Yes! I kid you not! There’s a Buffy MMO in the works, and the Firefly game is delayed. More’s the pity.

In an announcement to press today about the keynote address to this year’s Virtual Worlds Conference in Los Angeles, the folks at Multiverse have announced a trio of new and interesting projects … The third is, apparently, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer massively multiplayer game. Multiverse, if you’ll recall, is also the company that holds the license to develop an MMO based on the Firefly television show, another Joss Whedon fan favorite. While the Firefly title has now apparently been ‘delayed’, it sounds as though the Buffy title is already in development. From the announcement: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer: A massively multiplayer online game based on the critically-acclaimed Joss Whedon television series. Currently under development at Multiverse, ‘Buffy’ exemplifies a new era of game design, allowing consumers to play it either as a fully immersive 3D environment or as a Flash-based 2D game.”

Update: We’ve got an interview with Multiverse’s Corey Bridges, who explains what that 2D/3D thing is about, and says the Firefly game has actually been worked on in the past. Without me! Wonder of wonders and shock of the ages.

Christmas is mostly about family and giving and all that stuff, but when it comes down to it we all have our eyes open for loot. It’s the time of year when we hope that the wrapped presents under the tree are exactly what we want. When miracles might just come true. Last year I sat down and worked out my list for Santa, and I think it would be a shame if I didn’t do the same this year. Here’s what I want for my 2008 year in MMOGs:

• Something on the Firefly MMOG … anything!
• To find out what some of those new MMOG startups are doing, and (of course) more Metaplace news.
• A late-in-the-year launch of Lich King. I’ve still got lots of stuff to do before then.
• The dedication to keep playing EQ2 until my fellow adventurers tire of Norrath. I’d really like to get to the Kunark content at some point, too.
• A spectacular launch for Warhammer Online and a Beta invite early in the new year. (Please, Mythic? I promise to play nice.)
• Further success for my newest gig: Massively!
• A successful (first annual) Worlds in Motion Summit.
• Even *more* acceptance of MMOGs by mainstream society. I’ve gotten my Toyota commercial and Mr. T’s night elf mohawk already. Top that.
• I’m still waiting for the second episode of Illegal Danish, and now I’m waiting on MMOvie also. I could use some more of Snacky’s Journal, too.
• Announcements for the new games from Square/Enix and Blizzard … and for the love of all that is holy, just cop to KOTORO, BioWare!
• A sense of what Guild Wars 2 will bring us; 2007 made me a huge fan of Arena.net’s original.
• The dedication to keep the RSS feed smoking here on MMOG Nation.

My GameSetWatch column for this week is pretty straightforward: How They’re Going to Screw up the Firefly MMOG. I try not to mince too many words here because, well, they’re gonna.

They’ve got the license, and undoubtedly have the rights to use the likenesses of the protagonists in the game. So, why wouldn’t they use them? The most compelling reason I can think of is that they’d get in the way. If there’s one thing every Massive game gets right, it’s that the experience should be about the player’s story. If Malcolm Reynolds and the crew of the Firefly-class ship Serenity are included in the game (as I suspect they will be), the only purpose they would really serve would be to degrade the experience of the individual players.

Update 1: Dan Dormer was nice enough to give the article a very nice nod from the VGM Watch site. Thanks, Dan!

Update 2: Joystiq linked back to the post, and sparked a lot of great conversation on the subject. Good stuff.

Update 3: Warcry put up a link to the post … no comments, but he says ‘gorram’. So … funny. :)

Update 4: I’m pretty cynical about tar internets at this point, but being linked to from Whedonesque? That’s pretty cool. The site also linked to an interview with Corey Bridges, talking little bit about the project at a site dedicate to the game. Fireflymmo.com just got added to my Bloglines feed, thankyouverymuch.

Update 5: A meta-article about issues raised in my own piece is up on EQVault: What Makes a Great MMO Universe?

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Wired has opened a portal to an alternate universe. Through that portal has slipped a single news story: Firefly is going to be a Massively Multiplayer Game. I honestly don’t know what to think of this. On the one hand, I want a Firefly massive game as much as the next guy.

On the other hand … these guys are almost total newbs.

We have two or three years to see where this goes, so I guess there’s no rush to get the game pre-ordered.