What would convince you to work on an MMO?

First of all, this is not a “I’m makin the coolest MMO! Now I just need people to make it!” thread.

I’m just wondering what would convince the various developers here to actually see one of those threads and think “Yeah… I could get involved with that.”

The first, obvious response, of course, is “nothing… ever.” So let’s just skip that one.

The first part of the question is, what would be involved in an MMO WIP that would pique your interest? A fair amount of progress? (playable demo, videos of large, detailed environments, etc) Other, experienced developers working on the project? Hype? (word of the project has already spread around the web a bit) What about genre? Would an MMO of a particular genre or theme be more appealing to you?

The second part, just to get a broader picture of who responds to what, is “what do you do, and how experienced are you?” Are you a veteran programmer? Amateur 3d artist? Experienced designer? Do you multitask?

On-site work at a nice location and a decent pay with an experienced varied team(background, personality, etc). Also, the project needs to look like it will get finished and isn’t some throwaway. How much they have done is not relevant, what is important would be getting an opportunity to meet the people first(Which is what an interview is for, it goes both ways ;)). There would ideally be several more experienced people in my area as well. The game would also ideally be interesting and not generic, although this isn’t a deal-breaker. It would certainly help.

I wouldn’t ever work on an MMO for free. It’s too risky to waste what would be years of my life to a project without people and/or a company being invested in it financially.

I’m a software engineer(although I guess you could call me a programmer, but there’s reasons why I avoid that term). I would say I’m moderate in experience. I have interests in networking AI.

I would consider helping if the dev was an actual developer with years of experience.

Good artists with already made the base enviroment, so at least one dungeon, 2 nice scenes and a ready interface, characters or vehicles (if required), so that a programmer does not need to wait for things like that :smile:

I would work for free if i like the art, just for fun.

Interesting variety of responses so far.

@Zerano, What’s your skill and experience? From the links in your sig, it looks like you’re a somewhat experienced programmer. I have to say, you saying you would work for free on a project that looked fun is kinda surprising to me.

To respond to my own question; at my core, I’m an “idea guy”, which makes it difficult for me to commit to anyone else’s idea. However, I’m a professional graphic designer, experienced writer and amateur/intermediate programmer. So, obviously, money is a big motivator. I’ll even cut a deal if its a game that I really like.

I will also avoid almost every medieval, high fantasy MMO (unless it has a seriously unique hook). There absolutely has to be something original or clever about the game for me to give any kind of commitment to it.

If it was something I considered interesting and worth investing my time in as a gamer and a developer. So…not another WoW/EQ clone, and not another static world where your only real purpose is quest/quest/quest then raid/raid/raid.

Seeing all the MMO’s out there and how seriously brutal the market is now, i wouldnt ever join a MMO team. MMO to me has become a negative thing in the industry to be totally honest. First of all the team has to be 200% dedicated, and even more expierenced, and even if it finishes…will it sell?

Its just too much for something so unstable, theres great MMO’s out now thats doing crap just because there are waaaaaaay too many of them. The games that do best are the ones that stray as far away as possible from the industry “standard”.

And like JC said, the content in MMO’s are ALWAYS the same, this has made me almost not look at new MMO’s that are coming out, because i know what they are about. Quests and raids, no thank u. If it was something progressive like build something that takes ages to finish, but is rewarding along the way, i would try. Beefing up ur character with the latest raidboss loot is getting seriously old and its not funny anymore. Exploring is fun, see new things, be rewarded for beeing curious.

differentness… the premise for the art and the world dynamics would have to work differently and in some way more efficiently than other mmo’s to hae better art, better gameplay, easier, better, than other mmo’s. the core engine.

As a hobbyist? Nothing. One of 100.000 approaches makes it to final. And this one hobby MMO sinks very fast then. Why play a hobby MMO with half a dozen players when you can play professional MMO`s for free? Making a hobby MMO is wasted time and energy. And costs nothing than money.

As a commercial developer? Money. That easy :slight_smile:

I would work on a multiplayer project which was constrained a single server. I would never dream of an MMO which actually requires several servers working in tandem in order to run properly (ie chat, items, instance portals, etc). The idea that any of us should be making an MMO is bizarre and not realistic.

I suspect what people are thinking of is up to 500 people per server - this isn’t an MMO. It’s a small / medium online game. MMO is for multiple thousands of users and requires several computers per “server” to function with those numbers. Adding more CPU power does not fix it, you need separate computers or racks, so the data congestion can be managed at the entry point by (you guessed it) another server.

In short I’d happy work on something with around 32 players max on desktops, and 4 players max on mobile.

People say “would you work on an mmo” but envision just the quests, the game itself. That isn’t an MMO. That is a game.

An MMO is all about data management and networking.

Years ago I used to browse through the projects coming up and think to myself “Hmm, is this one going anywhere?” or “Is that one going to succeed?” and thought that actually made a difference.

It doesn’t. Nowadays what matters is getting paid. Now, if there was an MMO project here that offered 80k salary with benefits then I’d consider wasting my time on it - if not then the answer is “nothing, ever.” because I don’t need the experience and I don’t have the motivation to spend enough spare time on it to actually get anything worthwhile done on it that would make anyone believe it would last more than 6 months in development.

A lot of tools nowadays are very ‘hit the ground running’ kind of things, Unity practically hands you a physics, lighting, baking, asset management and collaboration tool for free. You can buy everything you need to make networking connect with a little leg work, slam a server together and have something rudimentary working in a week to show off and everybody would be like “whoa! its working! look at all the progress!” when you haven’t really done much and still need 100% of the assets to be created and polished. I think that contributes to a lot of false hope and after people get on a team like that and realize after 3 months that they aren’t getting anywhere the whole thing dissolves and they go work on something else.

tl;dr version
nothing, ever, except lots of money.

I’m confused where “What would convince you to work on an MMO” turned into “Should we make an MMO”. Obviously it’s not very realistic, I would not rather not lose my hair in my early 20’s and I certainly would not feel confident in a position where I’m in charge of programming a majority of the backend for an MMO or even be heavily involved in a large portion of the design/architecture of the backend.

In fact, if anyone were to offer me a position with those responsibilities I would turn it down purely on the fact they would offer me it. But I wouldn’t be offered a job like that. I don’t think anyone here is saying they will make an MMO, they’re just talking about what it would take for them to accept that job.

I assume we are talking as a hobby project here.
I could foresee myself working on something like the initial version of realm of the mad good

Small scope, constrained to 50 - 100 entities per server.
Basically it would need to be more like a small online game then an MMO.
The project also would need to have experienced technical artists (not just in art but also formats + tilemaps + etc)
I would also require that the project has a budget of at least 5000 - 10000$ just to pay for expenses (legal, server, licenses, audio, music) not including salaries.

But to be honest even a project that is constrained like the mentioned is scary as hell.

$

I agree that many people misunderstand what it actually means to create an MMO. Getting players networked and playing together is easy. Even creating a feature-rich game isn’t terrible (relatively speaking). However, once we add in the “Massive” part, it becomes something else entirely. And yes, if a team ever survives to get the fundamentals put together, they would hit that nightmarish brick wall of reality when they actually realize that their game collapses under the weight of 100 players.

Like most here, I do, of course, have my dream MMO that I’d like to create. However, the reality of the industry has now moved me to the position of “we’ll start that back up… when I’m rich”. However (and I think this is the essence of this topic), its still sometimes fun to just pull that MMO off the shelf and tinker with it. They’re just really fun to work on, even if it never gets finished.

I do like that most people are on the same page as me with the “not another WoW/EQ clone”. Enough with the quests and grinding, etc. I absolutely agree. (However, that will quickly get things off track here.)

So yeah, money, but I think that’s a given. Of course we’d work on an MMO if it was a full time/paid job. But that’s just a job like any other.

Also, c’mon guys, don’t forget to tell your skills and experience. Largely, this is because I’m predicting that it will be the more experienced (perhaps more jaded) developers who will have a stricter criteria.

More experienced developers that are making an MMO wouldn’t be posting about it here.

Well for me I think that there are just 3 basic things that would be needed,

A Real and promising Studio, a on-site-location , and last but most importantly, good money, game making is fund but i will only work on a big project if i get payd to do so, since, well I would love to eat some food at breakfast… ( I’m talking at an adult’s point of view )

about my skills, well i am a beginner/intermediate Programmer, until now i can only use Unity3d and script in JavaScript, but i am looking forward for other languages.

I’m not talking about industry vets. I happen to know that both hippo and jc_lvngstn are both experienced developers. Others here might be as well, I’m just not familiar with everyone’s work.

We look at ability to work in a team and experience/skill-set that person and personal honesty.

Our particular favourites - modellers who put Mixamo and Dexsoft artwork on their portfolio, 2d artists who then outsource their work on Elance / Freelancer to Indian and Pakistani artists, coders who then buy ready-made scripts as substitute for their works.

We call up their references - they do not exist. We write a letter to their University. No such person on their Alumni. We call-up our competitors HR dept and ask them to verify work-record. Does not work there. Give them an art test, they draw stick drawings. Give them a 3D model, they fall and fumble making the animations and on playback, the model textures shimmer and collapses inside Unity3d. Pay social security and IRS calls up saying you paid to a different name / gender.

If you are going to make an MMO, really should not be getting this kind of people to join your team. It gets interesting when these same people swarm from one MMO to another, leaving “site suspended” domains soon after.

A stable, well-designed framework is a requirement. Although i believe i could create a networking system, given the time and resources, i just wouldn’t want to.

Beyond this, it comes down to the usual stuff. The team, available resources, the game concept etc.