Oregon Trail MMORPG

I do not play MMORPGs and I am not into the whole online fantasy world of leveling up characters and paying a server to purchase digital weapons and explore digital worlds when I could be using that money to go to France. However, if there is absolutely any MMORPG I would put my money down for, it would be for the best computer game of all time: Oregon Trail.

If some video game designer stumbles upon this blog on a dull day, this is how I would envision an Oregon Trail MMORPG being done in the most politically incorrect and historically offensive way. However, this online game would remain as true to the original version as much as possible.

First of all, you start off in Springfield, Illinois. Before you start off in Springfield, Illinois, you got to choose your character. Your character will be the same age as you are so you have no control over that. You can't lie about it because you're paying for this game with your credit card and the game will go by the birth date you used to open your credit card. Somehow. However, you can choose your gender and occupation. So here's this. You and a bunch of friends can get together to start a caravan or you can start on your own but you won't be able to because with more people, you get more money. More money means more supplies. More supplies means y'all stand a better chance of getting to Oregon in one piece.

So after you're done purchasing your supplies like you would in the original game, you and your friends or strangers you just met in Illinois can name your caravan and be off on your journey to Willamette Valley! The more oxen you got, the faster you can go.

The best part of this game would be the many options you can do with your character like you would in a typical MMORPG. The hunting is the best part of the game. When you hunt, the game immediately becomes a first-person shooter like you'd see in the online coop first-person shooter. You can shoot anything! Your teammates, your enemies, and best of all, the buffalo! Once you're done shooting, you can haul the meat back. The game should leave the option open for cannibalism if the only other source of food is the enemy caravan and you're stuck in the Mojave Desert for 8 days.

Since this game is part coop first-person shooter, you can start battles or defend your caravan from the flaming arrows of Native Americans who are angry that you are trespassing in their territory. You can also start battles or defend your caravan from other caravans. You can have weapons with you so it would help that someone in your caravan is a Revolutionary War veteran. You can pillage, steal, and burn other peoples' caravans or Native American villages but because Oregon Trail was originally meant for children, your penalty will be annoying notices on the side of the screen saying that this is morally discouraged.

To deal with the conditions like typhoid fever and broken arms, you can heal faster if you got a doctor on your team! You can't do as much while you got dysentery so your stats on attack, defense, and speed go down temporarily until you get better. You could try hunting while you're sick but the screen will shake up just as you're about to shoot just to mess with your vision.

The best idea would be the effects of death. If you die in the game because you were impailed by too many arrows, there are only several checkpoints throughout the game where you can choose to "start over" at. You carry your skills with you but when you die, you take nothing with you. When I say nothing, that means nothing. You end up at a checkpoint you were previously at and you are naked with no supplies. Remember in the beginning when you had to purchase supplies and had to buy sets of clothes? This is where this comes in handy. You are reduced to the role of a n00b and must rely on the giving hearts of other users in the game for pants, shoes, and shirts. Being naked may seem like a great idea for a while but the clothes ultimately help you with your stats. Pants increase defense and better protect you from snakebites. Shoes also increase defense and help with speed when you are being chased by angry bears. Shirts will increase your defense and improve your health by protecting you from the everchanging weather of the game. This is also where being nice to other users comes into play because you don't want to be one guy that the enemy caravan recognized as the guy who tried to steal their oxen...and you're naked. To encourage you to put some clothes on, you cannot leave your checkpoint or do anything productive in the game until you are clothed. Plus, you can contact your buddies and see if they can come back for you or you go to where they are. You can meet up with your buddies by hitching a ride with a neighboring caravan or by going on your own. By hitching a ride with a caravan, you agree not to steal anything or burn their caravan to the ground until you get the approval of transferring back to your original groupie.

The expansion packs make great assets to the game. They give you more options to explore different routes beyond the "Oregon Trail".

The first expansion pack that I had in mind was the Native American Expansion Pack. As politically offensive this is, you are given the opportunity to start as a Native American instead of a banker from Chicago. You get to either attack caravans passing by or you can help them. This expansion pack will function more like Harvest Moon and less like Darkfall. You can also have the option of following Americans to their promised land but be careful as you may die of measles.

The second expansion pack that I had in mind allows you to deviate from the trail to Willamette Valley and explore different historical moments in American history. Your caravan can take a detour to Texas where you can help defend the Alamo from the Mexican government. This expansion pack will be the fluke in the series.

The third expansion pack would be great for fans of the classic MMORPG in a fantasy setting. Instead of traveling upward to Oregon, you can detour to Utah where the Mormons take settlement. At this point, you can get your Guild Wars on by helping to build up the Mormon church or tear it down. You get options of moving up in the Mormon church and accessing new commands in your menu by resurrecting zombies. You can increase your stats by obtaining holy relics and using your powers to either help or terrorize the caravans coming by. However, if you began as part of the Salt Lake City settlement, you carry those same powers with you even if you leave Utah, but beware that even thy holiness cannot stop American bullets and Native American arrows. But you can use MP (magic points) to resurrect zombies to defend you and your fellow men.

Like any game, there's always room for customization and extras. You can pimp your wagon by adding chrome wheels or stronger equipment to make sure your ride doesn't get stuck when it snows. Another extra can be something like by being courteous and nice to the LDS church and having a member join you, they can bless your oxen into racing to Oregon faster than ordinary oxen.

These are the ideas I have in mind so far. Yes, the expansion packs would most likely never be made because they would be marred with historical inaccuracies and offend anyone associated with the American flag but I would put money down to play this if such a thing existed. There are so many possibilities with this game that you may never want to end up in Oregon after all.

(Some of these absolutely great ideas came from my bro and Scott. I don't even care about taking credit. I just want someone to make this happen someday.)