When you’re working on a game independently your time is your most valuable resource and neglecting to understand the shear scale of your project will lead to the ultimate waste of time which is a failed project.
I agree that an mmo isn’t impossible it’s just extremely impractical, making a scaling multiplayer setting leaves server hosting and administration up to the users.
This means that you don’t have to have:
-international servers
-anti cheat and hacker prevention
-balancing at all skill levels (this is something that even very few big name developers know how to do well, IT’S NOT EASY)
-a dedicated I.T. department to deal with a massive influx of user/account issues
All these things need to be paid for, which I’m sure you understand already. The part that is commonly overlooked is that it needs to closely match the fluctuation of users. Assuming that you have some way of convincing people to give up their hard earned money to pay for content that isn’t “pay to win” and you successfully promote your game, people will might give it a try. Now lies the problem, if your game isn’t what it boasts or worse; it suffers from a bad launch altogether. It will snowball in bad PR have a decline in users all the while you are paying for the things I listed above scaled up to the initial launch. 10 000 man servers with 100 people in them is the massive kick in the nuts that games with very diverse and unique content have suffered repeatedly since the invention of the genre.
There will be a long period of alpha and beta testing, and to test all the content on the user scale necessary while providing an incentive for users to do the testing. You will be running your servers and services for free with little to no profit while people help you build and test your game. For an mmo this usually takes at least 2 years.
I think creating an experience you can share with your friends or community of any size is fundamentally what an mmo is, and focusing on making quality content is what scaling multiplayer games do a million times better than mmos. Take Minecraft for example, it may not be similar to the game you are imagining but its supports server sizes from a single client .exe to thousands players in a world that feels infinitely large. I think with your unique game mechanic (ie:survival and crafting) as an objective you can do away with everything repetitive about mmos and you can do away with mmos altogether. Not only is this a safer endeavor but you are appealing to a larger demographic of gamers making the potential for a successful game/series/business.
TechLord laid out a golden formula for this type of indie game development and I hope you seriously consider their methods.
I suggest you create the experience you want to have in a game and leave scale up to its users. Make the game, put it on steam, play it with your friends. You have nothing but your time to lose and you can have something playable while you scale it up.
I’m not got going to crap on anyone’s dreams based off how much money they have in their budget, I think looking for volunteers is perfectly valid assuming you can find them. You should make this project a realistic as possible especially if you want other people to get behind your ideas and share your ambitions. But if you have £200 - £300 than you should think about the best way to spend that money and buying non-unique content is probably it. Otherwise you should probably work on a per-asset payment system and take peoples time in to account.
Also, I just want to say I think people should be a bit more mechanically descriptive when recruiting for their games. Everyone has a story they want to tell or mmo/battle royale they want to make, but what makes your game a game. With out disclosing intellectual property, it would be nice if people would better explain some of the game mechanics they want to incorporate. Saying you want to make an “mmo” sounds to me that you simply want to make W.O.W. clone, although I’m sure that’s not true.
I think that what I stated is legitimate advice and I don’t think anyone who dismisses what TechLord or myself said as unjustified criticism is thinking very rationally.
I truly hope you find this insightful and don’t think I’m trying to deter you from ultimately making an mmo.
Good luck,
Cheers.
enearle