MMOs and hobby developers
i think MMORGP can be done by indie if they follow 'ELITE' style. But other than that, it's going to be complex.
1. Number of indie game projects started
2. Number of indie games shipped
3. Number of successful indie games
4. Number of successful indie MMOs
As hard as it is to get from 1 to 3, it's at least 10 times harder to get from 3 to 4. So...why?
Why is it harder to get from 3 to 4? I'd say because MMOs are a HUGE undertaking for a pro studio with 100 or so people to throw at the task. Try it with a team of maybe a dozen with very limited resources as far as money and time and it's near to impossible.
Technology and development is one thing (and a big one), but then you have the logistics and costs behind supporting 100,000 online players.
A simplified version of Guild wars could work. Heavily instanced, and use cities as giant interactive chat rooms. But then it's not technically a MMO.
A simplified version of Guild wars could work. Heavily instanced, and use cities as giant interactive chat rooms. But then it's not technically a MMO.
Technology and development is one thing (and a big one), but then you have the logistics and costs behind supporting 100,000 online players.
A simplified version of Guild wars could work. Heavily instanced, and use cities as giant interactive chat rooms. But then it's not technically a MMO.
TONS of mmos do it that way. Anarchy Online was done entirely that way iirc.
I'd be curious to know how much of that is stuff that could be easily replaced by existing code that's readily available to hobbyists.[/quote]The UDK is probably made up of much more than 5.5 million lines of code.
[quote name='stupid_programmer' timestamp='1296416210' post='4767126']
Blizzard has went on record saying there are 5.5 million lines of code to WoW. No clue how they came to that metric so they might be counting whitespace and comments to inflate the numbers. Either way, that is way out of the realm of possibility for a small indie team.
Download UDK, make help wanted post for your hockey MMO, profit?
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I think some of those who replied think an MMO has to be on the scale of a AAA title.
Keep in mind that assets can be kept pretty minimal and a working MMO could still be made.
There doesn't have to be a bajillion different weapon/armor/whatever models.
This goes for different mechanics too.
I suspect if a hobby developer kept this in mind they might have a MMO sooner thank many think.
Keep in mind that assets can be kept pretty minimal and a working MMO could still be made.
There doesn't have to be a bajillion different weapon/armor/whatever models.
This goes for different mechanics too.
I suspect if a hobby developer kept this in mind they might have a MMO sooner thank many think.
I'm the process of trying to build an MMO, right this moment. Though you guys are absolutely right, making something like WoW is out of range of individual developers like me; probably the most cogent argument for that in this thread is the content generation piece. However -- I would never want to recreate WoW. Because after all the extraordinary expense and time ... all I would have done is failed at trying to reproduce something that's already been done.
The reason I'm trying to build an MMO is absolutely for a creative and technical exercise. The same areas in my brain light up when I build things out of lego, when I build out my little world ... I love the limitations imposed by my abilities and my life (family, friends, career); it just makes it more interesting and important and rewarding when something in the world works, or even if 5 people play it and only one of them said it didn't suck.
Finally, its awesome to solve different types of difficult technical problems than what you do for work, if you are a professional software engineer like me. It adds fun back into programming (not that my day job is not fun, its awesome ... but not build your own world awesome!).
The reason I'm trying to build an MMO is absolutely for a creative and technical exercise. The same areas in my brain light up when I build things out of lego, when I build out my little world ... I love the limitations imposed by my abilities and my life (family, friends, career); it just makes it more interesting and important and rewarding when something in the world works, or even if 5 people play it and only one of them said it didn't suck.
Finally, its awesome to solve different types of difficult technical problems than what you do for work, if you are a professional software engineer like me. It adds fun back into programming (not that my day job is not fun, its awesome ... but not build your own world awesome!).
I think anyone still in the camp of "it can be done" are missing something simple. It's been alluded to already but I'll restate it again.
Writing a game that's server based multiplayer, even if it's persistent, just adds the MO part. To get that other M, the game needs to be, er, massive. That's it. How is one guy or even a small team going to make something that anyone would look at and say "wow, that's not just big, it's massive!". Answer: None, regardless of competence levels.
The fact that newbies think they can do it is laughable and only good for a fun poke. When good developers talk about doing one, they're just redefining the "M" bit to mean "minimal".
Bottom line: To make an online game that is truly massive, even if the code and assets just dropped into your lap one day, you'd still need to spend more money than you've ever earned to date in your life on servers, server staffing and customer support
Writing a game that's server based multiplayer, even if it's persistent, just adds the MO part. To get that other M, the game needs to be, er, massive. That's it. How is one guy or even a small team going to make something that anyone would look at and say "wow, that's not just big, it's massive!". Answer: None, regardless of competence levels.
The fact that newbies think they can do it is laughable and only good for a fun poke. When good developers talk about doing one, they're just redefining the "M" bit to mean "minimal".
Bottom line: To make an online game that is truly massive, even if the code and assets just dropped into your lap one day, you'd still need to spend more money than you've ever earned to date in your life on servers, server staffing and customer support
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