[MUD-Dev2] [Design] Where are all the amateur MMORPG devs?

[Mike Rozak]

Mike Sellers wrote:
> Second, there are other easier outlets for those with a moderate desire to
> create something online.  Flash games for example can be created by a 
> single
> person and there are multiple places to host them and get noticed.  So 
> some
> of those who might have tried creating an MMO go another direction 
> instead.

I don't exactly buy this one since writing a decent Flash game is (I assume) 
more difficult than using a MMORPG toolkit (at least the easier ones like 
NWN).


> Fourth, the tools suck.  There are no good, all-encompassing tools that
> snip

I could play devil's advocate and argue that MUD tools sucked too...

But I agree with you. Since the MMORPG toolkit developers are trying to do 
it on the cheap (and not write a mini-3DSMax, wave editor, photoshop, etc.), 
actually creating a MMORPG with a "toolkit" requires a host of other 
software, some of which costs money, all of which has a different UI theory. 
(This is often recusirve; I think a lot of 3DSMax users run Photoshop for 
textures, for example.)


> Taken together, I question whether there really *is* a large population of
> people both willing and, given the right tools, competent to create
> amateur/indie MMOGs.  We might see the equivalent of YouTube videos 
> popping
> up on MetaPlace once it's done, but those are a long way from MMOs as the
> equivalent of professional motion pictures or TV shows.

So MMO "shorts" (as in short films)? I've been advocating shortened gameplay 
for awhile. For example: The interactive fiction community has mostly given 
up "epic" 40 hour games, and produces 2-ish hour games. I've actually tried 
to convince MMO authors on various forums that they should aim to create a 
small world, but my suggestions fall on deaf ears; they have visions of 
500-hour epics with 1000+ PCU being produced by three men in a garage.

(Side note: If a game is only 10 hours, 1000 players on at once doesn't make 
much sense either; there'd be an overcrowding problem.)