indie MMOs

I really want to know what goes on inside the minds of Indies (such as myself) who make MMOs. Seriously, what's the deal? It seems like every time come on here to check out people's new ideas/screens, there's at least another person saying, "I'm making an MMO!" and more often than not, their screens look "alright" (by alright I mean better than I can do but not as good as a mass market would demand). But it just seems like there couldn't possibly be that many "low-rate" (and by low-rate I really mean "props for trying, but you're not a multimillion dollar corporation") Massively Multiplayer Online games. Maybe my vision is shrouded, but what I see is bunches of "Massively Multiplayer" games without the massive amounts of multiple players. So the thing I don't understand is this: what makes a person want to make an MMO? I know my motivation for making my non-MMO's are purely personal. I get an idea and I want to see it become reallized. I never anticipate a massive market playing my games, I just get ideas that I think would be cool. But it seems like the creation of a MMO demands that many people will be not just playing it but playing it at large quantities at a time. Is that something achievable by indies in such a crowded market, or am I just underselling us all? Please let me know what you think, and also please note that I really don't mean to belittle anyone's projects, if that's the way this is coming off.

Well, (deep breath), there's many layers of 'indie' developers. There's the solo guy who does everything himself. There's the guy that collaborates with 3 or less people on a project and then the indie team that has 5-10 guys that have some money etc etc. MMO's generally require a team. Teams require money (paying your peeps). And since MMO's take years to make, it's probably not very financially sound for a very small indie team to try and make an MMO. After it's done you have servers to pay for, maintenance, customer service, etc.

I don't think it's possible for a 1-3 man team to make an MMO. I mean a good MMO that people actually wanna play (read as >1000 people at any one time) The technology required to keep those people generally non-laggy is beyond a indie developer. Again, when I say indie developer I'm talking about usually 1 guy who contracts parts of his game he's making (art, music etc).

One guy making a successful MMO? Sorry, can't be done.

Not only can it be done, it has been done. Like most other genres where people try to compete with multi-million dollar budgeted developers aiming at retail markets, it's those who are considerably more clever and come up with something cheaper, more practical and offering a different experience who are making the vast sums of money while those trying to remake WoW just waste an awful lot of their time and talents.

I can think of plenty of reasons someone would want to make an MMO, "indie" or otherwise. There are also at least two examples of companies who have produced relatively low-cost MMOs, of which three rings' Yo Ho Ho Puzzle Pirates! is probably the most widely know (the other is Runestones' Seed, which although it tanked, was both complete and operational for a couple of months).

I realize that according to conventional wisdom it's impossible to create an MMORPG for under $10 million USD. As usual the problem with people saying something can't be done, is that there's always someone else willing and determined to prove them wrong!

While I may be wrong, I'm fairly sure that both Freeworld Online and A Tale in the Desert both started out as one man army type projects. Also Puzzle Pirates (which at the time of writing has 6794 players online) was originally developed by three people, and if I remember correctly Eve Online (which holds the record for most people online on a single server) had humble beginnings as well - although they where originally signed to a publisher, they eventually bought their game (and by extension I suppose their indie cred) back.

So. Is it possible for a small team to develop a successful MMO? Sure - if you find the right niche.

I think Eve Online is the most prolific example. I read about those guys. They mortgaged their houses to help pay for development or something like that. Crazy stuff.

I worked on an mmo for a bit, the most important thing I learned was that its not hard, the most important thing in any mmo after functionality is content, as long as the GFX are ok, and the controls are fine then the rest, story etc dont mean jack, as long as you give the player tons of quests or challenges to complete per level then they will keep playing.

Minions of Mirth was made by one guy ... mostly and the technology is also for sale.

The key is not trying to compete with the big boys. Look at games like Adventure Quest and DragonFable (both made by a small team). They are raking in TONS of cash (although they're not truly MMO's, they are online RPGs).

Anyone lone or small indie team trying to make a product that'll attract the AAA crowd are just wasting their time, IMO.

I think you can find something called uh... SomethingCrafter... sorry I forgot the actual name, that kit is pretty nice.

Yoko, I believe you're thinking of Realm Crafter.

http://www.realmcrafter.com/

MMO's arent technically that difficult.. realistically you just need a team of 5-10 dedicated people and plan the project to a realistic size. I made a working 2D MMO, but after few years got bored.

> Gabriel
I'm interested in knowing who has done it!!!

> Cousin Gilgamesh
While I'm not working on an MMO proper ( I hate the idea of a customer having to pay an additional $12 a month to play a game after they have already paid $50 in the store for the disk to load it on their computer, and after they have already paid $800 to $1500 for their computer!!! What, you say you've paid $3000 to $5000 for one of those gaming machines!!! MyGod )
I'm working on an offline RPG along the lines of Dungeon Siege, Neverwinter Nights, and Morrowind if you get the picture. The interesting twist in my design is that it takes place in the future ( yes, there have been RPG's that take place in the future, but they are far outnumbered by the dungeons & dragons kind that I think I have a chance in finding a niche. Much like the superheroes RPGs )
I'm alos working on a RPG library in C++ that would connect to Blitz3d to help make the creation of RPG's easier.

A traditional MMO server park( like WoW ) needs a 24/7 support and maintenance crew. For a small indie, 1-3 person, team this is not feasible.

Player run servers, like the fps games and IMHO Neverwinter Nights, are a better solution for indie devs. Only the matchmaking/serverfinding service has to be run by the developer.

If you'd still like to build a second WoW, take a look at Erlang ( http://www.erlang.org ). It's a programming language that's been used to build insanebly robust telephone switches and has quite some features which makes developing a MMO server less hard. It's not a silver bullet though....

For the Java minded peeps who want to replicate Runescape's succes, there is Project Darkstar. ( http://www.projectdarkstar.com ).

WoW is not a traditional MMO, but besides that here's the catch: By the time you need a server solution to handle more than 2000 consecutive players (the limit on WoW servers as far as I'm aware), you can afford to hire support staff. Besides who says a server must run 24/7 and have support? The Star Wars Galaxies servers (run by Sony Online Entertainment) are only up 23 hours a day (on a good day), and as far as I'm aware support in Anarchy Online and Puzzle Pirates is (or at least has been) mostly done by players who volunteer(ed) for it.

Like I said, saying something that has already been accomplished on several occasions, is "unfeasible" or "impossible" is at best ignorant.

I'm not "at best ignorant". I try to be polite, especcially at fora.

What i mean is that imho for the average, Blitz using, hobby indie team running a paid and mmo service, with more than, say 200 players
online may be a bit too much to swallow looking at the minimal service and support you've to give.
This is if your plans are to keep the team and the time investment small.

Developing a online game can be done with a small (and very,very good) team as shown by the examples. Keeping it running is something completely
different and takes a larger group of people, either voluntary or paid.

But by all means don't let me stop trying anybody to make a online mmo. Who knows, I could be blatantly wrong (or right).

Maybe the question is not *if it can be done* but *how* to make and run a succesfull online mmo with a small hobby team.

If it's just for fun then why not?! Quite doesn't matter if you're playing a game or creating a MMO then. If you wanna make money with it i don't see it working well out if you don't explore a nice niche as there are many good titles around and i wonder how you should be able to consume all that already. Maybe it's contract work...

Personally as a gamer i don't care as i'm mainly interested in single player games.

@ Jeremy Alessi:

Minions of Mirth was not made by one guy. Josh Ritter did the programming. Magnus Blikstad and his crew (www.witentertainment.com) did the animated models. Lara Engebretson did the world building. The music and sfx was done by other people. Et al. I suggest you go to www.prairiegames.com and read the credits (even little ol' modeling me made it as a distinguished contributor):

http://www.prairiegames.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=23&Itemid=39

99% of the people who want to create MMOs simply want to recreate what hooked them in the first place. These people were once addicted to an MMO (perhaps still are) and have a strong desire to be the source of other's addictions. That's all there is to it. Nothing more.

I do 3d artwork for a living and I would never valenteer to do all the artwark for an MMO. That's crazy!