Quote:Original post by abeylin
However, do you think it's possible for a massively-populated-website such as this to organize an mmo project and see it to completion?

No.

If we tried to make an MMO on this site we wouldn't be able to decide whether to write it in C++ or C# let alone even begin to think about the design.


There have been cases where single people/small groups have written MMOs and it is definitely possible, just not at all easy.

It would be hard. And it's possible to make an MMO, cause if it isn't then I've been wasting a lot of time.

It is very well possible for a small group, even an individuum, to program a MMO game.

However, what most people don't see is that you don't hack together a terrain engine and a skybox, load a few md3 models, and there you go, you're the MMO Uberlord and the million dollars come flooding into your pocket.
Although that is what most people seem to believe, it is just plain stupid, sorry to say so.

A project such as a MMO game requires above all very careful planning, a very widespread assortment of skills, and very thorough quality control, both during development, and later on.
If the gameplay sucks of if it is too hard to even get started, then even the most brilliant graphics aren't good for anything (see Ryzom).
If you make a couple of strategic mistakes in an otherwise good game, your players will run away (see Eternal Lands).
If there are any considerable exploits (either in the ruleset, or the game protocol) that you did not consider, cheaters will cause so much grief that people will soon refuse to play your game (many examples).
If you did not plan the levels system properly, your players will either quickly max out and get bored or will become frustrated and kick it, anyway.

In addition to a good concept and programmers, you need a few good artists, and at least 3-4 years of dedicated time (I am not talking about 2 hours per day after school!).

If you really get so far as to actually launch something after years of development, then you only need a couple of ten thousand dollars in advance to buy servers and bandwidth until the returns cover the costs... because you know, everyone will want to play your game, but few will actually pay for it.

After that, you can start thinking about how to handle the 25,000 support queries that you will get every week in addition to regularly updating your content and dealing with cheaters and crackers.

Quote:Original post by abeylin
Hi, it's well established that no one person or even a small dedicated group can make mmo game.

Not to give you false hope, but "A Tale in the Desert" did in fact build a rather successful little MMO as a small, dedicated group.

But dedicated means DEDICATED. Double mortgage your house, quit your job, ignore your kids, ruin your marriage sort of dedicated. And you need SEVERAL guys to do that. And they need to all be good at what they do and work well together as a team.