I think anyone still in the camp of "it can be done" are missing something simple. It's been alluded to already but I'll restate it again.

Writing a game that's server based multiplayer, even if it's persistent, just adds the MO part. To get that other M, the game needs to be, er, massive. That's it. How is one guy or even a small team going to make something that anyone would look at and say "wow, that's not just big, it's massive!". Answer: None, regardless of competence levels.

The fact that newbies think they can do it is laughable and only good for a fun poke. When good developers talk about doing one, they're just redefining the "M" bit to mean "minimal".

Bottom line: To make an online game that is truly massive, even if the code and assets just dropped into your lap one day, you'd still need to spend more money than you've ever earned to date in your life on servers, server staffing and customer support

I think there are some different definitions of MMO going on here. The M stands for a massive amount of players playing together, not necessarily a massive game, content or mechanic wise.

[size="1"]When most people talk about MMOs, they talk about Wow, Everquest, etc, and those are not achievable by a hobbyist. However, MOST AAA titles are unachievable by a hobbyist. No one is going to say that a FPS is unachievable because a hobbyist will never be able to program a Half-life 2 or a Call of Duty 2.
[size="1"]
Furcadia is an MMO and consisted of a team of 4 people.
Runescape was started by 3 peopole
[font="sans-serif"]Eternal Lands was started on Gamedev.net by a small group.[/font]
[font="sans-serif"]Kingdom of Loathing pushes the limits of what a MMORPG is, but with 100,000 daily players, and many of which you can directly interact and chat with, I think it qualifies.[/font]
[size="1"] [font="sans-serif"]
[/font][font="sans-serif"]If anything, recreating something at the "graphical mud" level is easier to achieve now than when these games were first produced, since more free tools are available now than in 1994 or 2003. Not that thousands of people interacting is "easy" in any sense of the word, but I would describe it as achievable.[/font]

[quote name='Rubicon' timestamp='1296903346' post='4769949']
I think anyone still in the camp of "it can be done" are missing something simple. It's been alluded to already but I'll restate it again.

Writing a game that's server based multiplayer, even if it's persistent, just adds the MO part. To get that other M, the game needs to be, er, massive. That's it. How is one guy or even a small team going to make something that anyone would look at and say "wow, that's not just big, it's massive!". Answer: None, regardless of competence levels.

The fact that newbies think they can do it is laughable and only good for a fun poke. When good developers talk about doing one, they're just redefining the "M" bit to mean "minimal".

Bottom line: To make an online game that is truly massive, even if the code and assets just dropped into your lap one day, you'd still need to spend more money than you've ever earned to date in your life on servers, server staffing and customer support

I think there are some different definitions of MMO going on here. The M stands for a massive amount of players playing together, not necessarily a massive game, content or mechanic wise.
[/quote]Yes and no. It's probably a case that an indie team defines massive as a thousand?. A thousand isn't massive though, it's merely "a bit big". To me, "massive" means a million players and that's not going to fit on your pc in the corner. Especially when to get a million players you do in fact need massive content else they won't come.

But I don't want to get into a fight about it. People bend titles/headings/definitions to fit there own goals all the time and I'm quite possibly being contrarian for the hell of it...

Yes and no. It's probably a case that an indie team defines massive as a thousand?. A thousand isn't massive though, it's merely "a bit big". To me, "massive" means a million players and that's not going to fit on your pc in the corner. Especially when to get a million players you do in fact need massive content else they won't come.

But I don't want to get into a fight about it. People bend titles/headings/definitions to fit there own goals all the time and I'm quite possibly being contrarian for the hell of it...

There aren't a million players in any MMO server right now. The largest most populated NA WoW servers are still under 50,000 players. The smallest NA WoW server has less than 2,000 players.

[quote name='Rubicon' timestamp='1296951124' post='4770201']
Yes and no. It's probably a case that an indie team defines massive as a thousand?. A thousand isn't massive though, it's merely "a bit big". To me, "massive" means a million players and that's not going to fit on your pc in the corner. Especially when to get a million players you do in fact need massive content else they won't come.

But I don't want to get into a fight about it. People bend titles/headings/definitions to fit there own goals all the time and I'm quite possibly being contrarian for the hell of it...

There aren't a million players in any MMO server right now. The largest most populated NA WoW servers are still under 50,000 players. The smallest NA WoW server has less than 2,000 players.
[/quote]

I have no idea what WoW's max concurrent players per server is but that should also be taken into account.

beyond the limit of concurrent users then more users don't really even matter, more servers would be required but pretty much the same amount of people would be playing together at any given point.

I think anyone still in the camp of "it can be done" are missing something simple. It's been alluded to already but I'll restate it again.

Writing a game that's server based multiplayer, even if it's persistent, just adds the MO part. To get that other M, the game needs to be, er, massive. That's it. How is one guy or even a small team going to make something that anyone would look at and say "wow, that's not just big, it's massive!". Answer: None, regardless of competence levels.

Unless:
A) You leverage community created content, or...
B) You procedurally generate 99% of everything in your game, or...
C) You find some other creative way to get around your own lack of time and motivation to create the content.

[font="sans-serif"]Necessity [/font]is the mother of invention (or something like that).

A thousand isn't massive though, it's merely "a bit big". To me, "massive" means a million players and that's not going to fit on your pc in the corner.

By your definition, the only real MMORPGs are Lineage, Lineage 2, World of Warcraft, and RuneScape. Other well known "MMOs" by AAA publishers have failed to hit the million subscriber milestone.
Speaking of RuneScape... wasn't that made by a small independant team?

From Wikipedia: [article]
[font="sans-serif"]Andrew Gower[/font] [font="sans-serif"]developed[/font] [font="sans-serif"]RuneScape[/font] [font="sans-serif"]with the assistance of his brother Paul Gower.[/font][font="sans-serif"][sup][2][/sup][/font] [font="sans-serif"]It was originally conceived as a text-based[/font] [font="sans-serif"]MUD[/font][font="sans-serif"], but graphics were incorporated early in development, adding it to the ranks of what were then known as "[/font][font="sans-serif"]graphical MUDs[/font][font="sans-serif"]".[/font][font="sans-serif"][sup][39][/sup][/font][font="sans-serif"][sup][40][/sup][/font] [font="sans-serif"]The first public version of the game utilised a mixture of[/font] [font="sans-serif"]three-dimensional[/font] [font="sans-serif"]and[/font] [font="sans-serif"]two-dimensional[/font] [font="sans-serif"]sprites[/font][font="sans-serif"]. It was released as a beta version on 4 January 2001, and originally operated out of their parents' house in[/font] [font="sans-serif"]Nottingham[/font][font="sans-serif"].[/font][font="sans-serif"][sup][2][/sup][/font] [font="sans-serif"]In December 2001, the Gower brothers, along with Constant Tedder, formed[/font] [font="sans-serif"]Jagex[/font] [font="sans-serif"]to take over the business aspects of running[/font] [font="sans-serif"]RuneScape[/font][font="sans-serif"].[/font][font="sans-serif"][sup][11][/sup][/font][/quote][font="sans-serif"][sup][/sup][/font]

Also of interest: "[font="sans-serif"]Each RuneScape server allows up to 2,000 players to log in simultaneously,[sup][60][/sup] allowing a maximum capacity of more than 340,000 players."[/font]
[font="sans-serif"]What does "Massive" mean: the number of servers running, or the number of players on each server?[/font]

Especially when to get a million players you do in fact need massive content else they won't come.[/quote]
Minecraft doesn't have "massive content". It has a limited amount of content that can end up being used in a myriad of interesting ways. (Minecraft isn't a MMO, I know, but they sold over a million copies, so I thought it worth pointing out) I think more MMOs will go the 'sandbox' route as it'll allow for emergent gameplay better, which will keep people interested for longer as well as be self-advertising with people uploading their unique-ish experiences online, while requiring less hand-crafted content from the developers.

[hr]
I think a big problem with the name "MMORPG" is that it describes a goal, not a genre. If I wanted to make a FPS, and Valve Software wanted to make a FPS, they'll both be the same genre. However, "MMORPG" describes a goal: 'massive' (whether you are defining 'massive' to mean content, world size, subscribers). Since it's describing a goal, not a genre, that means a game that wasn't an MMORPG early in it's life, can become an MMO later in it's life, just by increased player count or world expansions. With the exception of World of Warcraft and Lineage 2, no game hit 1 million subscribers within it's first year of release (at least, as of 2008).
This is why ORPG is so much a better term than MMORPG. World of Warcraft is a commercially successful ORPG. Success is also relative. If I made a game, and had 1,000 subscribers, I'd consider it successful for me as an individual.

I think anyone still in the camp of "it can be done" are missing something simple. It's been alluded to already but I'll restate it again.

Writing a game that's server based multiplayer, even if it's persistent, just adds the MO part. To get that other M, the game needs to be, er, massive. That's it. How is one guy or even a small team going to make something that anyone would look at and say "wow, that's not just big, it's massive!". Answer: None, regardless of competence levels.

The fact that newbies think they can do it is laughable and only good for a fun poke. When good developers talk about doing one, they're just redefining the "M" bit to mean "minimal".

Bottom line: To make an online game that is truly massive, even if the code and assets just dropped into your lap one day, you'd still need to spend more money than you've ever earned to date in your life on servers, server staffing and customer support

This is what I've been trying to say. Creating a MO is not that big of a stretch, adding that extra 'M' is. A lot of people here seem to think that any kind of online game is a MMO. Judging by some posts a MMO is even easier to make then Pong. Of course the term MMO is high subjective but I wouldn't consider any game that runs on a single server to be a MMO.

Runescape is thrown around a lot. Yeah sure it started with three people but it sure didn't end with three people and they certainly weren't working for charity. I would sure love to see a Runescape type game that was made for free. It certainly hasn't been done through any help wanted post on this forum as far as I know.

Judging from this thread I have to assume there are a bunch of posters working on hobby MMOs just ready to burst on to the scene. Otherwise I have to take all the "MMOs are easy" and "user generated content will make it a MMO" with a grain of salt.

Jesus why does everyone on this board have to be so pedantic the whole time. I take a deep breath every time I post in case something I say might be as much as 1% out. A million is massive to me. Maybe only a few games make that, it was just an out of ass number. Perhaps "massive" should officially mean only a quarter million. Let's ask the OED. Maybe WOW really only has ten players online at once.

If you're doing a boutique MO game and want to call it an MMO, go right ahead. Especially if you only need one server, which is pretty much the definition of "not massive" to the rest of us. No content either? Great, where can I sign.

Now cite the one exception that proves I'm talking out of my ass... Minecraft probably.I don't know why I get into these, it was a religion one last week. You know, the God version, not the "my definition is better than yours" one.

Rant over now. What stupid_programmer said +1

Jesus why does everyone on this board have to be so pedantic the whole time. I take a deep breath every time I post in case something I say might be as much as 1% out. A million is massive to me. Maybe only a few games make that, it was just an out of ass number. Perhaps "massive" should officially mean only a quarter million. Let's ask the OED. Maybe WOW really only has ten players online at once.

If you're doing a boutique MO game and want to call it an MMO, go right ahead. Especially if you only need one server, which is pretty much the definition of "not massive" to the rest of us. No content either? Great, where can I sign.

Now cite the one exception that proves I'm talking out of my ass... Minecraft probably.I don't know why I get into these, it was a religion one last week. You know, the God version, not the "my definition is better than yours" one.

Rant over now. What stupid_programmer said +1

Who cares about a quarter million players? Beyond a full servers worth there is no effect on the player by the other 248,000 players, so they might as well not even exist. I get that you think a MMO needs hundreds of thousands of players to be considered massive but by concurrent users per server 2000 is considered massive.

Someone else said it was about the players so I was just playing along. I get your point though and agree that once your environment is well populated then upper limits are indeed just fluff.

Someone above said they could do it all with procedural content and player generated stuff. Which is fine, I'm not knocking it. But how would you attach the superlative "massive" to something like that? You just can't. It's just an online game and in my world there's nothing wrong with online games.