A BIG idea

[Alyanomo]

hey guys,

I have a really big idea for an MMORPG (yes MMO)
and I truly believe it could work but it would require ALOT of players so ALOT of money and a really strong server
my question is, is there any chance that I'll ever get this game to be made?

I won't be able to make this game work and I don't even want to receive money for it (it would be nice if I could play it for free though :p)
I just want it to be made

any ideas where i can go with my idea?

[Reedbeta]

No one will make the game for you. Ideas on their own are worth nothing, no matter how good you personally might think the idea is. If you want to get the game made you'll have to do it yourself.

To make a large-scale MMORPG like that, you'll need a college education, a bunch of management and business experience, a few million bucks, a crack team of artists and programmers, 5 years, and a hell of a lot of luck.

[Alyanomo]

I feared that...
i guess it'll stick to fantasizing about it...
if anyone'd like to steal my idea, i'd love to tell you.
I don't ask anything for it!

[Nodlehs]

Where is monjardin's JWN meter when you need it?

[fireside]

i guess it'll stick to fantasizing about it...
Programming is a great hobby and game design is part of it. Start small and build up. You probably won't make an MMO, but you can make an interesting game that a lot of people enjoy. Start with python and pygame and see what you can do. It's much for fun than fantasizing.

[Alyanomo]

I'd love to, but my idea won't work in any way if there aren't enough players...
and i think it'd need at least 100,000...

btw, what's JWH from what i've seen, it doesn't sound good, i hope it means that i'm a noob (cause i am) and not that i'm stupid or rude or something like that, cause i didn't mean to seem like that...

[Nodlehs]

btw, what's JWH from what i've seen, it doesn't sound good, i hope it means that i'm a noob (cause i am) and not that i'm stupid or rude or something like that, cause i didn't mean to seem like that...

http://www.devmaster.net/forums/member.php?u=3481 Check his siggy

[Alyanomo]

i know somewhat what it means and i saw where he 'used' it
but what EXACTLY does i mean?
i mean how bad is it?

[Reedbeta]

my idea won't work in any way if there aren't enough players...
and i think it'd need at least 100,000...

Even if a game were eventually able to get that many players, it wouldn't start off with that many. So if you want to design a successful game, it had better work even with smaller numbers of players, or else you'll never get up to the 100,000 level. ;)

[fireside]

I'd love to, but my idea won't work in any way if there aren't enough players...
and i think it'd need at least 100,000...

If you're only capable of one idea, it's not for you anyway.

[Sol_HSA]

Programming is a great hobby and game design is part of it. Start small and build up. You probably won't make an MMO, but you can make an interesting game that a lot of people enjoy. Start with python and pygame and see what you can do. It's much for fun than fantasizing.
I'm starting to realize that the whole point of these MMO projects is to fantasize, and not actually produce anything. That's why everyone is starting their own, and are not ready to work on someone elses' already started project.
I'd love to, but my idea won't work in any way if there aren't enough players...
and i think it'd need at least 100,000...
I doubt you have any idea how large amount of people you're talking about.

[ville-v]

any ideas where i can go with my idea?
You must get a job as a game designer in a company making MMO games. When you are working there, you should recommend your idea to some key people and it might be done. Game companies are not doing ideas of people who are not their employees. Alternatively, you can win a lottery and hire some people to do it for you.

Or you can forget the whole idea of getting such a game and write fictional book about people who are playing that game, you will be praised for your great idea even though no-one can make it into game.

What exactly is your idea? Since it does require many people, I could imagine you are trying to simulate real life with lots of adult content (such as getting jobs, paying taxes, taking responsibilities). People just want to play something which is not similar to their everyday life.

[Alyanomo]

my idea was to elaborate GvG in a very big way
(i have a system thought out)
so i'll need ALOT of BIG guilds (or factions)

I don't think I'll get into game design professionally, maybe I'll be really rich someday :p

if anyone would like to know the exact idea, I'd like to tell but not here (since that COULD cause some trouble)

btw: I can and have thought of more ideas, but I just like this one the best

[Sol_HSA]

my idea was to elaborate GvG in a very big way
(i have a system thought out)
so i'll need ALOT of BIG guilds (or factions)

if anyone would like to know the exact idea, I'd like to tell but not here (since that COULD cause some trouble)
There's no way telling your idea here would cause trouble - unless it's racist or such. If you want to discuss it, then go ahead; people might have feedback on it, and you might learn a thing or two.
btw: I can and have thought of more ideas, but I just like this one the best
If you have plenty of ideas, write a novel.

[Alyanomo]

maybe i'll post it in some few hours...

you know, i have thought about writing a novel, seriously :p

[Sol_HSA]

you know, i have thought about writing a novel, seriously :p
Then this is your chance! http://www.nanowrimo.org/ - november is approaching fast.

[alphadog]

and i think it'd need at least 100,000...


You need 100K players to start? To make the idea viable? How did you "establish" this number?

What happens if you could only get 50K? or 20K?


my idea was to elaborate GvG in a very big way


How does you idea differ from Guild Wars by ArenaNet/NCsoft?

[fireside]

I'm starting to realize that the whole point of these MMO projects is to fantasize, and not actually produce anything. That's why everyone is starting their own, and are not ready to work on someone elses' already started project.

There are some that are interested in learning game programming, I think, and some that are in a fantasy much like the games they are playing. It sounds as if they think it's like gathering up some people in a fantasy to go on the next quest. Some take on a more realistic attitude when they find out it's out of reach. Games are great, but it's not much of a true learning environment and there isn't a lot of creativity in deciding what hair color someone should have.

[Alyanomo]

You need 100K players to start? To make the idea viable? How did you "establish" this number?

What happens if you could only get 50K? or 20K?



How does you idea differ from Guild Wars by ArenaNet/NCsoft?


well, i must admit, i just trµhrew a number at it,
but i think that 50K might be not enough...
ofcourse, it could work, but it wouldn't be nearly as fun.

well,
i might as well tell it

wait for the edit...

the game is situated in the middle ages with some asian and some magical aspects
you can choose from some several professions wich are basically warrior bowan and magician and some combining two of those (i haven't worked this out quite yet)

you start off on an island (think GW factions but bigger) with both low and high level areas, several cities and plenty quests to keep you busy as long as you want.

however, when you reach a certain level (let's say 20) you can do a quest witch takes you to the continent.
once you are on this continent, you can start a guild and form alliances.
this is where my idea comes in, the continent is devided into about 20 areas each with their capital and some 5 (bigger) wild zones.
when the game starts off, all these areas will be owned by higher demons.
if you have a big alliance, you can attack a castle/capital.
if you attack a castle, the alliance leader gets to pick a date and time for the battle.
when that time comes, every member of that alliance who is online is automatically teleported to the battlefield (unless if they have specifically chozen not to participate in the battle).
every (active) guildmember who isn't online atm is represented by a bot playing his character.
in the battle, the alliance leader play the battle as if it were a RTS (all members have been put in devisions all with their captain)
and he can give orders to his troops by either selecting them and point ouit what they have to do by clicking (this will appear to the players as some sort of mission)
or by directly speaking to the captain with a built in voice chatting system with teh captain, who can pass the message on to his troops.
(a general (alliance leader) can speak to a whole devision or even his entire army as well).
to capture a castle, either the others have to surrender, the attacking alliance must kill every single man or they have to stay in control of the castle for at least 20 minutes i a row (think TWM2).

this way, factions can be expanded into several areas. however, once you own a castle, it can still be attacked, either by the higher demons (who are more or less controlled by high gamemasters who try to keep balance on the continent) or by another alliance, in that caase, both alliance leaders have to agree a date withing 3 days of the challenge.
in case of a AvA battle, all the same rules count as in a AvE battle.
after the battle, the alliance leader gets a report with all teh kills and deaths of his members to give him a reference in case he would need some more captains.
ofcourse, if the alliance leader can't be online at the time of the battle for any reason possible, he is replaced by his highest rated captain or his second highest rated captain and so on.
if a captain is unable to fight (either he's not online or he's replacing the general) he's replaced by his highest ranked soldier...
the same thing happens if the captain dies during the battle (captains fight along with the troops)

whenever a alliance attacks a castle, everyone who wants can go to the battlefield (witch is actually the castle on the map) to watch, they can see the battle hapening live, however the ones who are fighting the battle do not see the 'spectators'

during the battle the activities in the area capital are stopped.


pz do ask questions cause i'm pretty sure i forgot tell tell you about ALOT.

[Nodlehs]

well, i must admit, i just trµhrew a number at it,
but i think that 50K might be not enough...
ofcourse, it could work, but it wouldn(t be nearly as fun.


You need to establish some metric for why you need such numbers. Just guessing is ignorant. What requires that many people? If you want to implement something that truly needs that many people, are we walking online at once? or just server population? How many people need to be online at once? That number has some very real world limitations based on server processing and bandwidth.

[alphadog]

well, i must admit, i just trµhrew a number at it,
but i think that 50K might be not enough...

So, your solution to throwing one number out at random and with no basis is to throw out a lower one? If I keep doubting you, will the number keep getting lower? :) Why would 50K not be "enough"? Enough for what?

[Alyanomo]

see my previous post if you want to know what my idea is...

and i stick to 100K as limit (as i said 50K would be doable but not nearly as fun)

[moe]

No offence, but I also fail to see the big fuzz about this idea.
every (active) guildmember who isn't online atm is represented by a bot playing his characterAh, the old bot-number to keep enough players in the game at any time. I would hate it, if I would play for many hours and the one time I have to work instead of playing some bot will ruin all the effort I put in the game. I am sure many people would not mind, but I would not play the game for that alone. If I have no control I dont see why I should play in the first place. And yes, I realize that you said the bot is only there in a battle and not essentially playing the game for me. But if the battle outcome does not have enough influence to make a difference there is no need to go into the battle in the first place either.
with a built in voice chatting systemYou will need the hell of a lot bandwith if 100k players play and chat at the same time. I don't think even WOW can do that. People rather use something like skype. Which also means that "voice-chatting-bandwith" is not something the WOW developpers need to care about like you would need to if you were to build that game. But I am no fan of WOW and never played it, so I dont really know. But it seams you want the biggest/best MMORPG ever which just is not realistic and (again no offence) your idea is not convincing enough to have that potential.

My two cents.

[ville-v]

No offence, but I also fail to see the big fuzz about this idea.
Ah, the old bot-number to keep enough players in the game at any time. I would hate it, if I would play for many hours and the one time I have to work instead of playing some bot will ruin all the effort I put in the game. I am sure many people would not mind, but I would not play the game for that alone. If I have no control I dont see why I should play in the first place. And yes, I realize that you said the bot is only there in a battle and not essentially playing the game for me. But if the battle outcome does not have enough influence to make a difference there is no need to go into the battle in the first place either.
You will need the hell of a lot bandwith if 100k players play and chat at the same time. I don't think even WOW can do that. People rather use something like skype. Which also means that "voice-chatting-bandwith" is not something the WOW developpers need to care about like you would need to if you were to build that game. But I am no fan of WOW and never played it, so I dont really know. But it seams you want the biggest/best MMORPG ever which just is not realistic and (again no offence) your idea is not convincing enough to have that potential.

My two cents.Alternatively you could buy some country in Africa and throw players in there to kill each other.

[Alyanomo]

No offence, but I also fail to see the big fuzz about this idea.
Ah, the old bot-number to keep enough players in the game at any time. I would hate it, if I would play for many hours and the one time I have to work instead of playing some bot will ruin all the effort I put in the game. I am sure many people would not mind, but I would not play the game for that alone. If I have no control I dont see why I should play in the first place. And yes, I realize that you said the bot is only there in a battle and not essentially playing the game for me. But if the battle outcome does not have enough influence to make a difference there is no need to go into the battle in the first place either.
You will need the hell of a lot bandwith if 100k players play and chat at the same time. I don't think even WOW can do that. People rather use something like skype. Which also means that "voice-chatting-bandwith" is not something the WOW developpers need to care about like you would need to if you were to build that game. But I am no fan of WOW and never played it, so I dont really know. But it seams you want the biggest/best MMORPG ever which just is not realistic and (again no offence) your idea is not convincing enough to have that potential.

My two cents.

since i was thinking about alliances of about 1000 people, i'd think that could be quite impressive.

i have one argument for the bot thing: my idea was to have a skill system like the one in GW but with slightly more skills in a build so that your efforts DO have influence on the outcome of the battle.
And the reason why Alliances will be encouraged to fight battles will be explained*

this built in voice chat system is only for in battles.
i think this might be needed to give orders to 1000 people in an efficient way.


*once an alliance owns an area, the alliance leader devides the cities between his guilds. if your guild owns a city, you get to pick the tax rate on everything (guilds get the taxes that are payed) and with that oney you can organize events to attrackt more people to make your sity their home base.
this way there should be a very lively economy and a fun community.

[moe]

Artificial enemies are cool, but not a bot that plays my part. No control -> no play. Even if the bot is far better than me. Probabely we just have a different idea about how a bot is funny. Well, we cant really argue about opinions.
this built in voice chat system is only for in battles.
i think this might be needed to give orders to 1000 people in an efficient way.You still need to be able to send this voice commands to 1000 players while also maintainig all what's going on. Send 1000 positions from 1000 players back and forward etc. Then your opponent needs to be able to do the same. What if 3 parties want to fight? you need to send voice commands to 3000 players... While somewhere else in your gameworld some people try to buy a cow from an imp, or whatever. You would need to handle 100k players info including the voice commands. I don't think that is possible just yet. We used to play a lot of settler 3. Our gamestyle was always to build up the economy for about 3-4 hours and then attack. Even with 2 players it getts excessively laggy towards the end. You could barely select the troops anymore. And that was in a lan, not online.

What if I dont speak the same language as the leader? I cant play now because I dont understand his commands?
the alliance leader devides the cities between his guilds.Have you ever tried to satisfy 10 people at once? At least 1 or 2 wont be happy with your decission. No matter how the leader divides the cities at least 100-200 people will be pissed about his/her decission. Yes it might be fun but I don't think in a real life situation the players would put up with it for long. I don't want to discurrage you. I just don't see any company risking millions for that.

So, that was another 2 cents :lol:

[Alyanomo]

true, opinion is opinion...

ofcourse it'll need a very string server but i think it's doable, since there'll probably be alot less people then on wow
and i don't think 100K players and 2K using voice chat is even near to handling say 1KK players at once (WoW)

what if you don't speak teh same language as ur leader i WoW and you wanna do a raid? same problem
and you can still follow the orders given with teh clicking system

well:
i'd say: about 5 cities in an area, the leading guild takes the capital,
and the four others are devided btween the 4 best guilds in the alliance
if you're not happy, start your own alliance and try to capture a castle of your own and another guild will fill their place

[Nodlehs]

The first thing I will do is list some things for you to consider. It is very difficult to read your posts.


Spell Check
No instant messenger/cell short hand please (You are at a computer with a full keyboard, USE IT)
Grammar = Win


Now, on to your assumption...

ofcourse it'll need a very string server but i think it's doable, since there'll probably be alot less people then on wow
and i don't think 100K players and 2K using voice chat is even near to handling say 1KK players at once (WoW)

You do realize that all the WoW subscribers are NOT in the game at the same time right? And that the entire population is spread over a boat load of realms right? Best guess is there is between 1 to 3 thousand players on at any given time on any single realm.

Not only that, each realm is not a single physical piece of hardware. There are many physical servers working together to run a single realm, a realm that is only servicing approx 1-3k players at once.

Keep dreaming, dreaming is a great ability. However, I would temper your actual expectations into reality and try designing a pong game first. You are lacking fundamental aspects of the MMO genre that restrict what you can currently accomplish with today's technologies.

[Alyanomo]

The first thing I will do is list some things for you to consider. It is very difficult to read your posts.


Spell Check
No instant messenger/cell short hand please (You are at a computer with a full keyboard, USE IT)
Grammar = Win


Now, on to your assumption...



You do realize that all the WoW subscribers are NOT in the game at the same time right? And that the entire population is spread over a boat load of realms right? Best guess is there is between 1 to 3 thousand players on at any given time on any single realm.

Not only that, each realm is not a single physical piece of hardware. There are many physical servers working together to run a single realm, a realm that is only servicing approx 1-3k players at once.

Keep dreaming, dreaming is a great ability. However, I would temper your actual expectations into reality and try designing a pong game first. You are lacking fundamental aspects of the MMO genre that restrict what you can currently accomplish with today's technologies.

If there was a spellcheck button and i saw it, i would've hit it and unfortunatly my english isn't perfect and i easily get distracted.

officialy, WoW has 6KK players, if you assume that the average WoW player plays about 4 hours a day, then there are approximatly 1KK players online at any given moment.
and if i devide the map in several playble areas (with unfortunatly loading screens between them) and there's a different server running for a battle, it should be doable
not for one person ofcourse.

my point is that a big gaming company (PlayNC, Blizzard,...) could make this game work, but ofc they wont
why would they risk their ass for a game that might work?


btw: on my TI-83 i've made several programs more complicated then pong :p
too bad i didn't spent time learning C# or something else that's useful...

[moe]

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/faq/realms.html
from the page:Is there a limit to the number of players on a realm?
We have established an optimal number of players per realm. This number is in the thousands, but manageable enough to foster a sense of community and to prevent overcrowding. They didn't say in the then thousands. So, it is probabely less than 10k players per realm. Let's say you have 10k players and (only) 10 Servers per realm. Then one battle place could hold 1k players. Hmm, I guess you would win by default since your enemie can not enter the battle place anymore :lol:

Seriously, if you take one server for one battle then this server must manage 2k players and the chatting and still manage some states with the rest of the servers for the remainig parts of this realm. I am not experienced enough with networking to truely give an answer but I don't see that happening any time soon. I think the server would have enough cpu power to process but not enough bandwith to collect all inputs and distribute the results.

My guess would be that WoW has about 300 players on one server at most. But it would be interesting to get some accurate numbers. Maybe I am way off with my guess.

btw: on my TI-83 i've made several programs more complicated then pong
too bad i didn't spent time learning C# or something else that's useful...If you have prior programming experience c# is not that hard to learn. Go for it.

[Alyanomo]

well, if u know that there are only 20 areas, it's possible to make it a rule that it's not possible that there are 2 battles at the same time.
then for the battles, you'll need 6 servers for the players (if i go on ur numbers) and several more for the chat system (i have NO idea how many)
i admit it's hard, but for a big company, it would be possible

i've been meaning to do that, but i downloaded the wrong program lately, so i got demotivated since my internet is REALLY slow atm...

[Domzimmer]

No offense mate but your whole idea resignates around Guild Wars. I mean max lvl 20. Move to a different continent when you are a high level.. Thats all coming from Guild Wars. Also to have 100 k players all playing at once just to make the game fun would most likely be an impossible task because first of all you have to attract 100 k people to register an account to your game. All download the game client and login at the same time.. I wouldn't want to imagine the amount of bandwith needed for that type of idea

[alphadog]

Right, Domzimmer.

Not totally sure on the numbers, but most MMOs usually shoot for an arbitrarily fixed amount of bandwidth, at about 3-5 kbytes/sec per player for game data.

So, if you have 100K players, you're looking at 500K kbytes/sec, or 488 Mbytes/sec. That's basically an OC12. An OC12 will run you five figures per month!

Now, if you want to add voice, that's another minimum of 5 kbytes/sec per player. So, you'll need two OC12s.

Time to look under the sofa cushions for loose change!!

[searing123]

Hey I'm also a beginner (a 15 year old Sophomore in High School actually...) and dream of making a really large scale MMORPG's. Having an idea is good but consider a few things first:

1. Write the idea down. It helps you understand exactly what your game is going to be and how everything works so you can communicate your idea better to people. You might also see some of the potential problems in your games and solve them before you make it. If it ever does get made.... Who knows.... you might be extremely lucky and be able to make this game 10 years from now when you are an exceptionally respected game designer for some very big company.

2. It's nice to think BIG but there are some things that are TOO BIG. For instance your 100k player requirement. You would need an insane amount of luck just to have that many people have an account for your game not to mention having 100k players on at once. I've personally played Guild Wars and would see that a large scale GvG battle with 1000's of people fighting at once, but such a large scale battle would be really difficult to make possible and control for the "Guild leader". Instead of doing large scale battles with 1000's of people, do one with maybe 50 people on each side. It will still be grand, might be possible to make, and easier to control than 1000 people.

3. Think of something to make your game different from Guild Wars. If your game is basically a copy of Guild Wars of probably less caliber then your not going to even get 100k players. You have to make it different and better than Guild Wars. Think outside the box. Consider the following to make your game potentially better than Guild Wars:

a. Don't have people waste 2 years just to get all the skills. Make it possible so that you can be decent in the PvP world after playing only 3-6 months. I remember I played Guild Wars for 2 1/2 years and 1 1/2 of those years was spent getting skills so you can be decent in high-scale PvP.

b. Rewards for winning in PvP battles besides points towards getting titles. Maybe war loot? I personally like your idea of conquering territory with your guild and maybe these territories can give resources towards your guild to fuel the guild battles. Also, do not forget some way to keep balance in the game to prevent one guild from being the dominant guild. Guild War's alliances are cool as well but make it possible to backstab a alliance guild in a battle.

c. Look at the game, Chrome Hounds, for it has a similar battle system to yours I think, just your battle system idea is much much bigger. Chrome Hounds might also give you some more ideas as well.


That's my 3 cents. Good Luck!