season to develop, not to mention that although the series was incredible, the movie Serenity is a mixed-bag for fans. In the end, maybe Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, with its seven seasons of potential plotlines and characters, would have been a better option for an MMOG.

See also: Firefly returns as MMORPG