Building your own MMORPG - It's possible.

Dauzqul

"MMO's are pretty feared in the indie gamedev community and new users who have a MMO dream are often laughed at. There's also an aura of secrecy about them, maintained by people who have once dived into MMOs a little but failed and are unwilling to share their knowledge with the others, preferring to discourage them instead. Well, they are wrong. It is possible to create a MMO, and it doesn't necessarily cost millions. Just as Unreal 4's graphics would cost millions to achieve some few years ago, those things just become more available as the time goes."

Building the world is the easy part, e.g., the land, castles, etc. The difficult part is dealing with the mass amount of data flow / database stuff. This can be achieved.




#1. Building the world. I'm not an artist. However, with Unreal Engine 4, I can paint a masterpiece.

1. Sculpting a world with ease using LAM for Unreal Engine 4:
2. What about cities, castles, etc? There are so many different texture/mesh packs that can be purchased from UE4's Marketplace. It has everything you will need, e.g., animations, modular meshes, weapons, etc: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/content-cat/assets/environments. It's like playing with legos... making your own buildings out of preexisting walls etc. A lot of the caves you see in MMORPGs are actually made out of only 5-10 different rock meshes. They are simply turned, resized, and twisted to give the appearance of being 100% unique.

Modular Meshes etc: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/medieval-village

#2. Learning UE4's Blueprint system. Blueprint is basically another name for visual scripting. This is where you create stuff like health bars, inventory systems, crafting, combat, etc. There are countless tutorials on how to create pretty much anything via YouTube. Here's a good video that discusses the concept of BP:

The following kit for UE4 pretty much completes most of the core features of a basic MMO, e.g., combat, menus, respawn, quests, looting, etc: https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?53208-MMO-Starter-Kit - Ignore the graphics, as this was created with the sole intent of the users bringing in their own lands etc.

The scale of your game ultimately depends on the server. This is why there are entities such as "Photon Server" (https://www.photonengine.com/en/OnPremise). Albion Online is currently using Photon Server.



It would be very easy to create your very own "Isle of Refuge" or "Tortage". Once you get something like this to show and play, that's when these "big projects" turn into Kickstarter campaigns - using the funds to hire hardcore coders for the more difficult stuff.


Yes. Unity is great as well. However, with UE4's BP system, I simply feel it's much easier for beginners to work with. Full games can be made with the BP system alone and not C++. Moreover, the creation tools that come with UE4 are fantastic. UE4 is free - until you earn over "x" amount... then you will be required to pay 5% of income generated.

When loading up UE4 for the first time, you are given the option to choose from 1st Person, 3rd Person, Side-Scroll, and Top-Down (Diablo) tempates. You will be given a character with basic "WASD movement" and a blank map. This is where you start learning how to mess with all the building tools, e.g., LAM tool from the video above, etc.






I really don't know why I'm posting this. If someone has a dream to make a MMO, it's possible... Just wanted to let you know.

DrDread74

I'm working on an MMO game right now. It's nearly finished and I'm doing a kickstarter for it in February 2016. I'm a website and database programmer by career.

You talked MMO games but all you referred to was how to make the graphics not what's wrong with the feature set of the typical MMO of today. MMOs don't have to be 3D and graphical. You can make one text based and be wildly popular. Undertale is a good example of a low spec game that has a larger following then some AAA titles.

I think any MMO you make will probably be successful is it can emulate the origins of where it came from which was playing D&D or equivalent at the gaming table with your friends.

Quizzical

If you rely too heavily on external tools to do everything for you, you end up with a really generic and boring game.  I'm not saying that you can't or shouldn't use tools that do what you need, but you'd better not end up doing everything in whatever way the tools make easiest.  Anything that makes your game unique and interesting is not going to be handled for you by off-the-shelf tools.  If you want to make a good game, you're going to have to handle some heavy lifting yourself.

That said, you don't need for every single thing in your game to be some huge innovation.  It's fine to have a few key areas where you're going to do things differently from most games, and then let standard tools handle most other things for you.  But you'd better be able to deliver on those few key areas if you don't want your game to be awful.

anemo

I have some for you right here, though that closed down(for RL reasons mainly).

http://cranktrain.com/blog/autopsy-of-an-indie-mmorpg-1/
http://cranktrain.com/blog/autopsy-of-an-indie-mmorpg-2/

Covers basic developer stuff eventually getting into post mortem-y  stuff.

The biggest ‘financial’ cost is time. I estimated that going back and changing the game’s design, or just keeping on trucking with the current plan and adding more content to make the game closer to ten hours in length would take at the very least another year’s work. That’s fine if you’re at University, you’ve got tonnes of time, but that wasn’t the case by the time the game was completed and had been released for a little bit, I was three months out of University. So rather than the servers, it was the producing of content that was the, very real, financial cost.

_______

http://www.over00.com/index.php/archives/1119
http://www.over00.com/?p=1610 (less related)

Mostly covers lessons learned

And don’t get me started on community management … The most time-consuming concerns I had were related to PvP and community management related to it. Drama … Banning … Abusing … Hate mails … Threats … It was just way more than I could handle and it wasn’t even what I wanted to start with. At some point I was desperate to get more players and I tried way too many things which lead to more troubles.

And another shocking fact … PvPers don’t spend much money on the game. Dedicated crafters were always the most important supporters of Golemizer while PvP mostly only brought people who were requiring me to spend a lot of time for little money. So the most time I’ve spent on Golemizer was for people who didn’t help me to get any profits out of Golemizer … bringing me further from my goal of making a living out of games. That was my mistake. I shouldn’t have let PvPers take so much place in Golemizer as I know for sure that I’ve lost some of the people I wanted to play Golemizer in the process.

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https://web.archive.org/web/20070106063538/http://www.devmaster.net/articles/mmorpg-postmortem/part1.php
https://web.archive.org/web/20070106063512/http://www.devmaster.net/articles/mmorpg-postmortem/part2.php
https://web.archive.org/web/20070106063700/http://www.devmaster.net/articles/mmorpg-postmortem/part3.php
https://web.archive.org/web/20070106063812/http://www.devmaster.net/articles/mmorpg-postmortem/part4.php
https://web.archive.org/web/20070106063556/http://www.devmaster.net/articles/mmorpg-postmortem/part5.php


A pretty ambitious game for the early 2000s, though from two people.   Had some major exploits that happened and how they dealth with it.  Mostly is a historical walk through.  Also the game is still up and running.

As mentioned in the previous parts of this article, the players are usually unhappy with any changes, unless of course, the change simplifies things or makes things easier to do. But whenever the change requires them to change their strategies, there is widespread complaint, cries that the developers don't listen and want to ruin the game, threats to leave the game and so on. The mere announcement of future changes makes them very nervous, and they usually don't bother to read the full announcement, but rather immediately jump to [wrong] conclusions. There are, of course, some players that do like changes, and there are some players that don't care. But the bulk of the replies to any "future change announcement" is usually "Omg omg teh devs want to ruin teh game!11!!". Often times we just gave up modifying some stuff that we believed would be good for the game, but the players cried about it.

While the players usually play the game more than we do, most of them only care for their best interest. It is up to an objective 3rd-party to carefully examine the implications of any game system modification. That 3rd party is us, the developers, who unlike what some players think, want only the best for the game. It takes someone with a global vision of the entire project to decide what would make the game better for everyone.

A while ago, I was reading an article written by some web-based MMORPG developer who was dealing with similar issues. I can't find the URL to that article (I did try to google for some keywords, with no success). Basically what the author said was that after a while they just ignored the complaints and went forward with the implementation of those changes. And with time, the players actually liked those changes, despite of their initial overreaction. Reading that article was very informative and encouraging to me, so I vowed to do things in a different way from now on.

______________

In the first two cases the developers totally recommend ignoring "You can't build an MMO" type posters, while carefully pointing out you're going to have to make some changes to your design, ideal, and dreams.   The last case the developer totally jumped back down the rabbit hole to attempt to make another MMO. 

YashaX

You can make some simple games really easily in UE4 but anything slightly complex is quite difficult. Its also a monster of a program with many amazing tools, each one with quite a steep learning curve.

Note that the gap between fairly easily designing a level with prebuilt assets and slapping together a few blueprints to make a simple first person shooter and making an mmo is immense.

Gaendric

I'll just add that setting up the tech or being able to use an engine is not "making a game".  It's just one part of making a game. 
The tech is the foundation to build on and provides the tools to build with.
You still have to put in the effort and design the building plans, create all the building materials to specs and actually use them to build something great. (and these are the hard and soulcrushing parts) 

You also can't just lay down the foundation, see which random shape it forms and then build on it without severely impacting your potential.

The design needs to come first and needs to dictate which engine/tech solutions are even a match for what is to be created. "Pick an engine first" is not a good approach.

That said, more people getting into game dev means more chance of some talent emerging, and that is a great thing.
If someone is better motivated by trying a hard MMO project, they should! They can only learn from it. But expectations should be realistic. 

Kyleran

 Building your own MMO is a lot like building your own laptop; possible, but better left to the professionals.

Kilrain

Kyleran said:

 Building your own MMO is a lot like building your own laptop; possible, but better left to the professionals.

Bs. That's pretty much all I have to say to you.

Mendel

Gaendric said:

I'll just add that setting up the tech or being able to use an engine is not "making a game".  It's just one part of making a game. 
The tech is the foundation to build on and provides the tools to build with.
You still have to put in the effort and design the building plans, create all the building materials to specs and actually use them to build something great. (and these are the hard and soulcrushing parts) 

You also can't just lay down the foundation, see which random shape it forms and then build on it without severely impacting your potential.

The design needs to come first and needs to dictate which engine/tech solutions are even a match for what is to be created. "Pick an engine first" is not a good approach.

That said, more people getting into game dev means more chance of some talent emerging, and that is a great thing.
If someone is better motivated by trying a hard MMO project, they should! They can only learn from it. But expectations should be realistic. 

Let me add to @Gaendric's overall excellent commentary.

If the game you want to make isn't supported by the game platform, you will spend a lot of time (and energy, and possibly money) trying to make the engine work the way you want.  My idea that I tried to build an MMORPG on (in 2002), didn't fit the game platforms available at the time.  I had intended a feature to drive the creature AI by replacing the AI with an internal RTS-like interface.  A group of Adversarial Managers (company support staff members) would use this interface to provide strategic level goals and activities for the in-game creatures.  This way, the AMs would recruit in-game forces (mobs), set up movement plans, and send task forces out to achieve a goal.  The orcs in Camp Orc could suddenly form up in groups of 3 fighters and a healer to protect the local warg breeding pens.  Then suddenly, the Camp Orc orcs would begin grouping with 8 fighters, 3 healers and a shaman to attack the guards at a nearby village.  The plan was to have a single AM generate these changes, and apply them to each server dynamically.

None of the available game development packages at the time simply didn't support this kind of idea, so I was anticipating the need to build my own development engine.  That basically pushed the entire project out of my price range, resulting in me abandoning the idea in 2003.