I am trying to design a game like Kings of Chaos or Rise of Tyrants, and to date have not found any really good resources on how to go about programming the PHP behind it. I got my programming degree back in the dark ages before HTML was even a big deal and now I am trying to figure out how these sites are made. Do I just need PHP and MySQL to design a text-based game, or will I need a scripting language like Java as well? Is there a book (or a site) dedicated to creating a text based MMORPG that is really indepth (I haven't found one yet)that could help a beginner like me with something like this? Or is there a site where you can download source code to look it over and play with it? Any help anyone can give would be greatly appreciated. Thanks>

The telnet-based ones are useually called MUDs. You can find alot of info on them with a simple google. There's also atleast one published book on the subject(MUD Game Programming). This is not for the web though. I'm not sure where you might find resources for that.

// Eric Johansson