General

You know what I think would be a sweet game/mmo/site?

So one of my favorite games for the GBA was Megaman Battle Network. It was basically a game where you controlled Megaman on the "net" which was a series of walkways that directly corresponded with the realworld. For example, you could on the net walk from the main character's computer to his neighbor's computer. On the way you would fight viruses. This is somewhat of the same idea.

Alright, so the first thing would be that the gameworld would be directly based off of Google Maps, meaning the gameworld would be the streets of the real world. When you make an account it pinpoints your main location (though not an exact pinpoint for privacy) and that place would become "your" land. So, for example, your block would become your land. For people who live in the same area (such as places like New York which is millions of people stacked on top of each other) they could share land.

Once you've established your 'home" you can then travel the streets of the real world through the game fighting enemies, gaining powerups, the usual MMO type deal. Now, as you gain strength and money and whatnot, you'll have the ability to buy land. So, for instance, you could buy out a block of land that exists in the real world. You can then build on this land to make whatever you want; a shop, a hospital, another home, a bank, whatever. If someone so happens to live on that block in the real world and they create an account, they would live on your land but it wouldn't affect your land to you (think multi-level apartments).

The game would be real-time. Players can only move at a certain speed (which could be improved with powerups and whatnot) and death would spawn the player back at their home (or another home that they own that they've designated). Your character would get fatigued the farther they get from their home, thus making enemies harder the farther they travel, while still keeping enemies in the area easy for new players. This way a player situated in, say, southern California might start off being able to visit cities around them, they'll have to work up their player's strength to travel to farther places such as northern California. Then, it would take them a while before they could move to the middle states, and even longer to get to the eastern states or Mexico/Canada. Places such as Japan or Hawaii which are water-locked would have fatigue-free travel to several points near their area as not to restrict those players. The player would also be able to move in the game while not playing (just so a player wouldn't have to sit and wait while his character travels from California to Ireland in one sitting) but as a slower pace than in game (such as 1/100th of the pace).

There'd be leaderboard and all that sort of stuff that a normal MMO has. The game itself would already have built in economies, considering land in an area where no one lives would obviously be cheaper than land where a lot of people live. Stores run in major cities would be a lot more expensive to run but have more exposure than one in a small city of only a couple players. You could even incorporate real-world games such as Geocaching (which you should look it up if you haven't) in-game.

Would you play it?