An MMORPG - Can we do it? Our plan.

[WhiskeyJim]

First of all,

hi to you all game developers and fellow nerds (no offence, Star Trek for the win)! I'm enjoying myself while reading these forum topics - I really like how people help eachother with different kind of problems and answer to questions of any "level".

To introduce myself a little: I'm a 17 year old student in a Finnish vocational school and our studies mainly consists of computing. Couple of my friends are in the same school aswell. Well, as we're learning programming (mainly Java) and different kind of operating systems I couldn't be happier. Add that to many years of so called "hobby computing". I've played games from about 5 years old to this very day. I have done digital art (for couple of years now) and composed some music and I've got positive feedback of my work. I think I have a pretty solid idea what this all is about.

Yes, I have played Guild Wars and World of Warcraft (both games from the very start to the very end) and they were really time consuming and repetitive. Little annoying things made them really unpleasant. Not going to flame or abuse them more, they just weren't my type.

Well, one day we (me and one of my friends (a great drawer and graphics artist)) started to plan of making a game. Heureka! It would be an MMO! We planned and discussed about the features and content and it sounded like a great plan. We don't have too much experience of creating games but we hope our experience of playing them and making different types of art could fill the hole.

My plan, as the programmer and somekind of artist, was to start with the irrWizard's framework as it is really nicely built and easy to play around with. We would make a single player run-around-the-terrain-game with the movement and controls as we like and then turn it into a network version to be played with a group of five people. Movement and single actions like chatting and somekind of attacking could be implemented after this. Then we could add some RPG elements like skills and different kind of spells and extend the area if all goes well.

What do you think of all this? All we got is time and inspiration, so they wouldn't be a problem.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Edit: Changed the title a bit.

[IPv6]

IMHO: do something easier as a first effort. If you`ll start full MMO, you will get nothing more than expirience...

[Virion]

I'm totally agree with IPv6. Do some smaller games first before moving onto such a huge project.

By the way, I am 17 years old too.

[Midnight]

I'll third that motion.

[Saturn]

Actually your question is easy to answer: If you have to ask, then no.

[Nodtveidt]

Sometimes, taking on such a massive project as your first real effort is the best way to go, since you're not "corrupted" by other systems. If you think you have the guts to tackle the most difficult style of gaming there is on your first time out, I say "go for it"!

[monkeycracks]

It's never a good idea to name a post that

MMO = Massive Multiplayer online...

Nearly impossible to make...
But good luck if you try

[WhiskeyJim]

Thanks for replying all.

"you will get nothing more than expirience..."

If I got this right then I think it's a good thing to get experience, no?

We decided to give it a go even without any "real" experience. Any things we should consider and think of before we really get the project going?

[monkeycracks]

I'm working on an online rpg as well. Things you should consider are :

Will you use a class system or otherwise.
You'll need a combat system.
What will be the main point of your game, what will you do.

One of the most annoying things is :

Getting a friggen rigged correctly human 3d model that looks good.

[bitplane]

I'm also with the nay-sayers. I hope to make at least one RPG game in my lifetime (I have 3 pretty cool concepts), but I doubt I'll ever set my heart on a MMORPG because I know how much effort is involved. A MMO is the kind of project that a large team of experienced people would need to dedicate 4 years of their lives to achieve. It will never be finished, and you'll never be able to do anything else during the time. If you ever make it work then you'll spend all your time supporting it, but the chance of you actually finishing it are small, and when you fail you will have ruined your reputation as someone who has the minerals to finish a serious project.
You would be better off spending your time making 10 smaller games, actually finishing 5 of them, and building a team of people who have faith in your ability to finish a big project.

[CuteAlien]

Start programming a MUD (Multi User Dungeon). There are already working environments so you don't have to write those. They are text-based and usually not real time, so two of the hardest hurdles are already gone. If you work hard you will actually be able to programme something workable. And most important - you start learning what it takes to describe a world in a way so it's usable in a computer game.

You can certainly also start working on other small games, doing MUD or adventure programming is just something which seemed the most closely related game type to an mmo which can be used to learn doing games.

Just to give you an idea how much work a mmrpg does need, here's the credit list for GuildWars (and most people on there are extremly experienced and have still worked a few year fulltime on that game): http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Game_credits

[Virion]

244 people altogether...

[IPv6]

If I got this right then I think it's a good thing to get experience, no?

May be. But... just imagine. From artist view: Take a most "hard" model you make. Multiply time by 5. Them consider redoing it EVERY week to follow changes in the client engine. Than multiply on 200 (monsters, weapons, armors, etc). Then consider redoing EVERYTHING from scratch because you`ll finally start to understand what you really want. They redo it again because publisher will say "no, its lame" to whole graphic look. Then consider doing the same amount of work every 2 months to keep players interested in your world (the only thing they need from your game - new content, constantly). Without users you will end up without money. There is no such amount of enthusiasm to keep working on it year after year. Man with such big enthusiasm can lit whole city at night and can be spotted from the moon at night side of the earth. Can you be spotted from the moon right now? Without 10000X optics i mean.

From the programmer point of view the most complicated thing is proper networking, client syncronizations (NOT 3d engine) and server implementation. You should be really strong to be able work with hundreds of people at the same time. A small error can worth days of "blind" testing in order to find "why this f***g arrow is going trhou enemy in one case over 100". After hour or two server memory will be in total chaos because of fragmentation (new delete every 100 millisecond), you will start to get errors "don`t have enough memory" on server with 2 Gb RAM! After an hour of gaming! This error forced MMO team of my friend to completely redo core of server engine - another 3 months of development (but they are working full time on big entertaining company in Russia, around 15 programers)

Sum of gained experience will be short - never start another MMO without proper team, lots of time and bright idea (detailed from the beginning and not shifted in any way during development)

[WhiskeyJim]

Thanks for the opinions, and nice posts everyone. Happy I didn't get any flaming.. yet. My "team" now actually consists of couple of my school friends, who have some time to dedicate for a game.

The whole idea from the start was to have fun and see if we could be able to create our so called "dream game". We've started small and we've already learned a lot. We are still going to carry this project on and we hope that people, even the ones who think it's a bad idea, wishes us good luck just because it's about having fun and working as a team.

[monkeycracks]

Well good luck anyways