[MUD-Dev] MMORPG: where to start for making and running a game

[Oliver Smith]

"Richard Brown" <richardlbj at yahoo.com>

> Now the question: what am I going to do with my rich friend's
> money in the next six month? What should I buy, who should I hire,
> what do I tell them to do, and the most important: what should we
> try to accomplish?

This is not something new; there have been several attempts to build
MMO cash cows using almost entirely off-the-shelf (mostly open
source [1]) systems, and a programmer named "Wayne" who everyone
agrees is a very promising kid, is cheap, and works long hours till
the jobs done [2].

You may want to re-evaluate your approach to be less hands-on. If
you're already choosing to use existing systems, you may want to go
a step further.  There are several MMO companies around who haven't
hit the big time, but didn't exactly fail.

Some of them have great engines, but their game targetted the wrong
market and hasn't blossomed. Others had a great game design but went
to market before the product was ready.

As the launch and flounder of SWG shows, you can't simply cobble
together a bunch of single-player game-developers and make an MMO -
even if you have a little MMO experience behind it.

So, I would suggest starting by finding yourselves a license your
team can get into and behind, per e.g. Robert Jordan's Wheel of
Time, and approach one of the existing teams with a proposal.


Oliver

  [1] Frequently not quite in compliance with the licenses.

  [2] But actually he does his coding in about 15 minutes and the
  rest of his hours are surfing, IMing and checking his mule on EQ.
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