It would be an interesting idea for a new software product.
Build your own mmorpg.
People have already tried to do this with NeverwinterNights. But of course, you can't get more than 64 people in one game there. Wich is pretty small compared to regular mmorpgs which support up to 5000 concurrent users for each shard.
And the graphics are very dated.
Perhaps it's time for something new like this, but on a larger scale. Doable? I have no idea.
I just had a crazy idea. So, we want a game by gamers for gamers. I'm really stepping out of the box on this... ...start up a non-profit organization, get funding (i hear it's easy to do if you have a legitimate non-profit organization). The purpose is to develop a game for gamers, which will be distributed freely and will not require monthly subscriptions (is that non-profit enough? i don't know much about non-profit organizations)... ...you may be saying "That won't work..." for a number of reasons. Server upkeep, have to pay staff, etc... ...well, hopefully funding and donations will be sufficient for paying staff and getting the game released. What we won't do is provide servers. The gamers will provide their own servers (private WoW servers comes to mind). The gamers running their own servers will be able to add their own content, develop and share patches with other gamers who are running their own servers, and pretty much create their own unique experience on their own server. If you think about it, using this method of allowing the gamers to host their own servers, the possibilities could be endless. The gamers would be obligated to funding the private servers probably via donations. This would truly be the game by gamers for gamers. It would bring a whole new level to customization. The gamers will be able to design their own content (and this is possible for those who know what they're doing). Those who don't know how to do it will be in a good situation anyway, because they can play the game without paying a cent (unless they wish to support their server by donating). I think it's possible, but would be a lot of work. Primarily, the developers would have to lay out the foundation of the game: world physics and graphics engine, some basic character models, etc. They would also need to design a game with an open-ended storyline, which will allow room for the gamers to decide what happens. I don't know, food for thought. Kind of a neat idea. Hell, think about it, you could have your own server and play the game without limitation with just an obligation to keep your server(s) up and running. It could work.
I'm currently involved in an MMO project that is right-now completely volunteer based with a bit of funding for various costs (such as getting the company licensed in the UK)
The biggest most important thing of a project with such low funding, is your core starting people. The people that will stay with you, rain or shine, are the most important.
We happened to have an artist, which was also the writer, along with a great programmer, and myself for sound design and music.
Our biggest hurdle that we kept running into was 3d modelers. They were impossible to keep for several reasons. Mainly because they just weren't into the project like we were. If one of us had 3d modeling experience, we'd be a lot farther right now.
So...MMO's are hard to even get an ALPHA running. Unless you have a bit of money, or a LOT of ambition, MMO's are extrememly tough.
I'd say more, but guess what? You guessed it: NDA.
Hard to get 3D modelers to slave away fro free? Not surprising. You see, every single human being on Earth beleives he has a great game idea. But it takes actual skills to produce any game, good or bad. People with actual skills get hired by actual companies to work on actual projects.
If you want to make an indie game, you damn well better know how to do something other than just "have great ideas". Great ideas are a dime a dozen.
Instead of waiting 10 more years for darkfall to be released why dont we gather some people from mmorpg and make our own mmorpg we know what we want, they dont know what we want, so what are WE waiting for?
A programmer just coming from school cost you 25-30K euro's a year. So someone expirienced in this line of business will cost you double. Then you need to have a designer (Actualy more then one), someone who knows how to make a proper design on with the programmer can work and keep it dynamic. They prolly get payed about as much as the programmers.
The server will cost you even more and you need to have them from the beginning of the project. So that you can have an SVN running (File management), have phone conferences (Just mail will not do) and later in the development play test (For the QA department). Then you will have the problem of PR, you really need someone for that else you just end up like Darkfall.
"The gamers will provide their own servers (private WoW servers comes to mind)."
While I like you idea, it will not work. I really doubt you will get a lot of founding and it will be extreamly expencive. Avanture has investments worth of 10 million I heard and this already is really not that much for developing the game and you will still need servers for the sake of testing and what I wrote above.
Also a game like darkfall runs on server clusters. This means that one PC running a server is not going to be enough. While you might make a client/server design with would overcome this, it would severly limits what the game can and can not do.
nathanpinard,
The is really a problem with project like yours, especialy if your going to look for specialised poeple (programmers enough who would land you a hand), however finding good modelers, artist, sounds artist and stuff will be hard. With luck you might attract a student who would like to get some off-school expirience to put on his CV.
Your project might work though and does not have to take 10 years. Depending if you know your limitation when working with such a small group. This is something Darkfall has done wrong and have been to overly ambitious. Anyhow good luck with your project and hope you manage to pull it till the end.
Hard to get 3D modelers to slave away fro free? Not surprising. You see, every single human being on Earth beleives he has a great game idea. But it takes actual skills to produce any game, good or bad. People with actual skills get hired by actual companies to work on actual projects. If you want to make an indie game, you damn well better know how to do something other than just "have great ideas". Great ideas are a dime a dozen.
Yes, that is of course true. I'm not sure if you were arguing or just continuing the conversation.
And as far as people having actual skills getting hired by actual companies. While that IS true, there are a great deal that get hired not just because of their skills, but because of networking. It takes both.
Anyway, if luckily if we play our cards right our game will be on the mmorpg.com (not for a while though) which should prove to be ...interesting.
Also, I wanted to make something clear. We absolutely make sure anyone that is interested in our project knows what kind of work they are getting into, and what they are getting out of it.
nathanpinard, The is really a problem with project like yours, especialy if your going to look for specialised poeple (programmers enough who would land you a hand), however finding good modelers, artist, sounds artist and stuff will be hard. With luck you might attract a student who would like to get some off-school expirience to put on his CV. Your project might work though and does not have to take 10 years. Depending if you know your limitation when working with such a small group. This is something Darkfall has done wrong and have been to overly ambitious. Anyhow good luck with your project and hope you manage to pull it till the end.
Much thanks. We actually do have several solutions to the problems I listed. They are kind of border-line NDA breaking though to go into detail.
If your curious, I have a fan site I created here: http://www.conquestofheroesfans.com. I simply do all sound design, music (along with Romeo Knight) and also edit the drama segments along with the podcast, as well as host it. This wasn't all forced upon me, but really my idea for expanding PR. It'll be starting up again when I free more projects up I have otherwise. There is no official site just yet as we're pretty early in development.
Also, we have a different strategy. We aren't really selling the game initially in terms of PR/advertising. We're selling the IP, the story, the media that people can connect to. Some people in the MMO genre don't care about story, but a great deal of people do. So to start, we are marketing novels which will somewhat immerse people into the story, along with the drama segments that I do on the podcast (if you can stand my voice) and then later on when the game itself comes out, events in the game will co-incide with the story. (not promising anything yet though)
So...I'm seeing a good future. We've pushed, but things are looking up right now. I'm glad I stuck with this project this long.
Instead of waiting 10 more years for darkfall to be released why dont we gather some people from mmorpg and make our own mmorpg we know what we want, they dont know what we want, so what are WE waiting for?
Sounds like what Aventurine did ten years ago.
Keep in mind that those type of projects have been already tried by a lot of people. Few of them manage to push the product to release as Aventurine has done.
Take Perpetual Entertainment (these ones were not indie) for example. They moved to have two solid games in development, Gods & Heroes (This one always looked more "real" than Darkfall to me) and Star Trek Online, to cancel one and Transfer the other to Cryptic Studios within a year (more or less).
We can like or dislike how Aventurine manages the PR, info, release dates, development time etc... but one thing it is true, they have survived where other companies would have sunk long time ago.
Creating a new MMO and bringing it to market is hard (pretty much true for any new product actually) and while many will try, few will succeed.
In this era of the big budget MMO, its even harder for a small company to compete, and perhaps we've almost reached the point where its just not possible for indie development houses to produce them anymore.
If Aventurine manages to pull it off they will have done something remarkable, not matter how it turns out.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Hard to get 3D modelers to slave away fro free? Not surprising. You see, every single human being on Earth beleives he has a great game idea. But it takes actual skills to produce any game, good or bad. People with actual skills get hired by actual companies to work on actual projects. If you want to make an indie game, you damn well better know how to do something other than just "have great ideas". Great ideas are a dime a dozen.
That is bullocks. You never heard about the modding communities appearently?
Ever heard about Forgotten Hope mod for BF1942?
All volunteers my friend. And those guys had some really good 3D modelers in their mod team.
Or how about Counter Strike? It started as just a mod, wich happened to grow out as a huge success that it got somehow picked up and commercialised later on.
Instead of waiting 10 more years for darkfall to be released why dont we gather some people from mmorpg and make our own mmorpg we know what we want, they dont know what we want, so what are WE waiting for?
The problem is: I know what I want, You know what you want, The next poster willknow what he wants. And they will all be diferent opinions.
By the way, I remember one time I logged in one of the free to play mmorpgs listed here,it was one in development but open to all wanting to play. And there was one guy telling another: Come on dude! lets log out of the game and make our own one better than this! And the other one was saying: Oh not now!,but little later.
Hard to get 3D modelers to slave away fro free? Not surprising. You see, every single human being on Earth beleives he has a great game idea. But it takes actual skills to produce any game, good or bad. People with actual skills get hired by actual companies to work on actual projects. If you want to make an indie game, you damn well better know how to do something other than just "have great ideas". Great ideas are a dime a dozen.
That is bullocks. You never heard about the modding communities appearently?
Ever heard about Forgotten Hope mod for BF1942?
All volunteers my friend. And those guys had some really good 3D modelers in their mod team.
Or how about Counter Strike? It started as just a mod, wich happened to grow out as a huge success that it got somehow picked up and commercialised later on.
And there are so many more examples.
Just wanted to point that out.
Cheers
Bingo.
I think many companies and people underestimate fan-made content. Many mods turned out to be games later, like Team Fortress, and others had interesting ideas, i.e. Left 4 Dead got the concept of a HL mod called Zombie Panic! and there's a lot of people who still play a game just because of well made mods.
That is bullocks. You never heard about the modding communities appearently? Ever heard about Forgotten Hope mod for BF1942? All volunteers my friend. And those guys had some really good 3D modelers in their mod team. Or how about Counter Strike? It started as just a mod, wich happened to grow out as a huge success that it got somehow picked up and commercialised later on. And there are so many more examples. Just wanted to point that out. Cheers
A mod and making an MMO from scratch is completly differant. First of all making a mod for HL2 is free, bar man hours. If you have to make a (good) MMO you either have to start from 0 or license tools (Engine and maybe a whole toolset). If you have the money to license a good toolset (with are pretty expencive), you might be able to pull it off.
Starting from 0 will be a long term plan and requires poeple to stick around for a while. Also you have to look deeper. Server structure and design of the game. Mods already have a big structure under it and only have to consern themselves mainly with features. It will be more of an effort then building a mod.
Example of a toolset: (Fallen Earth is made with this one)
This thread is really interesting. This is how DF was born, and developed into the game it is now. All you see is tons of post ridiculing the OP about how hard, costly, and even impossible this is. Aventurine has gone through this, and yet still get criticized like they are a multi billion dollar company with an even more successful publisher backing them.
What they have done is incredibly difficult. I have a BS in Game Dev. I have developed two games complete with custom graphics engines using DirectX, OpenGL, SDL, physics libraries, bump mapping, networking, etc. I wrote a DX graphics engine for a Navy sim using insane socketing to sync three different rendering machines with a huge server and multiple clients. I would not even think about undertaking a project like Darkfall or working on an MMO. Why?
I have a life, a 9-5 job where I program all day, a wife, a kid, friends, dogs, and I have to support these things. Developers, programmers, and talent available to make a game of this magnitude are nearly impossible to find. They either are already working on actual funded projects, have a life that requires time, or aren't passionate enough for it. To find a group of people hungry enough and passionate enough to do it that don't need money to live, have similar ideals of what will make a good game, have enough time to develop like beasts, and enough skill to make that development worthwhile is nearly impossible. If anyone or any group even came close to being successful and finishing a project I would pat them on the back, give them infinte respect, and recognize what they sacrificed and what it took to get the project to where it was.
The hardest part of it all? No matter what you can be assured the community, the people who you are trying to make a game for, will be the biggest pricks you have ever encountered. They will cry, whine, flame, troll, bitch, cry some more, and make unreasonable demands. They will send threats to your email, and any other contact information you have out there. They will analyze your entire past and criticize your every move.
Instead of waiting 10 more years for darkfall to be released why dont we gather some people from mmorpg and make our own mmorpg we know what we want, they dont know what we want, so what are WE waiting for?
What are WE waiting for? No. What are YOU waiting for? I have a friend who does what you are doing all the time. He has this big dream of being an awesome film director. I totally respect him for his ambitions and his perseverence. Unfortunately he actually doesnt really have any talent for making films.......but like millions of people he has lots of ideas. So when he has one of these amazing ideas (which are actually awful) he tries to pull loads of people into this grand scheme of his by using the word WE a hell of a lot. WE could do this. WE could make that.
If you think you have some good ideas and the skill to form a successful team then just get on with it. Get your ideas together, figure out all of the complex skills you will need to make the game, type it all up in a detailed document, figure out all the costs involved and also how long you expect the games creation process to take. Then try and find god knows how much money that would be required to pay everyones wages.......unless they are generous enough (or insane?) to do it for free. Then try and find people willing to do it
Thats exactly what the people at Aventurine decided to do. In fact thats exactly what EVERY games company has done. You do realise dont you that a games company is just a collection of ordinary people just like you and me right? They asked the same question as you.......except that instead of posting the question on mmorpg.com these people with their particular set of skills required for making a game got together and made a game.
So I'll look forward to hearing about your kick ass games company in the future
A developer is going to allow us to do just that. It's called Meta something or other, I thought it was Meta world, but it's start with Meta for sure. It gives you a space online and a set of powerful and very user-friendly tools, you're then free to create your own mini adventure or whatever your creative juices conjure up. People are then able to link what they've created if they so choose to do so. If everybody on a forum community worked together they could each create a part and then link them all together once it's released. I wish I could remember the full name.
A developer is going to allow us to do just that. It's called Meta something or other, I thought it was Meta world, but it's start with Meta for sure. It gives you a space online and a set of powerful and very user-friendly tools, you're then free to create your own mini adventure or whatever your creative juices conjure up. People are then able to link what they've created if they so choose to do so. If everybody on a forum community worked together they could each create a part and then link them all together once it's released. I wish I could remember the full name.
You are talking about Metaplace. It is a web based isometric view type of project where every user can create a world with their own rules and link them to other worlds. It is pretty cool i'm in the beta. I don't think there is an NDA against saying that. It is not a full on MMORPG for everyone though. It won't fill the gap that most veteran MMORPG'ers have. Within 10 years or so though the idea could take off and turn into something pretty great.
My recommendation would be to draw up an entire design document of whatever MMO you invision.
Things like:
What's the overall story?
What's the goal?
What kind of art/graphics will be used?
What genre?
What kind of sound/music?
What platforms will it be created for?
What type of leveling/skill system will there be?
Combat mechanics?
What kind of mathmatical equations will be used with stats/abilities/etc?
Any questing/missions?
Sandbox or Themepark, or maybe a mix of both?
FFA PvP, Full Loot, etc How will this all work with everything else?
Anything you can possibly think of goes on that document in a very organized and easy to read manner. And you'd also have to write a bible of the story as well.
Although I think the above posters all pointed out the flaws in the OP logic...
I would add that I think thats where MMORPGs will eventually lead to. NOt in everyone making some indi MMO, but in some game system that allows for customization of the game enviornment in a uder friendly way. I'm not thinking about Second life, but more along the lines of what happened with MUDs
Some of these engines are more user friendly than others, but none of them have a "Make WoW" button.
Although these engines help alot, the other hard part is making all the artwork, models and animations for characters, gear, Mobs, buildings, etc. That's a large part of any MMORPGs budget, artwork.
Comments
It would be an interesting idea for a new software product.
Build your own mmorpg.
People have already tried to do this with NeverwinterNights. But of course, you can't get more than 64 people in one game there. Wich is pretty small compared to regular mmorpgs which support up to 5000 concurrent users for each shard.
And the graphics are very dated.
Perhaps it's time for something new like this, but on a larger scale. Doable? I have no idea.
Oh and this whole topic is very off topic.
Reminds me of another equally brilliant plan:
1. Collect Underpants
2. ????
3. Profit
I'm currently involved in an MMO project that is right-now completely volunteer based with a bit of funding for various costs (such as getting the company licensed in the UK)
The biggest most important thing of a project with such low funding, is your core starting people. The people that will stay with you, rain or shine, are the most important.
We happened to have an artist, which was also the writer, along with a great programmer, and myself for sound design and music.
Our biggest hurdle that we kept running into was 3d modelers. They were impossible to keep for several reasons. Mainly because they just weren't into the project like we were. If one of us had 3d modeling experience, we'd be a lot farther right now.
So...MMO's are hard to even get an ALPHA running. Unless you have a bit of money, or a LOT of ambition, MMO's are extrememly tough.
I'd say more, but guess what? You guessed it: NDA.
Hard to get 3D modelers to slave away fro free? Not surprising. You see, every single human being on Earth beleives he has a great game idea. But it takes actual skills to produce any game, good or bad. People with actual skills get hired by actual companies to work on actual projects.
If you want to make an indie game, you damn well better know how to do something other than just "have great ideas". Great ideas are a dime a dozen.
A programmer just coming from school cost you 25-30K euro's a year. So someone expirienced in this line of business will cost you double. Then you need to have a designer (Actualy more then one), someone who knows how to make a proper design on with the programmer can work and keep it dynamic. They prolly get payed about as much as the programmers.
The server will cost you even more and you need to have them from the beginning of the project. So that you can have an SVN running (File management), have phone conferences (Just mail will not do) and later in the development play test (For the QA department). Then you will have the problem of PR, you really need someone for that else you just end up like Darkfall.
"The gamers will provide their own servers (private WoW servers comes to mind)."
While I like you idea, it will not work. I really doubt you will get a lot of founding and it will be extreamly expencive. Avanture has investments worth of 10 million I heard and this already is really not that much for developing the game and you will still need servers for the sake of testing and what I wrote above.
Also a game like darkfall runs on server clusters. This means that one PC running a server is not going to be enough. While you might make a client/server design with would overcome this, it would severly limits what the game can and can not do.
nathanpinard,
The is really a problem with project like yours, especialy if your going to look for specialised poeple (programmers enough who would land you a hand), however finding good modelers, artist, sounds artist and stuff will be hard. With luck you might attract a student who would like to get some off-school expirience to put on his CV.
Your project might work though and does not have to take 10 years. Depending if you know your limitation when working with such a small group. This is something Darkfall has done wrong and have been to overly ambitious. Anyhow good luck with your project and hope you manage to pull it till the end.
Yes, that is of course true. I'm not sure if you were arguing or just continuing the conversation.
And as far as people having actual skills getting hired by actual companies. While that IS true, there are a great deal that get hired not just because of their skills, but because of networking. It takes both.
Anyway, if luckily if we play our cards right our game will be on the mmorpg.com (not for a while though) which should prove to be ...interesting.
Also, I wanted to make something clear. We absolutely make sure anyone that is interested in our project knows what kind of work they are getting into, and what they are getting out of it.
Much thanks. We actually do have several solutions to the problems I listed. They are kind of border-line NDA breaking though to go into detail.
If your curious, I have a fan site I created here: http://www.conquestofheroesfans.com. I simply do all sound design, music (along with Romeo Knight) and also edit the drama segments along with the podcast, as well as host it. This wasn't all forced upon me, but really my idea for expanding PR. It'll be starting up again when I free more projects up I have otherwise. There is no official site just yet as we're pretty early in development.
Also, we have a different strategy. We aren't really selling the game initially in terms of PR/advertising. We're selling the IP, the story, the media that people can connect to. Some people in the MMO genre don't care about story, but a great deal of people do. So to start, we are marketing novels which will somewhat immerse people into the story, along with the drama segments that I do on the podcast (if you can stand my voice) and then later on when the game itself comes out, events in the game will co-incide with the story. (not promising anything yet though)
So...I'm seeing a good future. We've pushed, but things are looking up right now. I'm glad I stuck with this project this long.
To the OP: if you knew how difficult - or an insurmountable task developing a MMORPG is, then you wouldn't have bothered asking.
Sounds like what Aventurine did ten years ago.
Keep in mind that those type of projects have been already tried by a lot of people. Few of them manage to push the product to release as Aventurine has done.
Take Perpetual Entertainment (these ones were not indie) for example. They moved to have two solid games in development, Gods & Heroes (This one always looked more "real" than Darkfall to me) and Star Trek Online, to cancel one and Transfer the other to Cryptic Studios within a year (more or less).
We can like or dislike how Aventurine manages the PR, info, release dates, development time etc... but one thing it is true, they have survived where other companies would have sunk long time ago.
Creating a new MMO and bringing it to market is hard (pretty much true for any new product actually) and while many will try, few will succeed.
In this era of the big budget MMO, its even harder for a small company to compete, and perhaps we've almost reached the point where its just not possible for indie development houses to produce them anymore.
If Aventurine manages to pull it off they will have done something remarkable, not matter how it turns out.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
That is bullocks. You never heard about the modding communities appearently?
Ever heard about Forgotten Hope mod for BF1942?
All volunteers my friend. And those guys had some really good 3D modelers in their mod team.
Or how about Counter Strike? It started as just a mod, wich happened to grow out as a huge success that it got somehow picked up and commercialised later on.
And there are so many more examples.
Just wanted to point that out.
Cheers
Great idea OP!
Send me 25 million USD through paypal and will get started right away!
"There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
The problem is: I know what I want, You know what you want, The next poster willknow what he wants. And they will all be diferent opinions.
By the way, I remember one time I logged in one of the free to play mmorpgs listed here,it was one in development but open to all wanting to play. And there was one guy telling another: Come on dude! lets log out of the game and make our own one better than this! And the other one was saying: Oh not now!,but little later.
I couldnt stop laughing.
That is bullocks. You never heard about the modding communities appearently?
Ever heard about Forgotten Hope mod for BF1942?
All volunteers my friend. And those guys had some really good 3D modelers in their mod team.
Or how about Counter Strike? It started as just a mod, wich happened to grow out as a huge success that it got somehow picked up and commercialised later on.
And there are so many more examples.
Just wanted to point that out.
Cheers
Bingo.
I think many companies and people underestimate fan-made content. Many mods turned out to be games later, like Team Fortress, and others had interesting ideas, i.e. Left 4 Dead got the concept of a HL mod called Zombie Panic! and there's a lot of people who still play a game just because of well made mods.
A mod and making an MMO from scratch is completly differant. First of all making a mod for HL2 is free, bar man hours. If you have to make a (good) MMO you either have to start from 0 or license tools (Engine and maybe a whole toolset). If you have the money to license a good toolset (with are pretty expencive), you might be able to pull it off.
Starting from 0 will be a long term plan and requires poeple to stick around for a while. Also you have to look deeper. Server structure and design of the game. Mods already have a big structure under it and only have to consern themselves mainly with features. It will be more of an effort then building a mod.
Example of a toolset: (Fallen Earth is made with this one)
http://www.icarusstudios.com/pages/total-solution
This thread is really interesting. This is how DF was born, and developed into the game it is now. All you see is tons of post ridiculing the OP about how hard, costly, and even impossible this is. Aventurine has gone through this, and yet still get criticized like they are a multi billion dollar company with an even more successful publisher backing them.
What they have done is incredibly difficult. I have a BS in Game Dev. I have developed two games complete with custom graphics engines using DirectX, OpenGL, SDL, physics libraries, bump mapping, networking, etc. I wrote a DX graphics engine for a Navy sim using insane socketing to sync three different rendering machines with a huge server and multiple clients. I would not even think about undertaking a project like Darkfall or working on an MMO. Why?
I have a life, a 9-5 job where I program all day, a wife, a kid, friends, dogs, and I have to support these things. Developers, programmers, and talent available to make a game of this magnitude are nearly impossible to find. They either are already working on actual funded projects, have a life that requires time, or aren't passionate enough for it. To find a group of people hungry enough and passionate enough to do it that don't need money to live, have similar ideals of what will make a good game, have enough time to develop like beasts, and enough skill to make that development worthwhile is nearly impossible. If anyone or any group even came close to being successful and finishing a project I would pat them on the back, give them infinte respect, and recognize what they sacrificed and what it took to get the project to where it was.
The hardest part of it all? No matter what you can be assured the community, the people who you are trying to make a game for, will be the biggest pricks you have ever encountered. They will cry, whine, flame, troll, bitch, cry some more, and make unreasonable demands. They will send threats to your email, and any other contact information you have out there. They will analyze your entire past and criticize your every move.
What are WE waiting for? No. What are YOU waiting for? I have a friend who does what you are doing all the time. He has this big dream of being an awesome film director. I totally respect him for his ambitions and his perseverence. Unfortunately he actually doesnt really have any talent for making films.......but like millions of people he has lots of ideas. So when he has one of these amazing ideas (which are actually awful) he tries to pull loads of people into this grand scheme of his by using the word WE a hell of a lot. WE could do this. WE could make that.
If you think you have some good ideas and the skill to form a successful team then just get on with it. Get your ideas together, figure out all of the complex skills you will need to make the game, type it all up in a detailed document, figure out all the costs involved and also how long you expect the games creation process to take. Then try and find god knows how much money that would be required to pay everyones wages.......unless they are generous enough (or insane?) to do it for free. Then try and find people willing to do it
Thats exactly what the people at Aventurine decided to do. In fact thats exactly what EVERY games company has done. You do realise dont you that a games company is just a collection of ordinary people just like you and me right? They asked the same question as you.......except that instead of posting the question on mmorpg.com these people with their particular set of skills required for making a game got together and made a game.
So I'll look forward to hearing about your kick ass games company in the future
A developer is going to allow us to do just that. It's called Meta something or other, I thought it was Meta world, but it's start with Meta for sure. It gives you a space online and a set of powerful and very user-friendly tools, you're then free to create your own mini adventure or whatever your creative juices conjure up. People are then able to link what they've created if they so choose to do so. If everybody on a forum community worked together they could each create a part and then link them all together once it's released. I wish I could remember the full name.
You are talking about Metaplace. It is a web based isometric view type of project where every user can create a world with their own rules and link them to other worlds. It is pretty cool i'm in the beta. I don't think there is an NDA against saying that. It is not a full on MMORPG for everyone though. It won't fill the gap that most veteran MMORPG'ers have. Within 10 years or so though the idea could take off and turn into something pretty great.
OP:
My recommendation would be to draw up an entire design document of whatever MMO you invision.
Things like:
What's the overall story?
What's the goal?
What kind of art/graphics will be used?
What genre?
What kind of sound/music?
What platforms will it be created for?
What type of leveling/skill system will there be?
Combat mechanics?
What kind of mathmatical equations will be used with stats/abilities/etc?
Any questing/missions?
Sandbox or Themepark, or maybe a mix of both?
FFA PvP, Full Loot, etc How will this all work with everything else?
Anything you can possibly think of goes on that document in a very organized and easy to read manner. And you'd also have to write a bible of the story as well.
That would be one of your first steps.
Although I think the above posters all pointed out the flaws in the OP logic...
I would add that I think thats where MMORPGs will eventually lead to. NOt in everyone making some indi MMO, but in some game system that allows for customization of the game enviornment in a uder friendly way. I'm not thinking about Second life, but more along the lines of what happened with MUDs
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
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Nobody is useless, he/she can still be used as a bad example.
If you're actually interested in such a project, here's a pretty good list to get you started:
List of Online Game Making Engines
It's under "The List: MMORPG ENgines".
Some of these engines are more user friendly than others, but none of them have a "Make WoW" button.
Although these engines help alot, the other hard part is making all the artwork, models and animations for characters, gear, Mobs, buildings, etc. That's a large part of any MMORPGs budget, artwork.