xavier wrote:
Do you actually think an MMO is a hobbyist project?

Vdub, my advice is to do a lot of research and avoid asking questions until you absolutely have to. Xavier's attitude is typical all over the place about creating an MMO as a hobby. Yes, you have to learn somewhere, but there are other sources around that are less...negative. You will need all this research to be able to answer Xavier's question for you and your team. You will only truthfully be able to do that once you understand what it is exactly that you are trying to do... and what it will take.

I have put together a few links about MMORPG development, compiled here:
http://www.projectwish.com/e107_plugins/li...links.php?cat.2

That should give you a good start. The IGDA whitepaper is a must read:
http://www.igda.org/online/IGDA_PSW_Whitepaper_2004.pdf

You should be able to read through that without skipping anything if you are truly serious. Start working on a design document and plan.

It is my opinion that the only things that are impossible are those things that you will not try. You will have to be ready to work for years to come to do it, but it is possible. You will have to put up with a lot of crap from nay-sayers. If you don't think you can do all of that, then don't even bother.

I wish you good luck. Feel free to ask me anything and I will help as I can. (If done privately, we could avoid the nay-sayers, but some in the same situation would miss out on actually learning something from the experience).

It seems there is a falacy floating about regarding hobbyist MMO projects. And that is that they are 1-5 man teams. I keep reading that in the responses, but it just doesn't make sense.

There was a point in this thread that we stopped referring to the OP, but even he had a team behind him. Moreover, people seem to also think that we (MMO hobbyist projects) plan on building an MMO from scratch, without building something simpler first. Let me also put that to rest. I agree that it is absolute insanity to even try to go straight to the end, without learning to walk first. For example, PW's plan (and this has been our plan since we started in Jan. '05) is to build an alpha before we ever get to a beta. Our plan for alpha is 1 city, 1 race, no gameplay, a client and a server. Basically a glorified 3d chat with 3d avatars in a small 3d world (a tiny portion of our planned world). This is what we would call proof of concept. This would prove that we can do what we want. This would be proof to possible recruits on our skill, goals, dedication, etc. It would also be proof to the nay-sayers and to ourselves. After this is done, it would be time to work toward a larger, second alpha, and then on to beta. This is a long journey, no one is disputing that.

Then next thing that we do at PW, is work with the "if-you-build-it-they-will-come" attitude. This applies to the argument that it takes 100 people to make an MMO. This attitude means that even if we are too small now, as long as we continue, and make it to our alpha goal, people will continue to join the project. For us, we have the advantage (and disadvantage) of being associated with a failed-MMO. This means that our community grew very fast and our pool of devs was large when we started. Everyone working on a hobbyist-type project knows that people are gained and lost to real life every day. This means that things are not consistent. As long as you expect that and get used to it, that is okay. ^@%# happens. When we started, we had over 30 people onboard. Over time, we dropped to under 10. This is going to happen. That is when you make your choice. We made ours and now are at around 15-20 people again. Not everyone is contrubuting constantly, but again, that is going to happen.

A third thing that has not been accounted for is will/desire. xavier dislikes my notion that anyone can do anything, but I still believe this. Many here agree with him, and some even agree with me. The people that agree with him are exactly right ... for themselves. If you make that decision before ever attempting, then there is no point in trying. You already know the answer. Its called a self-fulfilling prophecy. For those people who keep and open mind, learn what their task means, learn what it takes and continue on, there really is nothing that can stop them.

Another thing we use at PW is XP, that is Extreme Programming. This methodology calls for small, consistent updates. This is an important step, especially when it comes to keep devs and a community motivated. A good website helps, and releasing a newsletter or news items will as well. Team meetings are a must to keep the devs motivated and up-to-date. A good IRC channel will go wonders as well. Team leaders who know their field will be important as well. It is impossible to structure yourself the same as a real gamedev company would, but keeping as many things as close to reality is also important.

Every project is also going to need a zealot (or three). Someone who can laugh in the face of all the detractors, and mean it. Obviously, I am one of those for PW. It is not just me, however, there are 3 of us, and counting. We have been there since the beginning, and will never give up. One of us is young and has time, the other two of us are professionals (in different fields, ie. we have jobs, but not in gamedev) and know how to manage time. For me, I get between 3 and 6 hours of sleep on a typical night. I work full-time, have another business on the side and do a ton for PW. My wife is pregnant and I do church, cubscouts and other activites. Essentially, I am insane. I know it. It will catch up with me one day, but that day will be the day that I quit believing that I can do it.

I also think it requires professionalism. I *try* to remain professional when dealing with others, as does our Project Manager. Yes, we are just some group of wannabe's, but that will change some day. You have to act like it. For those of you who fealt that I have been childish and unprofessional, I apologize and invite you to show me where. I like to try and keep the image of PW high, so I would not want to lower it by being unprofessional. People see someone (or read in our case) who is well spoken on a given subject and it makes a difference. I try to be knowledgable in every subject that I talk about. In some, I am still a newbie, while in others I try and share my knowledge. All in all, I try to watch my spelling and grammer. For others who are not native english speakers, it helps to be humble, and for the most part, you all are.

So, we cover philosophy, design principals, methodology, image and management. Is that enough? No, it will still take luck. Even with all of these things together, it will still take that zealot (or three) to generate some luck.

Hmmm, where do I begin? Thanks for getting this out in the open I guess . What follows isn't necessarily on topic, but this topic started due to my PM to jacmoe, so deal with it .

Let me use the history of Project Wish as an example here:
We started PW in January of '05. When Wish disappeared, there were tons of people who wanted to see it (or something like it reborn). We had almost 400 users in the first week. To clear things up a bit, there is a difference between indie and what we are doing. I dislike calling it hobby, because it is more than that, but there might not be a better term (world-wide team working on and open-sourced indie-type project).

Our core programming team was selective and started with around 6+ talented individuals. Most were students (some here might know of Lucky_Luciano, he was our client side lead). We had a server team lead as well. Between Lucky working pretty much on his own and our Server guy practically the same way (with a couple of reliable others) we had a mostly working map editor (see what Falagard has done with it on his PLSM2/GOOF editor) and a working chat server and client. Then life happened.

Most teams like mine that have been around are very aware of this stage. It seems the Ogre team is similar at times, although having someone as hardcore as Sinbad keeps it going always . During that time, I was working with our world and story teams helping get things together as I taught myself Art better than I knew it. The teams were very sub-divided back then, with Animation, Modeling, Texturing all having separate teams. While we were working on getting requirements together, artists with real life commitments started to fade, as there was nothing yet for them to make, because it all wasn’t decided yet. Our Project Leader (who still leads the project to this Day) has been a pretty consistently busy guy who is a senior developer at Intel. I mention this because when Intel calls, he has to do his thing. This leaves times where he has been in and out.

At the end of last summer, the first blow was Lucky_Luciano disappearing. To this day, we still haven’t had more good work from a programmer than him. After that, due to the remaining egos trying to either take over the project or just get creative control, most of our server programmers finally left. At this point, our story team had enough to be done for a while, so they went on hiatus. The world team had designed what we needed for our Alpha phase (working prototype with 1 city and no gameplay, just a chat server in a 3D world). They slowly disappeared too. The artists had mostly gone as well, so I took the art team over with the help of Fuinelen as my co-lead (who ironically has done a lot of cool little programs here on Ogre). We knew what we needed and we knew the amount of work needed. We continued slowly as we learned the pipeline. I had purchased ZBrush and was learning it, but not much was getting done.

During fall of last year, we hit our low point. It almost came down to me, but not quite that bad. The Project Leader has always been in and out, and I never have worried about him, because he has the same desires as I do. Lots of real life hit for the remaining members, but even the community started to fade. Our ex-programmers who had been hosting our Trac needed to take it down, so they did. The remaining people could not get to the info that we had been collecting, so they also started to either get pissed, or just leave.

This is when I decided to pretty much take the bull by the horns and start to steer. I started with the website. We had had a CMS planned for quite some time to replace the plain PHPBB forums that we had, but since those who volunteered to do it had never finished it and had RL issues, it never got done. I tried a few CMS's and stuck with e107 since it has one of the better rated ones and had everything we needed. I am not one to just stick up a default theme, so after getting the prototype working I had to then dive into the DB. Getting it converted to the e107 forum format, I then moved onto graphics design and PHP/CSS. After some more uber-learning, I had 2 custom themes (very basic ones). The test site looked ready to go, so just before Christmas, I released the new website. Since then, things have been better than ever, activity-wise.

With the new site, people started coming back. I had, by this time, built quite a library of MMO design sources, and had been visiting many websites. With my exposure came more new people visiting the site (they clicked the link in my signature). We also made a decision during this reorganization time to reply to a lot of the old applications (we have probably received 50+ inquiries since the start) and some of the old team members. The Project Leader has since taken over as lead programmer and started work with our server programming. Since the old server team lead had refused his advice before, the code was scrapped because it was not designed correctly. We actually got a lot of replies to my emails. This started the rebuild/reorganization. I also got the Trac db and got it up and working on my own server at this point.

At the beginning of this year, we really started rolling again. The Project Leader had been working on learning ICE (our server middleware) and we had gotten a lot of my artists back. We started producing. Since then, we have 5 set programmers on the team with 3 more currently in the interview process. We released our first two test renders of our alpha 1 design, but only done in Max, still no Ogre. I still run most of what happens, including more new website designs that will be finished soon. We have reached a happy medium where there are no egos trying to control things (I am happy to run things until the Project Manager gets time to redirect some things that could be better). This leaves us with essentially 2 main leaders who have a pretty set vision and all the patience in the world to see it through.

I left out quite a bit (like Cobra who has been with me all along), but I think you get the picture from that. This now brings me to my PM to jacmoe. He mentioned in a reply to someone recruiting, that he knew some programmers who were looking for serious projects. I PM'd him, rather than hijack the thread, to see if he could point me in the right direction. This thread is now the result . You should notice that Project Wish is absent from the recruitment forum. This is on purpose. Not once did we ever think we could withstand the ridicule of that place, and rightly so . We still are not at the active recruiting phase, and may not ever need to be. Both the Project Manager and I have always felt that if we build it, they will come. I do try to recruit privately if I see someone who I think could help us, while working on a dedicated project.

This also brings us to here and now. None of our programmers are very familiar with Ogre, at all, yet. This is the obvious glaring absentee from our website. We have no in-engine screenshots. If we were to pickup even 1 Ogre-ready developer, we could have a prototype in no time. That is the reason for my PM to jacmoe. Am I begging? Heck no. Am I serious? You better believe it.

I expect to not get ANY replies about MMO's, so please don't waste my time arguing with me about how they are impossible to make and a waste of time. You will find that my team and I are well versed in the area and are FULLY aware of what it takes. That aside, will it take a long time? Yes, most definitely. We have followed the Extreme Programming methodology since the beginning; consistent small updates are the way to go. If you have made it this far in my post, congratulations. You actually have an attention span. I hope there is something to learn from it, since there usually is from "post-mortems," but this is not one of those. We are doing well, and would be willing to accept dedicated individuals who are willing to be part of that one project in a million that doesn't fail.

Any responses are welcome, PM's or right here. I have nothing to hide and am proud of where PW is.