If you want to make a MMORPG just go and do it, not sure why you're posting it here all you will get a bashed because of how many threads are made about some one making a MMORPG who never comes back to the forums anyhow later down the road with progress. I would suggest posting this under Announcements not under beginners because you have not presented a question.

Just some tips for getting started.

- Get a plan made first, without a plan on how you're going to program all of this it's going to be sloppy.

- Have some experince with programming chat clients or something that deals with connecting to a server with clients.

- Have a lot more than basic knowledge of your language which I'm assuming is C# because I used XNA and you could only use C# sadly.

- Expect this project to take a long time if you're new to programming and expect that you might not even finish it because this is way to big for one person who is starting off with XNA or programming in general.

I also did a search, maybe try this free online rpg maker.

http://playerworlds.org/

It will allow you to make Final Fantasy type SNES games, I've used it years ago and it was great back than maybe better now.

It's not because so many come and then never make progress, it's because we've all had grand schemes for "simple" games as beginners and despite 'knowing' it'll be really difficult... we've all completely underestimated what it takes. [/hyperbole]

Rendering things in 2d doesn't make any of the design/code particularly easier. Just a little less math heavy, a bit easier to find resources for, and more forgiving of performance flaws.

Let me suggest you, i was like you i said "I can do it, some easy mmorpg 2d, i'm not a newbie i did that that and this bla bla bla", and i started now i'm stuck the only thing i have is person that can move with scrolling if you use arrow key and just moving without map scrolling if you use mouse, nothing and i dont know how to add scrolling i dont now what to do next and how. So i backed to tetris that i skipped. I suggest you to do the same build some few games like tetris, asteroids maybe pacman.
Anyway even if you ignore my suggestion good luck and update us ;)

Quote:Original post by Hollower
The key point to stress here is that you don't start with a game idea and then view learning programming through the narrow lense of making your end goal. By that I mean there is absolutely NO point in concentrating on the details of your game like story, combat, stats, races, graphics etc. before you even know how to print "Hello World" onto the screen. I've seen people who when they finally learn conditional statements they try to start coding a combat system via mountains of nested if/else-if branches. It's just "unhealthy" :). You really need to enjoy programming as a pursuit in itself, without your dream game always in mind. If you're truly serious about this the healthiest thing to do is put away all your notes and everything you have on this game idea and just forget about it and focus on programming. If you find out you hate programming, well, you will have saved yourself a lot of time wasted drawing up tons of game material.

I would disagree. Having a (reasonable) goal will give you motivation to keep learning the techniques necessary to achieve it. Otherwise, you are just going in random directions without much focus; that is necessary when you begin programming but eventually you need to pursue something.
In my experience, at the very least, deciding to make a game in Direct3D is exactly what drives me to learn how it works; it's what prompted me to go beyond the scope of my book and look online at multitexturing, normal mapping, light mapping, spacial partitioning with trees etc. Half of having a goal is moving towards it; the other half is figuring out how to move towards it and it is the second half that is so invaluable to education.

If you really want to do this then i suggest you start by joining an existing open source MMORPG project such as The Mana World to get some experience working on a large project and a better understanding of what it takes, that way you'll have other people that you can ask about design issues and how to implement stuff then when you think your ready you can branch out and build your own.

It should also be pointed out that XNA doesn't have any networking functionality. Although, if you only intend to use PC platform then you can use other C# components for networking.

I think anyone who tries to post a topic in For Beginners with MMO in the title should be given a big red flashing light and a siren.