what goes into making an mmorpg?

pinkstarfish

I was just being curious on how mmorpg's like WoW, everquest 2, city of heros/villains, ect. get made. what types of programes do designers use? how do they get every action/reaction to work. what basically goes in to make mmmorpgs actuallly be a working game?

Zhanghia

Coding, working the graphics engine, setting up scripts.. lots and lots of work, and with all the MMORPG's coming out, if you're thinking you're going to homebrew one.. all I have to say to that is: Good luck, you'll need it.

CaesarsGhost

I got to visit Rapid Reality (www.mmocenter.com) in their Studio. I watched the concept artist go to town, I watched 2 rooms of 3D artists and modelers making those drawings come true. I watched the programmers and scripters pounding code like no tomorrow. I saw business phone calls being taken... official posts on the Forums being made and proofread... terrain and enviorments being constructed in a whole other room.
Now, that's my first game studio I've ever been in. But I'd like to imagine it's fairly similar sort of look/feel across most of them. Probably some of the bigger wigs have cubicals, and RR didn't have those.
The link at the bottom of my sig links to a thank you letter I wrote them, complete with pictures I took while in the Studio... it kinda gives you a look at what it looks like in there.

Now as far as the programs they used? There was 3D Studio Max, Visual Studio, some other programs I can't meantion... I think Notepad. Photoshop was definately 1.

I'm not advertising... I'm just stating from a gamer who's been in a studio.

EDIT: Here's that link:
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setView/news/gameID/196/showArticle/3378