It is a good start, and a dangerous book since it is going to set you up focusing on the MMO as the world. You need to think bigger than that, since the MMO's land mass only covers a 9 mile by 9 mile area - less than a city - so a "real" world of World of Warcraft would cover an Earth-sized planet (or a good part of it), check here for a map and scale comparison. You could easily multiply the entire MMO world map by 100 times in each direction and still have a small area in relation to a full-sized planet. Which is why last time we suggested:
The lore book as a good reference guide as well, because it is less MMO based and more lore-based. We want to expand the land mass and fill it in with hundreds of miles of smaller kingdoms, unexplored areas, and interesting locations - while still keeping the familiar, in-game areas as tent-pole locations that tie your new material back into the world.
That scale problem will be your largest problem in this game. Granted, you could avoid creating anything new and just fill in everything with "unexplored wilderness" and leave the game locations as-is, but you will be missing out on a huge opportunity to make the world your own. Ideally, this will be a world much like a early settlement USA, with huge tracts of unexplored wilderness, cities being built, trade happening, wilderness expeditions being launched, places of mystery being avoided, and all sorts of "kingdom activity" happening in the established cities and smaller places you will fill in. Conquoring that "sense of scale" and making the world larger than the game will ultimately make your game stronger, and keep players from going back to the MMO because there isn't much different between what you are doing and what the game is doing.
The next huge problem you will need to deal with is the power level of the MMO, and frankly, the game world itself. As a veteran MMO and WoW player, I am going to expect a full upgrade path for gear, and be able to deliver a 90,000 damage crit from my high-level mage. This game is not going to be like that at all. This will be a flatter progression, and all the magic items in the game will stay within the Fantasy Companion's suggested guidelines.
This is critical, since you will be doing a lot of "coloring" items presented in the Fantasy Companion as the items, creatures, and spells familiar to the World of Warcraft universe. You could go all-out and write a conversion guide, and I am sure there are some who are trying, but the goal here is to get a simple, WoW-like experience up and running without having to write a conversion guide or spend a lot of time translating everything over, item by item, class by class, and power by power. 90% of what is in the base Savage Worlds game and the Fantasy Companion will cover what you need for this type of a game.
Simply recolor items, apply a trapping to a spell, create classes by picking powers that class would have in the game, and don't try to replicate the videogame perfectly. A paladin can heal, so let them heal with a healing power with a "holy" trapping. Done. Create a druid out of a moonfire like attack spell, a root, some heals, a thorns spell, and some shapeshifting. Done. Maybe you pick powers as you go, and every class isn't so tied to a strict progression chart that says "this power must come at this level, before this one, and after that one." A paladin is a collection of fighting ability and holy powers, and maybe every paladin in the world isn't trained the same way.
Think of the World of Warcraft game as the "videogame adaptation" of a real world. It's obvious the game's creators had to cut a lot of the "real world" out, simplify all of the classes and professions the "real world" actually has, and create an artificially high "power curve" for the magic items in the game. The "real world" that you are playing in is much larger, much more complex, the professions much less clearly defined, and the magic of this world is much more evenly powered and within a normal range of power and capability. Epic items can still feel epic with the best levels of power found in the Fantasy Companion, but not to the point where they are doing an unrealistic ten-thousand times damage of a normal weapon.
There is actually precedent for this in the videogames, if you pull in the original Warcraft RTS games. Those were much flatter power levels, where the "epic heroes" and items of the world could still take damage and be defeated by normal monsters and units in the game. The power level of the Warcraft universe has been blown out of proportion because of the MMO, and in the "real world" it is probably closer to the power level - start to end - of a traditional RPG, such as Savage Worlds.
For our game, this is a good thing, because we don't need to break our role playing game and simulate a 90,000 damage crit with the rules and scale our items all the way up to impossible levels. We are playing on the pen-and-paper "real world" power level, and that is how this world works. Although it looks and acts like the World of Warcraft world in every other way. We are keeping the number ranges down for play-ability, yet still allowing for powerful magic items in the game to capture that "epic feel."
So what do you do about "epic level" items that are better than your last "epic level" item? say you get your hands on a legendary sword, like Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker, and you stat that out to the maximum level of power a magic item can have in the Fantasy Companion. Then, you find a new sword that blows that out (like most any green item from an expansion past Cata, or even some gray vendor swords in high-level areas). How do you make something "more epic" without blowing out your rules?
First, those "high level gray items" in the game world do not exist, a shortsword sold in Northrend is the same as a shortsword sold in Elwynn. The power level of all basic items is the same, and there is no "videogame" progression to normal gear - normal gear is normal gear. All "epic items" max out at a certain level, and that Thunderfury is just as epic as a Maul of Tyranny. Seriously, Excalibur is Excalibur, in real-world power level, and those high-level purple items should be just as epic as each other. That makes Thunfderfury desirable again, and flattens out the power curve of all of these expansion items (and any others that may come and destroy your game).
Also, items do not have "levels" or "requirements" - they are all just green, blue, purple and so on (in relative levels of power), and can be used by everyone. There is no such thing in this world as a "level 60 green item blowing out a level 10 green item." Green items are all "low magic" items but still magical, and they are all around the same power level ( a +1 here or there).
I would never in-game refer to an item as a "green Item" so I use this only for rating the items found out here in "real" World of Warcraft - before the videogame designers messed everything up and built this insane power curve for the game.
There is a point where you can go overboard, and too much is too much. You want to limit "real world" item power to the best the pen-and-paper game has, and leave it there. A "green item" at any level may just be a +1 to hit or a +1 to damage, and leave it there. It is good, worthwhile, and is an advantage to have. Scale up the higher-level greens and blues, and all the way to purples and oranges along the power curve you see in the Fantasy Companion and you will save yourself a lot of conversion, power-level headaches, and a lot of wasted time building a World of Warcraft simulator in another game.
Next time I want to focus more on classes and powers, so stay tuned for that.
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