Yes, you are dreaming too big. Even the smartest, most dedicated and ____EXPERIENCED____ person would find what you are attempting to be pretty daunting.
If you don't want to listen to people try to dissuade you (which is exactly what you just asked everybody to do) you should just jump in and start creating. In a year or two you will figure out what you are doing wrong and correct it, start over, or go in a different direction. Look at how other people are doing the stuff you want to emulate. And it sounds like you are starting from the top, with all the minute details, like voice acting. I would not even worry about that for a looooooong time, and that can _easily_ (comparatively) be bolted on at a later date. You want to make some completely open-ended, intricately detailed 3-d world where you can do anything, attain whatever social status, do almost any action and have all the actors respond appropriately. And you have never made a game before? Good luck!

Honestly, don't. Start with a small "snapshot" of what you are attempting. Say, one tiny, isolated hamlet, and see what issues you encounter.

1. I hate to complain, and I mean really really hate to complain, because I'd hate to make anyone angry, but I felt like there was some pessimism or at least some negative viewpoints directed at me simply because I was new to all of this.
2. I came back to ask for recommended engines for an Open-World style game.
can UDK be used to create a large open-world style game?

1. Toughen your skin. Let it all roll off you like water off a duck. It's not sticks and stones that'll break your bones.
2. This type of question does not belong in Game Design. Ask engine questions in the For Beginners forum, please.

To answer your question about UDK, basically no, you can't unles you modify the engine A LOT. The engine was made for co-op games of at most 64 players, and not for MMOs (I know this because I spent months learning about UDK to try and make my MMO). It has been done before, though (Chronicles of Spellborn), but they basically completely rewrote the server-client framework and they were all very experienced game devs.

I do think all of your ideas are fantastic and that you are asking great questions. Voice acting I think can make a game much more entertaining if it is done right, and if you have decent voice actors. For example in KOTOR 2, all the NPC are voice acted and I loved it, I thought it made it a much more gripping game. Although, if you cannot find decent voice actors, or do it yourself (if you are SO talented that you can make many different voices), then don't so it at first and add it later.

With magic, I do think your idea is sound, but as other people have said, too much required complexity can be a throwoff. Maybe use your idea but have built in spell templates they can use.

And for a background story, either way is fine, either they have a background and they react off that, or they start off fresh and make their own story.

And back to engines, I would say do not use UDK, if you want to make an MMO, use an engine made for MMOs, I would say Torque, BigWorld, or HeeoEngine. HeroEngine is by far the best option (my opinion), but it costs $5000 (not too much compared to others). The bad part about BigWorld is with the cheap version you can only have 10,000 player accounts, which is not many at all, and then if you want more you will have to pay a small fortune to get it. I have never tried Torque, could be a viable option.

You could go with my strategy on this, I, like you, have been making games with GameMaker since I was 10, and learned programming when I was around 8, with the idea of making an MMO in my head the whole time. I decided I wanted to use HeroEngine after a very long process of making games with PHP, GM, and Java (I even made a networked java game where you could talk and use items and gain levels and stuff, but I later decided I would not make my own engine). HeroEngine caught my eye like something that really catches your eye. I obviously cannot afford that, so I'm using my UDK experience that I got from playing arou d trying to learn how to make an MMO to make a smaller tower defense game that I can sell to make enough to buy HeroEngine.

I wish you nothing... but the very best of luck on your project, and I can't wait to see it finished.

To answer your question about UDK, basically no, you can't unless you modify the engine A LOT. The engine was made for co-op games of at most 64 players, and not for MMOs

. . .

And back to engines, I would say do not use UDK, if you want to make an MMO, use an engine made for MMOs

To be clear, I don't see anything in Martut's posts indicating that this is intended to be MMO or even multiplayer.

Oh, yes, I don't either, thats just the kinda vibe I got off of his post, ignore all that stuff about MMOs I said, yes UDK could be a good option, I can even help you out getting it started if you want me to.

Voice Acting:

If you haven't already, go play Morrowind, and compare with Oblivion. While much of the conversation is still very generic and copy-pasted, there is a much greater sense of interaction in Morrowind. Not having every line voice acted allows a lot more different conversation options.
The voice acting in Oblivion received a lot of criticism - many gamers found that everyone sounding the same was more jarring than if no-one said anything at all. Also bear in mind that voice acting costs money, and takes up disc space...

So the real answer is to get 10,000 voice actors.

Yes, you are dreaming too big. Even the smartest, most dedicated and ____EXPERIENCED____ person would find what you are attempting to be pretty daunting.
If you don't want to listen to people try to dissuade you (which is exactly what you just asked everybody to do) you should just jump in and start creating. In a year or two you will figure out what you are doing wrong and correct it, start over, or go in a different direction. Look at how other people are doing the stuff you want to emulate. And it sounds like you are starting from the top, with all the minute details, like voice acting. I would not even worry about that for a looooooong time, and that can _easily_ (comparatively) be bolted on at a later date. You want to make some completely open-ended, intricately detailed 3-d world where you can do anything, attain whatever social status, do almost any action and have all the actors respond appropriately. And you have never made a game before? Good luck!

Honestly, don't. Start with a small "snapshot" of what you are attempting. Say, one tiny, isolated hamlet, and see what issues you encounter.

That's exactly what I was planning to do. Try to get it working and then after I can prove the concept of the game is working, get it all figured out form up a team so that we can get to work.

Thank you so much for you input though. Honestly, I'm taking all of the advice I get to heart.

I've worked with a couple of game engine systems with social systems inside of them, and I know basically the foundations of how it'll work in my head. That's my long-term dream, I suppose I'm going to make a bunch of smaller systems to make sure I can combine them all together, as was suggested before.

I'll need to define variables and attach specific values to each individual NPC (if I decide to make it that advanced), so that they will have the illusion of personality. A person with a high... "Confidence" stat, let's say, may be simply more likely to run after you if you attack them or someone they have a high "relationship" stat with. Besides the pre-set stat, having a weapon could raise the stat, having armor could raise the stat, and depleting health would lower it. The relationships could easily be very simplistic and just a "How Much I Like This Person", with a couple things, such as factions, effecting the relationship. Much of it would be scripted, so I'd need to get a global foundation down first defining what characteristics they are and how they effect the NPCs. I'm thinking about starting the social system first, as it's the most advanced and I can learn the most from all of the inevitable mess-ups. I don't consider mess-ups failures because you learn more through them than successes.

Besides that, there's also the entire realm of how they treat the player, I'm not counting on having NPCs doing much to each-other randomly because that is highly unrealistic. It'd be very tasking and pretty useless to create a gigantic system describing that because person "X" lives near person "Y" they have a "Z" percentage of doing "A" to them. I could simply give them schedules that make them do specific things, or choose from a list of things to do. That's also much better than a "I do everything due to computer generated response" system because it gives the option to create habits and quirks. For example: someone sitting by a pond and writing. It'd just be an animation of course, but it'd be interesting to pass by and see a person doing so.

[quote name='Martut' timestamp='1298410395' post='4777711']
1. I hate to complain, and I mean really really hate to complain, because I'd hate to make anyone angry, but I felt like there was some pessimism or at least some negative viewpoints directed at me simply because I was new to all of this.
2. I came back to ask for recommended engines for an Open-World style game.
can UDK be used to create a large open-world style game?

1. Toughen your skin. Let it all roll off you like water off a duck. It's not sticks and stones that'll break your bones.
2. This type of question does not belong in Game Design. Ask engine questions in the For Beginners forum, please.
[/quote]
1. Thank you.
2. I'm awfully sorry, thank you for letting me know. I overthink things sometimes, so somehow I thought it'd be okay to post those kinds of questions here. I'll go there with that question.

Oh, yes, I don't either, thats just the kinda vibe I got off of his post, ignore all that stuff about MMOs I said, yes UDK could be a good option, I can even help you out getting it started if you want me to.

Excellent, I'm currently doing some of the tutorials to see what I can do with this, exactly. But, I guess this isn't the forum to discuss this sort of thing . I'll be sure to look you up if I have some questions.

[quote name='Sandman' timestamp='1297252636' post='4771826']
Voice Acting:

If you haven't already, go play Morrowind, and compare with Oblivion. While much of the conversation is still very generic and copy-pasted, there is a much greater sense of interaction in Morrowind. Not having every line voice acted allows a lot more different conversation options.
The voice acting in Oblivion received a lot of criticism - many gamers found that everyone sounding the same was more jarring than if no-one said anything at all. Also bear in mind that voice acting costs money, and takes up disc space...

So the real answer is to get 10,000 voice actors.
[/quote]
Haha, yeah right. I've been thinking that maybe people can say a few words as a greeting, so that it won't be so strange if there's a lot of people in one area and there's a "crowd" noise. But, like it's been mentioned before, I should get the groundwork set up.

you can also email me at conqueralltime@yahoo.com, I can give you basics on how to make a HUD, make enemies that are aggresive and not, how to set up the game config and stuff like that =) Basically I can help you get all the groundwork set up which is what you need right now to get it going.

Maybe an alternative to voice acting would be to just do sounds like grunts, sighs, growls, laughs, etc. This wouldn't give you complete silence, but such a small short sound can be repetitive without being annoying. Just don't overuse it.