So here’s a fun one. Over the weekend I was surfing YouTube trying to put together a Trove playlist because I think the Trove music is super fun and nostalgic for me, and I bumped into some random video from some random dude talking about how he was going to buy Trove. He has a super soothing tone and actually some fairly reasonable complaints about the game (I share most of them, honestly), but I have no idea whether this person is serious or whether it’s wishful thinking. It wouldn’t be the first time a rich person bought up an MMORPG and tried to turn it around, right? We’ve got the GamersFirst MMOs, Fractured, Ethyrial, Trials of Ascension. Of course, it doesn’t always go well, as Crowfall’s and Dual Universe’s buyout showed.

For this week’s Massively Overthinking, you don’t need to weigh in on Trove. If it goes somewhere, it goes somewhere. Instead, let’s talk about what we would do if we had more money than sense. If you had piles of money, would you buy an MMORPG? Which one? Would you hope to just keep it online, or would you try to turn it into its very best self?

Brianna Royce (@nbrianna.bsky.social, blog): Assuming I have already taken care of important things and noble donations and all that, I’ll say the first frivolous thing I would do if I won the lotto and had money pouring out my ears would be to invest a ton of money into MOP and MMO blogging in general. There would never be a return on that, but there never was to begin with, and it’s something I care about, so I’d do it for the genre.

Then I’d probably do something dumb like spend money negotiating to get Star Wars Galaxies back online and negotiating to get City of Heroes restored properly with paid pro developers. Oooh, I might try buying Glitch too because the player-run emulators have been plugging away for like 13 years and still aren’t even close to done, which is wild. And I’d definitely spend money on buffing up Project Gorgon. Really, if Gorgon had better graphics and more of the sandbox content I need, I’d never leave. All it has ever needed was money. It doesn’t lack for creativity. I’d love to see what they could do with piles of money and a full team. I change my answer. I’m putting all my pretend chips on Gorgon.

I think the urge would be there to make something new, Steven Sharif-style, but if I’m going to blow through a ton of money, I’d probably rather preserve and improve something worthy. Could definitely rescue more games than I could build.

Carlo Lacsina (@UltraMudkipEX, YouTube, Twitch): Reminds me of the kid who bought Hostess to save it a few years ago lol. I would go for Wildstar, but I would use all my winnings on it; the rest I’ll throw into a retirement plan.

So probably Wildstar? I know there’s already a project to revive it, but getting folks paid to do it would probably speed things up a bit. I’d have them make me a special room just for me and populate it with the ladies.

Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes.bsky.social, blog): You mean after I use some of that money to buy myself and my family a nice little single story house and rescue my mother from the hell that is Florida? Easy: I would throw funding at the Marvel Heroes revival project. Yes, this would require the immense sums to throw at the House of Mouse first to get the blessing from Walt’s frozen head, but after that extortionist sum is paid, then I would just ensure that the project would be funded enough to see more developers put the whole thing back together and at least re-release it, ideally as an optional offline single-player game as well as an MMOARPG.

Failing that, I would just otherwise buy the rights to MapleStory 2 and bring that back. It’s not like Nexon wants to do anything with it, so I bet I could buy those rights for a song, and then we can get back to a version of that MMO that’s actually coherent-ish and doesn’t control like sun-roasted ass.

In either case, I would just prefer to keep the lights on, but if there were enough calls for more stuff added, then I would make sure that’s funded too. Honestly in that regard it’d be a question of fan response, but if nothing else, having either of these back would be super.

Eliot Lefebvre (@Eliot_Lefebvre, blog): My first choice if I have All The Money and have to use it on MMOs, preferably ones that actually exist? We’re getting a WildStar revival and redesign from the top down, and you’d better believe I’m making plenty of changes to expand the game. It’s going to be a Realm Re-Wilded up in here. I’d go into more detail here, but I actually wrote a column about what I’d do with minimal extra money, so you can probably guess what I would do with all the extra money.

But why would I stop there? I have all the money. I can reshape the industry as I see fit! But instead of being ludicrous, I would go and also get a team together and make my pitch for Transformers Online. That might be easier than buying the WildStar rights from NCsoft, sure, but that’s creating a new game instead of paying money for an existing game, so it’s a little less interesting on some level.

Wait, I still have all the money left over? Crud, if I don’t spend all of this El Chupacabre will slash my tires. I’m halfway tempted to buy the rights to some other games, then. Not to do anything with them, but to remand them into protective custody. No, I am not re-releasing Hellgate: London. No one will ever try to re-release it again. I own it and I am locking it away in a vault wherein none of you ever get to touch it or look at it. Maybe I’ll even do it for games that I just personally don’t like very much! Oh, wait, this is why rich people turn evil.

Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): As much as I love games and game preservations, no, that’s not what I’d do with a ton of extra money. But if I were told to pick one game to preserve and/or resurrect to keep online as a legacy title, I’d probably say WildStar and sleep well that night. Even if it never got any more content, it’s still a wonderful game for what it was and we’re poorer without it.

Sam Kash (@samkash@mastodon.social): Unlimited monies, I could do such great things. But if we’re focusing on MMOs, I think it’d be a tough one for me. I’m not sure that I would take on any of that effort. Don’t you put that evil on me, Royce!

Although, changing some bits I could see working. I really don’t believe in the balance that I see rolling around most MMOs. I honestly do think I could be better. Perhaps I could convince companies to let me rebalance their heroes and skills.

Tyler Edwards (blog): I mean, you know what I’m gonna say, right? I’d buy The Secret World off Funcom, put it up for sale again, rehire Joshua Doetsch to write the story, and pick up where we left off.

I wouldn’t change too much about it, but assuming unlimited resources, I’d revamp (but probably not eliminate) AEGIS, get the rest of the auxiliary weapons made, introduce some kind of hard mode versions of early zones for max level grinding, add a raid finder, and maybe tweak some of the weapons to be a bit more mechanically distinct (though not to the super gimmicky extent SWL did).

Again assuming unlimited money, I wouldn’t mind resurrecting Magic: Legends, too. That game had great ideas, but was released faaaaar too soon. Though to be honest it might be better to just make a whole new game using similar game systems.

There are a few other games on my “I’d resurrect this if I had infinite resources” list (it’s something I enjoy daydreaming about from time to time), but they’re not MMOs. No One Lives Forever is one, and I was just thinking last night about how much I’d like to bring the Myth franchise back from the dead. Feel like Joshua Doetsch would be a good pick to do the story of that, too…

Every week, join the Massively OP staff for Massively Overthinking column, a multi-writer roundtable in which we discuss the MMO industry topics du jour – and then invite you to join the fray in the comments. Overthinking it is literally the whole point. Your turn!