There was almost a Guitar Hero MMO

Yup, really.

Back in the decadent hay day of the Guitar Hero franchise, back when it was an excuse to print money, DJ Hero developers FreeStyle Games came up with the idea for Hero World – an MMO based on the popular Hero franchise.

Word comes by way of a video from Unseen64 (below), and spotted by IGN UK, which says this would have been an browser-based MMO that united all games under the Hero banner (Guitar Hero, DJ Hero and any future Hero titles). It would have been tied to a Facebook app.

Unable to develop the project themselves due to on-going responsibilities with the DJ Hero IP, the title was instead being developed by now-closed Dutch firm Virtual Fairground, who at the time were best known for an MMO based on popular French cartoon Galactik Football called Club Galactik.

Players would have been able to import their characters from DJ Hero, or make their own. In Hero World, gamers could build clubs, then hire their avatars from DJ Hero to play in them. This interplay is something that one of the developers likened to the relationship between PC space MMO EVE Online and console shooter Dust 514. This concept would have worked cross-platform, too (how progressive!) and was set for a late 2011 release.

However, this project was ditched following declining sales in the Hero games in 2011. Publisher Activision revived the Guitar Hero series last year with Live, though following less-than-stellar sales, developer FreeStyle Games has been subject to a ‘restucture’.

Below is Unseen64’s full video: