Trading card game elements in MMORPGs

I was discussing yesterday that I wasn't expecting much innovation in the upcoming MMORPGs of 2007, especially not from a game where the parent company is EA, more famous for their 137 versions of Madden NFL than for groundbreaking innovation. But that doesn't mean that I don't think innovation in MMORPG wouldn't be possible, or that I wouldn't want it. I *am* critical towards the current trend to make MMORPGs more action-based, because the effect of lag on that would be horrible. But what I think could be a big innovation in MMORPGs is the use of elements from trading card games.

If I had 50 million dollar spare to invest in a MMORPG, which is unlikely, because rounded to the nearest million I have 0 million dollars, I would make it trading card game based. I've described some ideas in the past, on this blog, and in an April's fool joke on Grimwell.com. The basic idea is to replace the hotkey button with a hand full of cards, with each card representing a possible action in combat. Whenever you use a skill, that is play a card, you draw a random new card from your deck. For the player the interesting thing is building good decks, where the card fit together in a way that you're likely to have a good hand and maybe even some nice combos. For the gaming company the interest is in the possibility to sell people booster packs of random cards. Magic the Gathering and the Pokemon trading card game have shown that this is potentially very, very lucrative.

The Chronicles of Spellborn is advertising their skill system as being similar to trading card game elements. But I had a closer look at it, and in reality there are no random elements involved. TCoS just has a revolving hotkey bar, with 6 rows of 5 skills. You can use only the 5 skills visible to you right now, and then the skill bar rotates and you get the next 5 skills to choose from. But you determine exactly the order, you don't get a random row or random skills in it, you get the sequence you've built. Now that is already some innovation, and might be fun enough. I've signed up for the beta, and if that won't work will try to get into the open beta. From the videos the game looks good and fun enough, but of course I'll need to play it to say whether it is really fun.

So the only good computer game with trading card game elements I've played this year was Metal Gear Acid on the PSP. That works very well, but of course as a single-player and offline game there is no way to for the game company to make money on selling boosters. A trading card game MMORPG in which you could earn cards in the game, but if you don't have the time for that buy them in booster packs in an online store, wouldn't even need a monthly fee if well balanced. The monthly fee business model is a barrier of entry into this genre, and the Guildwars expansion based business model is only profitable enough for the best selling games. It is not only MMORPG combat that needs some innovation, but also the business model.