An MMORPG - Can we do it? Our plan.

monkeycracks · Post by **monkeycracks** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 1:58 am

I'm working completely solo on a multi-player project (And I have a mediocre team for my 'MMORPG'(I hate that term though)). It's possible, just not likely and hell not easy.

monkeycracks · Post by **monkeycracks** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 1:58 am

Also, Mom says it costs <$50 a month, this is DSL + phone line.

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 2:07 am

uh.. something tells me you just have unlimited time.

in some places like the UK they have fair use laws and such and they are only supposed to use their bandwidth a certain amount each day.

otherwise they recieve notice and something something who cares for me.

thats why they call it unlimited.

like I have an unlimited 5mb down and 512 up

in modern games my bandwidth will support about 8 players in an rts before they lag to hell and if they are really far away they might not connect at all.

point is this... you have a capped bandwidth.. I could be wrong but if you're not downloading stuff at 1mb/ps+ then you definatly are capped somewhere below ten meg. which is the most I get here and I pay oh 60+$ a month for that which I recently downgraded till my income situation changes.

for a realistic MMORPG such as world of warcraft or starwars galaxies I imagine they have multiple fat pipes or even backbones to the internet we're talking some serious bandwidth they pay a few hundred thousand a year for if not having to start their own ISP to manage it.

put it this way on a normal connection like mine 5mb or so you would need 16+ lines in your home just to run a high demand voyer site.. I know thats porn statistics I saw it on real sex once.

she payed a few thousand just to stream voyerism.. thats like a few thousand users... good mmo's have hundreds of thousands of users sometimes even millions. think about it... $50 bandwidth won't buy you an mmorpg... of course there are lower bandwidth mmo's such as time of defiance. supporting about 2 thousand players at any given time which is about equal to a voyer site in that respect.

for the best mmorpg's on the market you can not even get the bandwidth requirements period thats why sony has SWG setup in california.

monkeycracks · Post by **monkeycracks** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 2:22 am

Yeah, I see what you mean now.
But seeing as most MMOs won't have 100,000 starting out, you could easily pull it off on a low-grade server until you can afford better and better, building up as you go.

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 2:25 am

monkeycracks wrote:Yeah, I see what you mean now.
But seeing as most MMOs won't have 100,000 starting out, you could easily pull it off on a low-grade server until you can afford better and better, building up as you go.

very risky.. that's the making of a bankruptcy I've seen it before.

all it would take is a sudden influx and lots of pissed of customers to bring the whole thing down.

if you plan it out and move very fast.. like being in the right area or trusting you business a few states or countries away... it could be done seemlessly..

the best model is time of defiance.. low bandwidth needs to begin with slow timed procedural almost mechanics making prediction handle most of the load... like I keep repeating there are ways.

but one has to be realistic and careful in this type of business.

monkeycracks · Post by **monkeycracks** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 2:29 am

Yeah, thinking about it, you'd be in some deep poop if you had some people stop playing.

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 2:31 am

monkeycracks wrote:Yeah, thinking about it, you'd be in some deep ***** if you had some people stop playing.

damn you're fast!!

it's just easier to skip mmo and do rpg..or fps for that matter.

dreams can be made but like anything REAL you must take care and be sensable.

you don't build a motel for your first construction job do you??

not unless you REALLY know what your doing.

lostclimategames · Post by **lostclimategames** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 5:43 am

man I need to move there.

how much do you pay for unlimited bandwidth?

I misunderstood you, i thought were talking about max usage per month. I got DSL with 6mg down and 3mg up for $35 a month and free hosting and a free domain name, so i get quite a deal, your in michigan right? If your ever around Bay City, look into starnet wireless.

As far as what your talking about you have to remember heres what you have

stats and positions for each object going over the line, at most youd have what 10kb per second per user? (i estimated that alot,im not even close to sure) now i can get a lot if were looking at that I can have over at least 100 people per line. Now lets say I want now, if your charging lets say $5 per acct. that is $500 per month, that is way more than the $35 per line, and a server upkeep cost.

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 8:55 am

your forgetting all the people to maintain that network the computer power to run it the electricity to power those computers additional backup lines for when your main ones go down which means you need special line combining routers that are expensive as hell.

lets see what else.. a place considering only a moron would try and run this from their house which at that level of income is illegal unless you properly section off your house from your work area and bring it up to building code meaning REAL firewalls to prevent burning yourself alive.

see this is where nearly 11 years of business knowledge and construction experience really comes in handy.

besides 100 people per 3mb line? whens the last time you saw a hundred person FPS server? and most of those use 10mb - 100mb lines.

an rpg is less bandwidth and can even lag a bit without much complaint but your bandwidth statistics are WAY WAY off.

first consider that your line is rated in mega-BITS not megabytes and not only do you have to send info for each moving object but you have to send them from client to server to ALL the other clients as fast as possible.

some companies use mirrors some use faster lines but region is a major issue as well.

I can keep going but I won't. I think the point has been made and remade.

the fact of the matter remains an mmo is a job for say 100 professionals not a small group or single amateur. this can be done but it wouldn't be anywhere close to easy or practical. obviously this guy seems to have a trick up his sleeve... he's gonna need it.

poop we must be getting close to $50,000 already. I watched somebody spend that just building a half ass bar and a cappuccino machine. we didn't even have any signs in the beginning we printed out OPEN on a bunch of paper and taped it together just to make ends meet LMFAO.

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:11 am

FYI one megabit = approx 120kbps

lets see.. 10kbps per 100 models per 100 players = 1000 x 1000 = 1 million kbps.. divide that by 120 to get your final megabit needs for 100 models and one hundred players...plus you need a bit extra for lag spikes and network stabalization.

1 mil / 120 = 8333.repeating... divide that by 3 which is yer meg upload.

by my math thats 2777 lines at 3mb.. thats a rough estimate but if it's anywhere near close to correct then you've got major problems.

x $35 = $97222... per month!!!!! hahahahaha yeah you can do an mmorpg alright... right into your funking grave man. hope you like living in the shelter.. and by god if you got sued what then?!

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:19 am

at a second glance I think thats supposed to be 100,000 rather then a million.. but the concept still applies.. and where are you gonna get 10 thousand dollars a month to pay that bill?

from your 100 initial players at $5 a month?

lets see if the bank will take $500 a month instead of the 10,500 it's costing you for the million dollar loan they'll never give you for such a risky business.

my dad couldn't even afford that and he has $50,000 preapproved loans sent to him weekly and it took him 40 years to get that kinda credit.

in all reality since we've gone this far lets say each node takes 5kb per second which is close to what irrnet uses I think and consider that only say 10-50% of those nodes will be moving at any given time that should cut bandwidth requirements down at least 50% if not 75%

now lets say you live in the right place and get a really good deal on bandwidth cause you work a deal with a smaller ISP willing and able.

you're talking at least $2000 a month per 100 people.

$15 typical mmo fee x 100 = $1500 now we are getting realistic.

heres how a real company does it... they charge that initial $50 for the box of software that gives you 50 x 100 = 5000 capital to get it running and to pay your workers a very meger paycheck.

the way they do it must be to sign up for say a 5 year contract with an ISP and pay about 1000 a month per hundred users... lag the poop out of the network meaning 100+ ping for all players also optimize the poop out of it needing maybe 25% less bandwidth then an fps... making that same 100 person connection meet the needs of 150-200 people.

build expansions for duping people into another $50 charge for updates that should have been in the initial release... starting to get the idea here?

problem is with this paticular project optimizing the bandwidth is hard because you're streaming ALL of the content and only cacheing what you can on peoples pc's which helps very little when they can manually delete that cache or they reinstall.

not to mention you're walking on eggshells to prevent a life changing bug that causes most players to quit. also lets not forget paying somebody to handle credit card junk which is he preferred method of payment.

so much work for such little profit.. too large an investment or project for 99.9% of the world.

so.. iZigoo how do you plan to do it?
BTW no offense but a name like that isn't exactly something I like or trust.
not personally..but that is the name of the project aswell yes?

once again I'll say it because you're going to need it GOOD funking LUCK BRO!!!

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:42 am

oh one last thing have any of you actually looked into what second life charges?

well to play is free but if you want game realistate you're looking at an initial $1500 a year plus a $50 monthly fee for maintaining it on their end *cough* BS .. and they want a setup fee..

it's nearly $3000 a year to own a medium island... granted if you work it right the game can make you money legally unlike some mmorpg's.

but why would I play your game when I could play secondlife?

in fact I gave up on second life because of how boring it is.

its not a game or a community its a place for idiots to build fake dicks and pretend gently caress each other... that or a glorified 3d chat room full of deviants and people that think scripting makes them a god.

lol oh man.. you'll learn. or you'll amaze but I doubt that. prove me wrong I would love that.. been looking for a way around this problem considering I must be wrong somewhere along the lines cause each mmorpg makes close to a billion dollars a year.

let me restate that.. the mmo industry makes 8 billion annually.. there are only 8 greats though... I imagine there are some 50 or so in total.

lostclimategames · Post by **lostclimategames** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 10:34 am

well i didnt take the time to reply past that first line of your second post past mine, 100 models X 100 people?????? why would you have 100 per one person? that doesnt make anysense? and also, what do you have for updating per second, lets see if its turn based fighting it should only update, what 2x per second maybe? well you have 1 model for each player (not 100) and you need the x,y,z,pan,level,exp,atk,def,mining,smithing,crafting,herblore,status variables, lets say you max all except the expirience/x/y/z/pan at 99, you send the information as strings, and convert them back for each server/client that means you have 32bytes total in strings, 32*8=256bits, so you'd send 256bits*2 (2 updates per second), now you have half a kilobit of information per second per person, obviously, you might have some more things like class and stuff, but that is stored on the server, and isnt changed everysecond, so that only would count as download info, so that would be off 6meg download. obviously there is a cost for the servers, placement, and electricity, but number one, half of the people who "plan" to make on mmo dont plan on it being huge instantaneously. also the discussion was about bandwidth not other physical costs.

lostclimategames · Post by **lostclimategames** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 10:38 am

also now that i read farther, you are in the wrong forum, your talking to izogloo or whatever, this is a different thread

might want to fix that

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 11:02 am

oh was izigoo another one?... whatever same concept.

you think players are the only moving entities?
maybe there won't be a hundred per player as armor and all that can be calculated on either side just fine. but what about reality where you would have 1000 players staring and lagging each other up most times intentionally.

I was talking about cost in general and the ability to do this project like the title of the thread asks about.

not just bandwidth. but your free to take this where ever you like.

besides I thought we were talking about a serious mmo with expandable capabilities.

any hobbiest can do whatever they want.. who cares really not many support things like this very long I suspect mostly due to having their home connection being used more by everyone else then themselves but yeah thats totally do able just hardly worth the time an effort for anything worth sticking around for.