Why does the development of an MMO take so long?

danmor

I read a few days ago that Auto Assault took 5 years to develop. I'm curious now: why is that so?

Is it because the whole world takes such a long time to put together? Is the server architecture so complex? What percentage of the development process do the individual parts of the game claim? Are the develpoers just lazy?

Has anybody an idea about those questions?

VixenHeart

Just look how much stuff you can do, how many people are doing it at the same time, and most of the time they make their own graphical engine and all the other crap.

The game is MASSIVE.

Phoenixs

Most good quality games take 2 or more years to develop. Most quality development houses spend several years on their newest games. It's not special for a mmo to spend several years on development. A quality game takes years to develop. But you must remember there a factors like size of development team, talent, funding and the publisher. All have a inpact on how long a game is in development. Regarding AA: I don't think NetDevil has the biggest development team. That is why AA took so long to develop. 

Hochete

i find it difficult to imagine just why it took 5 years to develop a game like AA. i'm not saying it's bad, but i've played it, and it's very .. nothingy. i can see why hugely detailed games such as warhammer online or even vanguard take a long time to develop, but games like CoH and AA....... i can't imagine what they were doing for 5 years. i think it is largly down to the developers being lazy slow-arsed gits.

VixenHeart

That too, but people use their own engine's a lot, and start from scratch.

Some companies like Sigil had backing from Microsoft, and still couldn't produce a game. . .  Now it's got backing from Sony and lets see what they can pull out of their ass.

Fireburst

It depends on many factors including how much money is being spent from the start. MMORPG's are a risky undertaking so often the game is fleshed out with a small team and then as confidence increases that they can make the game a commercial success, so does the budget  which speeds up the final development. It just takes a little time to reach that point sometimes.

freebirdpat

You also have to a game world and the system behind it where a player won't just blow through the whole thing in 90 hours of online play.

MadAce

Because developers think they have to make every single item themselves and they think they have to design the entire world.

They also believe that each feautere is a set of restrictions to be implemented.







That's why.

Elnator

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Originally posted by VixenHeart

That too, but people use their own engine's a lot, and start from scratch.
Some companies like Sigil had backing from Microsoft, and still couldn't produce a game. . .  Now it's got backing from Sony and lets see what they can pull out of their ass.

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What is it with the constant bashing of games?
Vanguard announced closed beta BEFORE the MS thing was announced.  The reason they dumped MS wasn't because they didn't have a game but because MS was trying to push the release date up on them to coincide with the release of VISTA.  Sigil said "no, we're not releasing an unfinished game just because you want us to coincide with your release".  I applaud them for that.

And they don't have "backing" from SOE, SOE is publishing the game for them, that's all.  Sigil is still 100% in the driver's seat.  (Which they weren't in their deal with MS).

As to the original topic:
The reason they take so long to develop is:
1) Artwork is not something you just toss together if you want it to look like 1 world.  You have to come up with concept art, figure out what you like, then start developing it for whatever engine you're using.
2) Story takes a while to write, polish, revise and re-write.  Then you have to code it into your game.
3) Mechanics are the hardest part, making sure the bits and bytes all work together.  Then you have to do internal testing to make sure your mechanics work
4) Networking pieces have to be developed that can handle TREMENDOUS load.  Not just the hardware but also the interfaces.  Most "out of the box" engines do not have the power to handle massive ammounts of traffic, which is why most companies limit their servers to sizes that prevent more than a few thousand concurrent users (EVE and Guild Wars being notable exceptions to this though they go about it differently)
5) Hardware has to be configured, purchased, etc.

None of those things happen overnight.  It takes time.  The biggest piece is the story and content.  You can't just throw a city on a game world in 2 seconds flat.  Every building has to be drawn in and attention has to be paid to detail, flow, and whether each piece fits into the environment properly. 

Overall the artwork and the stories (quests) take the longest to implement because it takes time to write them in, make sure all the triggers are right, etc.  Remember most teams only have 5-15 people doing 90% of the work.  Some are larger but for the most part development teams aren't very big.    SWG was one noteable exception and look how ugly THAT got (70 devs was the number I heard... too many cooks...)



The bigger the world, the more content you put in it, the longer it takes to develop and the higher the cost of development is.  On top of all that games like EQ2 where they get voiceovers in they have to get an actor/actress to do the voice overs and then they have to do multiple cuts to get it right.  I don't know if you've ever been to a script reading but it can take hours just to get a few minutes, heck even a few seconds,  right   Just look how much commercials cost to make, they're generally 30-60 seconds and it takes months to make 1 commercial.

katriell

An MMORPG is one of the most complex, convoluted software suites. There's networking, graphics, physics, modelling, animation, texturing, text and dialog, voiceovers in some games, mechanics, balancing and adjustments, content, user interface, debugging, lots and lots of debugging...

An MMORPG is also never finished. All are "unfinished" at release, and forever after. Every added feature requires some or all of the above to integrate into the world, then testing and debugging. But still, new bugs will creep in and old bugs will be revealed. It often takes the tenacity (and stupidity) of hundreds/thousands of players to uncover bugs that the developers didn't find because they didn't think to play the game in the unanticipated ways players come up with.

Players demand new features, and fast. The developing team rushes to complete and test the features. The features are patched in, and they have bugs. The players whinge about the bugs and call the game an unfinished, buggy piece of crap, and maybe a few actually have the sense and take the time to send a decent bug report. So the developers work to fix the bugs. All the while, the players call the developers lazy, stupid, etc., and the flaming of "the devs" becomes a sport.

So YAY for MMOs with a long development cycle. This means they're not bending to pressure from the players (or community of potential players) and are taking adequate time to work on the massive software, test it, and hopefully release it with less problems.

observer

Because developers and publishers set unrealistic goals.

Taron

the reason MMORPG's take so long to make is all the stuff that goes into them. Some of the developers cant even do their jobs because another group has to finsih their part before they start like modlers and concept artist, the modlers need the concept art before they can make anything then with story, monsters weapons armor and races need to be finished before the modlers can work. their is also the amount of stuff needed to be done, i should know i work on Navareaonline as the story writters, weapon, armor, races, factions, and monster descriptions for cheezersoft and we have no money all im doing im not even getting paid for and im still doing it so it takes a long time.