Thanks for the info everyone, I guess I'll give flash a shot. I don't know why, but I was thinking it would be easier to make a rpg in flash but I think it's going to take just as much work or close to as working with C++ and APIs.

If you're still there here's a tutorial on using the FlashDevelop IDE to develop a small program in ActionScript 3
Tutorial

If you're worried that someone might decompile your game, there are SWF code obfuscaters available, though I haven't had much luck with them.

I think it's possible to make a flash RPG but there are several limitations you have to face. Framerate has been mentioned already, if you're planning to make a web game, try not to go over 30 fps, as most browsers don't allow flash to take too much CPU time. But there are some hacks to get around that.

There is also a limit on how much code you can have in a single class file, about a maximum of 32k. So you might have to restructure your code late into the project if you're not careful. This is no longer an issue with Actionscript 3.

Another thing you have to watch out for is compilation times. As your project gets larger, compile times could increase exponentially. It may depend on the type of graphics you decide to use and how much animation you have (vector graphics probably take longer). If you're using Actionscript 2, there's a nice utility called MTASC, which will just replace your old code in your already compiled SWFs, taking a lot less time.

There are MMOs in Flash/Flex out there... Club Penguin is well known for instance. And SmartFoxServer is a Flash games server written especially to let you write multiplayer games.

Flash is a very viable platform for games (although I'd recommend Flex for developing AS 3.0 rather than than Flash tools if you're a programmer)

I've been using Flash a lot recently as part of my uni course. There's definately a lot of growth coming for the platform over the coming months - starting a project now is an excellent time to catch the new advancements.

The forthcoming version of Flash Player (10) will apparently have hardware 3D acceleration built in, plus the 2.0 version of the 3D engine PaperVision should be done by then, so there's no reason why in-depth time-consuming games can't be in the future for Flash - and I'm talking months, not years, for this to happen.

For example, my team's project involves PaperVision, which we then wrote controls and modified the camera to be like a FPS engine for our game. We want play sessions to be around 30-60 minutes at a time, but the game itself lasts for much longer (or will when it's done), so we will offer the facility to save progress. The art is done in Maya and exported as Collada so PaperVision can read it. There's collision detection and we could even get a physics engine imported to play with if we wanted. We haven't implemented it yet, but sound libraries are there in Flash already - 3D positional if you want to go into it. Currently, performance is reasonable: 16-20 FPS on a mid-spec PC in Flash Player 9.

Our game probably won't be widely released, although we are working with the BBC in our concept stages, etc., so who knows. But I can guarantee that other organisations (including the BBC themselves) are VERY keen on this Flash expansion - one of our contacts there is a dev on the PaperVision team - and will be supporting it in the future.

Like I say, a platform to consider.