I love questions like these... their so innocent.

I don't want to lower your hopes, but if you have to ask those questions then IMO I dont think you are ready to start developing an MMO. If I were you I would really follow the suggestions in this thread. If I misinterpreted your post then I appologize.

Well if you are going your own way my first suggestion is learn everything you can about network as here the main problem lies in MMO development from a technical standpoint
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=mmorpg&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2001
(Is your friend)
Also look into enet raknet tcp udp and other networks and protocols

Would also recommend to start with an game engine
http://www.panda3d.org/
http://unity3d.com/
http://www.udk.com/ (not to sure abot it)
http://www.crystalspace3d.org/main/Main_Page (a mmo by the name of Planeshift is "playable"(but crap,bad leader) and also used in Peragro)
Another thing is to brush on your gaming design skills as you have to balance economy combat classes allot more then in other games
The rest is just normal game developing

Also instead of you starting from scratch why not join an existing MMO project and learn from them after-all those projects need more contributors anyway

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=521341
http://peragro.org/
http://trinityreign.com/

Also this guy has some really solid concept for mmorpg but needs programmers
http://freezingmoon.org/
Also I DONT recommend using it but you can look at http://worldforge.org/ and see how there system are put together

[Edited by - adrix89 on March 14, 2010 3:02:49 PM]

Quote:Original post by Aleksi
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.

That's good, glad your expectations are set right. Also, there are a few examples of "WoW clones", and they don't do well. One needs to do something differently to beat competition, not copy them. Trying to make an MMO that's prehaps a bit simpler might be a way to go. Underdo the competition persay.

@kryotech This is a small scale MMO. The plan is really only a level cap of 10, two dungeons, one small raid for the level cap. 4 races, 3 classes, 5 total zones. And that's the complete game. That does make it sound sort of simple but most of you know how much work that takes. Like I said I'm not going for a WoW clone or anything. Just a simple game, where players can connect, chat, walk around in 3D and kill things basically.

@agm_ultimatex Honestly although I still play WoW to this day there are so many aspects of it that I just don't like, especially in the expansions. It's really an original concept as far as game play goes and I definitely want this experience under my belt.

@nullsquared If you mean by make the game basically single player first then add on and edit it to be multiplayer then once that's done make it an RPG then I could see how that could be a good approach. If you mean make 3 games, that seams a little bit useless to me, all it would be is more experience doing what we've done before on our own.

@Daaark I don't think you get the objective of this, I don't want to just find some engine online that will let me make a game in a month so me and my friends can play it. I'm looking for something greater then a something made by game maker to show off and prove what I'm capable of.

@adrix89 We've decided to go with Ogre as it's opensource and I really want to know about it start to finish rather then join in and just learn about one part, like the programming. Plus, the people I've teamed up with are all people I personally know and can work with.

To everyone else, thank you for all your help, too much typing right now got to get back to reading, thanks again.