so im curious why should i just wop out 300 for an engine i cant test "hero engine" im not sure if ill get anywhere with it so yea what am i suppose to do i guess ill go with torque

Just remember that you have to write your own MMO backend (This is the technically challenging part of an MMO) yourself if you go with torque. (Personally i think its worth $100 to avoid this)

From a technical point of view the MMOFPS genre is far more challenging than the MMORPG genre (primarily because of the higher bandwidth usage per player and tighter latency requirements), from the top of my head i can only name 3 MMOFPS games (PlanetSide, World War 2 Online and Dust(not yet released AFAIK) and all of them were made by experienced professional teams.

A MMORPG that is set in a non content intensive setting (space, a frozen or desert world, etc) is far easier to pull off than any MMOFPS.

I think you need to drop the "Massively" part of multiplayer. Lets say 16 to 32 players (at the larger end of normal for non mmo based games), that would actually be doable for 2 people and wouldn't require a dedicated server with a huge amount of bandwidth, this is the part that costs most with an MMO. A regular home PC and home internet connection cannot cope with the huge amount of players in a massively multiplayer game and this is where dedicated high bandwidth servers come into play unfortunately costing far too much for 2 people still in school. The other thing is the sheer quantity of art required, you say your quite an artist, thats well and good and I'm not going to question that but you need to consider one thing, the game world is massive, if you alone design it then some players may find it gets repetitive, there was a large team working on skyrims dungeons and I still find them to be a bit samey with too much re-used, your 1 guy (this may well be a part where your engineering class may be able to help you actually).

If you were to go with a regular FPS, possibly single player, possibly team deathmatch like CoD. It would be alot easier for you guys to develop, wouldn't require a large dedicated server all the time (my 0.15mb home internet connection can host 8 players on openarena, not actually had more people available to play with me to test more) and wouldn't require an expensive engine. Hell XNA could do it, UDK could do it, unity3d could do it, you'll be harder pressed to find an engine which can't (other than those that can't do FPSes at all). It would be doable for 2 guys still in school. I do advise that you learn to program though, your buddy might appreciate the help as a game is a large undertaking after all.

You can't just jump into the MMO world, eventually you might be able to start work on your own mmo but I would get a few titles under your belt first, you might well be able to develop it on your home internet connection as a proof of concept aswell before moving it onto dedicated servers. But I think you should start single player, stick some multiplayer in eventually (32 players max really) before you even think about researching mmo technologies.

I know your confused but do work on english and grammar. This is a multi-national forum and if we can understand your post a bit clearer then we can aid you in getting the help you need a little better.

lets say we go with 6677 max 32 players per map then would UDK be the perfect tool for me i honestly love using it. but as for the online parts of things i have yet to venture it out and btw u guys have been great with the info thx

Yes UDK should be able to go up to 32 players on a cheap server without much problems, (You could probably go up towards or just above 200 on a good server but beyond that you start to need a proper MMO backend and possibly multiple physical machines for each game (This is where things get both expensive and complicated))

You can still have things like persistant characters, stats, etc that are shared between servers fairly easily as long as you can trust all server hosts.

Torque 3D can support up to 32 players. UDK takes 25 percent of revenue in royalties, while Torque 3D(T3D) has no royalties. For a long term plan I would say Torque 3D is a better option. The scripting language is called Torque script in T3D and feels and looks very much like C++.

For 179 us $ you get access to all the source codes of the engine, no royalties and a pretty fine online documentation but prepare yourself for a very steep learning curve with T3D.

For me the choice was very obvious so I choose T3D and I have not regret that until now. I used to play around with Unity but I am not paying 1500 us $ for a pro version where I do not get access to all the engine source code.

UDK is a fine engine but the royalty policy is a real turn off so I find T3D engine to be best fit for low budget indies.

So to answer your question, yes T3D is absolutly worth every penny

List of games made with Torque: https://www.garagegames.com/games/3d-games

MMO game made with Torque(older version than T3D): http://www.prairiegames.com/

You can make an MMO with T3D if you got the skill, manpower, talent and economic resources.

T3D is a really versatile engine(well most engines are if one gets access to the source code) in that sense that if you know how to twist and bend the engine through programming in C++ you will be able create almost anything you like.

You should really try it out. I simply love this engine and the possibilities it has given me. Just prepare youself to hack it and twist it through the source codes when you wish to change this FPS engine(becuase that is what it is out of the box).

Cheers,

Dwarf King