I want to make an MMO. As far as experience goes, I've only ever made simple games in GameMaker and worked with World of Warcraft private servers. I have a basic understanding of connecting client and server and handling a game database. I know C++ but only have worked with software and not a game. So what I want to know, what do you need to make a game? Like what makes up a game. I know you need a client, server, database and an engine but what makes a client? What does an engine do and how does it work? How do I make these things. If anyone knows a good article or could help me with these it would be greatly appreciated. Also, I do have a team together. I have 21 people so far.

Read this link.
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=260813

As for making the game. Go to amazon and buy a few books on each topic for a game (Rendering, AI, Networking, Engine Architecture, Physics, Collision Detection etc etc) and go from there.

Going from GameMaker to a MMO is like doing First Aid then having a crack at being a Neurosurgeon.

lol, good analogy.

But seriously creating an MMO is tons of work, and the companies that run ones successfully have many teams, usually totaling over 100 employees. Thats with designers, programmers, 3d modelers, those working on the sound, etc. I recommend targeting for a multiplayer game that wouldn't fall under the MMO genre.

Maybe I should be a bit more specific, we don't know much about making an MMO. That doesn't mean to say we don't know about making games. The people who've agreed to work on this have experience in single player games, and some know a little about multiplayer, but not MMO's. I know how to connect two or more players in a game but not how to connect them to a server.

@wicked357 I've decided to go with Ogre, the goal for me was mainly to learn more about creating games from start to finish but using a pre-built engine is probably the best way to go and since this is open source I can figure out what's going on. Thanks.

@Promit Honestly I could do this project by myself but that article said if you can't don't get a team. I can easily go buy an engine, write the storyline and quests, use that engine to make a game without understanding most of what I did, set up a server and call it a day. But I want more then that, I want to learn what everything does. The overall goal is to make a game. But I (and the rest of my team) want to learn how games like this are made. And usually they're done with a team. Thank you for your post, and that was also an interesting read as well.

@agm_ultimatex I've done that before, never from scratch though, and while it could be a good idea I think this is still the way to go. I don't believe you need hundreds of people to make a game. It's not like we're trying to make the next World of Warcraft or Everquest or something. I understand it's a long difficult road ahead, but I'm not the kind of person that quits if somethings hard.

@mrobbins I completely agree, but you should probably learn first aid before going in to med school am I right? Everyone has to start somewhere, this post was asking where I could expand my current knowledge to achieve my goal of both creating an MMO and knowing the process of game creation.

@SimonForsman As previously stated we don't have much knowledge in MMO's but we can make a game. We've never built an engine from scratch though, and we've decided to use Ogre since it's open source and we can see what it does and all that good stuff. Also thank you for that link, the "Already a Programmer" section was exactly what I was looking for.

Thanks to everyone for their posts and links.

Quote:Original post by kryotech
Yeah, so lots of people come here saying that they want to make an MMO, but it really isn't nearly as easy as you may think. A lot ends up going into MMO's, so you might want to put down your expecations to jumping from GameMaker to MMO..............try the basic stuff first, buy some books on game dev topics, and then go from there with your team............

Believe me I know it'll be difficult, the main problem is I know programming but not how to apply it in this particular field. Thanks to all the recommendations from this site, I'll hopefully be able to create an MMO. I also understand how much projects get started an left, but I want to be able to go all the way through with this. As does most of the people on my team. The first deadline on the story was set last night for the 20th when we'll send it to the art team and they'll get started on drawing the different races in the game and some of the world. Once we get some good concept art I'll definitely post it here.