I think MMOs are very much in reach of hobbyist designers, but only those of the Hockey variety.

Have you looked at Hero Engine?

Granted someone doesn't think they'll make WoW 2.0 I think an MMO is actually an achievable goal for a dedicated hobby developer.

In my opinion, an ORPG is an achievable goal provided the lead developer has a few things:
1) He has time.
2) He has help.
3) He has experience.
4) He has motivation.
5) The amount of game content needed to be created is small*.
6) He has good tools.
7) He doesn't reinvent the wheel.


*[size="1"]Either due to a small game world, or due to procedurally generating almost everything.

I was a major part of a small 2D ORPG for 3 1/2 years (not as the leader, and not as the programmer) - never got completed. Regardless, it was a very good learning experience, and I enjoyed it very much. But it takes a very serious time commitment and, because of that, serious motivation because the development time will drag on and on (3 and a 1/2 years!). And what better way to be motivated, then to have others working alongside you? Also, for any game of any real scale, good tools to create content for the game are a requirement. Easy to use tools are even better, because then you can teach them to others to help churn out content.

Blizzard has went on record saying there are 5.5 million lines of code to WoW. No clue how they came to that metric so they might be counting whitespace and comments to inflate the numbers. Either way, that is way out of the realm of possibility for a small indie team.

5.5 M lines doesn't mean anything to me. Lines of code does not 1:1 translate to how much a product solves. 5 Million lines of code for a single person translates to 10 lines per minute over a period of 3 years. When I have a good game-plan, I can code about 20 lines probably max in a minute, but then there is running and testing (other time you are not coding), but if you have another programmer on your team or two, then your even more solid. 2 programmers in my opinion is way better than 20. More easily managed code, less bugs / easier to resolve bugs, more efficient.

5 Million lines of code for a single person translates to 10 lines per minute over a period of 3 years.

There is no developer capable of achieving that.


WoW has been in development for ~8-10 years. Assuming 50 developers full time, 2080 hours in a work year, this gives ~7 lines of code per hour. This is a very realistic number.

I can code about 20 lines probably max in a minute
No, you can't.

Your typing speed can peak at 20 lines per minute. It's the average across project lifetime that matters. This takes into account debugging, meetings, feature testing, coffee breaks, infrastructure downtime, training and everything else.

It's true that a runner can finish the track in under 10 seconds. That is not their average running speed. A project matters only as a whole.

Blizzard has went on record saying there are 5.5 million lines of code to WoW. No clue how they came to that metric so they might be counting whitespace and comments to inflate the numbers. Either way, that is way out of the realm of possibility for a small indie team.

5.5 M lines doesn't mean anything to me. Lines of code does not 1:1 translate to how much a product solves. 5 Million lines of code for a single person translates to 10 lines per minute over a period of 3 years. When I have a good game-plan, I can code about 20 lines probably max in a minute, but then there is running and testing (other time you are not coding), but if you have another programmer on your team or two, then your even more solid. 2 programmers in my opinion is way better than 20. More easily managed code, less bugs / easier to resolve bugs, more efficient.


Its pretty obvious you haven't worked professionally on anything large scale then. AAA games are all about turning a profit for the publisher. Do you really think Activision would have OK'd the millions spent on salaries for all the people at Infinity Ward to make Modern Warfare 2 if you and your friend could have just made the game in your moms basement?

I should amend my stance too. Writting a WoW killer from scratch is out of the reach of any casual developer but if they don't want to reinvent every wheel and use something like Hero Engine (I worked on a game using HE1 and its a mighty fine tool) then it becomes more feasible. But I don't think people quite realize the scale of a true MMO and want to call anything that supports more then two players online a MMO.

Do you really think Activision would have OK'd the millions spent on salaries for all the people at Infinity Ward to make Modern Warfare 2 if you and your friend could have just made the game in your moms basement?

I'm just talking code. Activision doesn't just employ programmers. There are way more art/design jobs as well as management which is a huge and needed chunk. I'm not saying anything is going to be WoW, I'm strictly talking the code, IE no art production other than placeholder drawings. There was an article about a guy that made an MMO engine in a day or something, I don't know how many players it supported or what its extent was, he was apparently just proving a point.

Its pretty obvious you haven't worked professionally on anything large scale then. AAA games are all about turning a profit for the publisher. Do you really think Activision would have OK'd the millions spent on salaries for all the people at Infinity Ward to make Modern Warfare 2 if you and your friend could have just made the game in your moms basement?

Have you read mythical man month? Not saying 2 people could make CoD, but there's definitely a lot of poor quality code and bureaucratic time wasting on larger teams that just doesn't happen on teams with just a handful of skilled people

edit: and like I said above, the programming is not the limiting part of making an MMO feasible. A skilled programmer could probably develop all the code needed for a well designed MMO. The problem is developing content, which is a monumental task compared to creating the actual engine the game runs on. Not to poo poo the game, but when you think of the amount of quests, zones, creatures, instances, classes, skills, crafting, items, etc it becomes ridiculous. Each item has stats, rankings, names, descriptions, and art. Each quest-line has non-trivial amounts of text/description and scripting required. Each creature has skills, stats, descriptions, art, and probably back story. Each class needs to be balanced, have it's own balanced items, have it's own interesting class quest lines, have their own unique purpose.

It is mind bottling the amount of non-programming needed for an MMO.

It all depends on the quality of work. MMO really just needs networking code to qualify it as an MMO. Could be a text-based MMO game. I think indie games overall are less quality than big budget games, but they can still be achieved. I dont know of any indie MMO's but there could be some already or in the works.

1. Number of indie game projects started
2. Number of indie games shipped
3. Number of successful indie games
4. Number of successful indie MMOs

As hard as it is to get from 1 to 3, it's at least 10 times harder to get from 3 to 4. So...why?