I am affashinated about MMORPG so I keep looking at people posts about their mmo projects, what it comes in my mind is this question “what do you really need to build an mmorpg?”. I am really looking for someone to answer me this question, yeh, of course what you need depends on the size of the mmo, but let’s say, I want to build something “small” at the begining to release it as soon as possible, in this small box I want to put:
fantasy mmorpg
player lvl will be 30
2 races, 4 classes
a decent character customization system
mmorpg standard systems (chat, inventory, bank, party, guild, skills, crafting)
a starting world with the size of half GTA San Andreas map (the world will contain 3 major cities)
10 instance dungeons
the mmorpg will use crosshair
the game graphic will be something like uhmp Tera Online (which uses UE3)
So what do I need to build something like this? With a small team composed by 12-15 elements how much time will it take? And what about the money, how much do you need to build this game?
If you guys could answer these questions would be really cool
Much less than that tbh. What you need is knowledge on network systems, database architecture, and a fine template called the MMO Starter Kit (it’s in the marketplace forums). You also need to get yourself a server or 2, and know about virtualization.
If you were to purchase all of those assets, or 3dsMax plugins to create said assets, you’re looking at right around $2500 or so (CityEngine is the most expensive at $500). But that does not include the cost of the different programs. For example, you will want to get Autodesk Creation Suite, which is about $2,000, the character can come from Mixamo, BonesPro, WorldMachine.
Time? Well, it depends on prior knowledge. It shouldn’t take long to get a sample prototype out if you use OTS stuff.
I would say way more than $1 million. “2 races, 4 classes, a decent character customization system, chat, inventory, bank, party, guild, skills, crafting, size of half GTA San Andreas map”, that’s a lot. And even with $10 million it will take you probably more than 2 years.
It depends on how much time you can invest and what you want to do. Don’t let those negative answers discourage you. I would say, start small and be prepared to throw your first attempt away. When you learn a new technique, you will learn as you go.
All these negative answers… even from Mods… i expected more!
Anything is possible with time… you could spend $500-$1M depending on how you want the game to look, what graphics you want, if you want it online or not?..
you could spend 1 year and loads of money for a big team, workshop, and advertising…
or you could do it all yourself and spend 10 years?
How are plugins supposed to make all of your assets? You can’t buy all of the assets you’d need, unless you don’t care what the game looks like. If you have a team of 20 low-paid workers for a year that’s at least $1 million.
If you have enough time and an unpaid/hobby team, it wont cost anything (except of the servers), otherwise you will surely have to pay $1 million (of course it depends on the quality, features,…)
he never said anything about quality… just graphics fidelity, which is easy enough to pull off; and plugins don’t create your assets, they help you create them. Usually faster and easier than what you could if you did not have said plugin.
You may have bought the plugins but you don’t have the assets unless you pay someone for it–which will cost much much more than $2,500. Chances are unlikely that you would find an artist who isn’t terrible that would do the work for free. Even with plugins to speed things up it will still take a team of artists quite some time to build all of the content, which would add up to quite a lot of money.
money and lots of it (this may get old hearing it but your gonna need servers if you want a big population, login servers, databases, world servers, etc)
time/patience, this will not be a 3-4 month project its gonna push you to your limit be ready for a journey
knowledge/skill, luckily in today’s time knowledge is everywhere
an mmo is a huge hurdle that normally runs in the multi millions of dollars. BUT you are not forced to follow the norm, start small and in chunks and work your way up. and if you fail you will have likely gained some amazing experience for your next attempt
