Want to make a MMORPG? Here's the computer for you!

#21 @rmullen: Lore isn't an MMO. However, it's a significant expense to run the servers we run for it.

A free MMO would be financial suicide unless you have a business plan like GW. And even still it might be financial suicide.

Infrastructure costs money. Period.

@Stefan: As for the necromancing, Alfred actually seemed to add value to the conversation, rather than a "me too" post. So, meh, I don;t mind ;)

#22 I guess as said in an earlier post, either in this thread or another one, some MMOs are made (or at least dreamed up) just because the developers want to play it, not for financial reasons. And of course i wouldn't expect any indie/hobbist made MMO to have the player volume a commercial title would have; no where near. The cost in hardware, time, and 'infrastructure' make it impossible it seems.

I guess i'm not realy thinking of an M-M-O (Massive Multi) as much as a game that alows a community with an economy comprised of whoever's logged on, from 2 to 2000.

What do you think? Is that to much to expect from a game made as a hobby?

#23 We have a member of our MMO-building team who is a network architect for a living. He's going to get us some space on his racks. Once I have some bandwidth and system spec data, Ill let yall know.

#24 That would be great! Would it cost anything? Its not a big deal if it does, as long as its not astromonical. i'll post a public email adress so's y'all can get ahold of me.

r_mullen001@yahoo.com

#25 *still sad about Wish's cancelation* I don't think this is the first one they've had up for sale. Royal shame, the game seemed quite a bit different than most of the current MMO's(I was in beta 2.0).

#26 Indie MMO: www.puzzlepirates.com

Persistent characters, economy, and lots of puzzle games... all with a heaping helping of "Yar!"

It looks like they've going to publish through Ubisoft, so are no longer technically "indie", but they went it alone for quite some time.

#27 @rmullen
I am working on doing a MMORPG, which brought me here. It is a fantasy MMO and we are still early in developmental stages. I am mostly doing it due to the lackluster games out there. Including WoW.

I have numerous friends from other games discussing what the other games lack and trying to fix it. I think the big companies problems are they try to dumb down the games to make them easier to play. I originally thought I could make a MMO and sell it to a company and have it compete with WoW. After months of research and work I realize what a dream that was. I plan now to get my Game Design rewritten, Business Plan finished and updated and get my game going with help from friends and game modders on the internet and then try to sell the idea to a VC once it is up and running to show them the game.

@Alfred Norris
Pardon me for asking this, but would you have any suggestions to help me get things started? I am a subscriber to IGDA forums and magazine and hope to make this Oct.'s Austin Game Conference to learn more about MMO's as well.

Also, Alfred Norris, why did you pick this game engine over others? Price, ease of use?

Thanks

#28 Dig a little deeper and you'll see all the things that contributed to Wish not being profitable.

Only a projected 68k subscribers and there was "no chance of profitability." No wonder... THIRTY TWO full time employees plus "a number of outside consultants".

I wonder why. I bet not one of those 32 employees was a decent marketer. I run with the gaming crowd all the time and I never heard of "Wish" until this thread.

With 68,000 subscribers paying $49.95... figure a 30 free trial before you have to pay, then its $14.95 a month...
Month 1: $3,396,600 - box sales only
Month 2: $1,016,600 - subscribers only

That's $4,413,200... Take out portions for pressing, boxing, distribution, marketing (tee hee)... I've never brought a game to market so I can only begin to guess... But business sense tells me a conservative guess is that totals around 30% of gross.

Figure also your pressing is around 100k copies. By month 2 you still have 32,000 copies of your game to move, and if they aren't flying off the shelves it will be a while before you can raise the funds for a second pressing.

Now you're down to $3,089,240 in the first 60 days. With 32 employees, figure about 29 are actually working on the project and 3 are support, you need an office and all the trappings that go with it (cleaning service, copier machine, security, insurance), plus a server room for all your toys that you are still making payments on (priced on EBAY at $120k).

Sounds like yet another example of a gaming company with more money than insight into thier intended market.

#29 That server from way back at the beging of this thread is down to 95k, buy it now price.

Cool really. If i had 95k I'd buy it.

I don't know what I would do with it though

#30 @Jimmy Long
Cool! I hope to see or hear more about what you are working on soon. I want to take all the things that are fun about an MMO (persistent characters, economy, community) and couple it with the classic fun of the games of the past. Think about pac-man. No, i'm not making a pac-man MMO, but that game has been around FOREVER and people still enjoy it. Its just good old fashion fun. Those are the lines i'm thinking along, but i don't want to disclose too much right now. I've got a wonderful idea and a helpful local staff and we are making our strides. Hopefully we'll have something worth looking at very soon!

#31 That server is horribly inefficient imho, once the bandwidth starts pumping you're going to start loosing a lot of cpu cycles that should be going to running the applications over into doing tcp/ip stuff. Also, the interconnect is a big bottleneck, they use 100mbit between nodes? horrible.

This cluser is better suited as some science super number cruncher at some university somewhere, something for which a bit of network lag won't matter too much :)

Fatten up the pipes and move those cpu's on the dual blades onto quad blades... nah forget it, you'd be redesigning the whole setup anyway :P

Edit: some typos

#32 I'd run my game on it heh, my demo i should say. I am thinking too far ahead. 95k isn't all that bad is it for a system like that???
I know a lot about hardware but nothing I have worked with or on was even close to being that good. I feel so left out from all you ppl talking about selling to the gov't. :(

*maybe someday