I don't know why its so surprising that people under 21 have an unrealistic view of the world.

This.


MMOs are just this generation's "great American novel." Young people have been grasping at goals far beyond their reach since the dawn of time.


It's not all bad, because some of those people really do turn out to do amazing things, but either way, it's hardly surprising to me.

I think part of it is the fault of non gamers always trashing gaming as lazy and frivolous.

It's not just non-gamers; the number of gamers I see tossing around terms like 'lazy' and 'unoptimised' shows they have no idea about the world of game development either.

(and at times makes me question why I bother when I could make considerably more cash for less work else where...)

I think its perfectly fine to have over ambitious ideas in the the beginning, it helps them keep the passion alive, and propels their education further. I think what entices them about MMO's is that they get to create their own world where they make the rules.

I think what entices them about MMO's is that they get to create their own world where they make the rules.

Why is that different from any other game type?

edit: I think the real problem is setting goals you are not fully prepared to work toward. Even over ambitious goals can result in successes (maybe not through attaining the goals, but by getting closer to them than you anticipated), but if you aren't prepared to actually push for that goal, you're going to fail.

With smaller bite sized goals, it's much easier to pour yourself into it because there isn't a mountain of unknowns. You can plan your journey, you know what to expect, and you're able to guage how far you've gone/have to go.

I think another reason behind why it's always an MMO is because the free-to-play MMOs are usually poorly designed and other MMOs with competent designers are designed around the restrictions of making an MMO. When a person who does not know the design restrictions of networking an MMO sees these games and plays them, they think "This would be so much better if (insert statement here which basically sums up to 'trillions more dollars were spent creating this game')". At the time, they won't know how difficult it will be to properly and smoothly implement their best-ever ideas into an MMO environment.

I started with the idea of making an MMO, though I was put on the right path by the nice people here at GameDev before I started a Help Wanted thread and wasted more of others' time. Now, I'm aware of how unrealistic it is, have learned a huge amount about game development and game design, and found out I actually enjoy parts of the development phase other than design and writing (though those two are still my favorite).

<rant>
I must say, it is very frustrating to see how poorly MMOs and MOs are being handled in the free-to-play market. In an MOFPS that I once enjoyed, the developers added a new piece of body equipment to the shop with the same stats as another piece, only with less defense and a higher price. The game had potential, but it went under for a year or so, got picked up by Aeria Games, who changed the name to "Repulse", and now it's been thrashed by their greed and the terrible designers who worked on it. Despite various crash-related errors still lurking about in the client, the game hasn't been updated in probably 6 months other than new "deals" they introduce for their real-money currency. "Buy a bodysuit with Aeria Points, get another for half off! Oh, and make sure you don't buy that one we put added that's worse than another, but costs more than it!"
Not only that, but they've pretty much made it pay-to-win as well with their Aeria Points and inability to make basic game design related calculations.
</rant>, also known as "I'm done whining"

As someone who spent the greater upper-half of his formative years on the world wide web (I'm now 20 years old), I have to say that people who grew up using the internet definitely feel it's ok to announce ideas, rather than finished products. I myself am guilty of this, I've had so many ideas for games and have said multiple times on another forum what it was going to be and when I would have it finished. I never even started most of them.

A lot of the times, the people who say "I'm going to make an MMORPG" don't even realize that it's a LOT of work to make some small games, let alone a huge game like WoW. Again, I am guilty of this, and started running before my legs had even developed properly, after I started learning DarkBASIC.

As to why people want so badly to make an MMO, I have no idea. I've never wanted to make one until recently, and I understand that it's going to take YEEEEAAAARRRRRS, even with a tool like Unity to get it going. But to me, that's more fun to have!

Why is it that the title of this thread is the most consistent thing that comes through on game design. What is it about MMO's that enables people to overlook the multiple people needed to build, enormous sums of money to pay for it in the first place and still say with a straight face:

I have an idea for an MMO.

It isnt just this, Facebook / Twitter has created a storm of "I have an idea of a social network / website", fortunately they all drown in PHP sites, same goes for Flash with all those awful web games.

I do think the word hard / easy should be taboo when dealing with projects, completing any project can be time consuming careless of whether its a game or a website and think when people say something is hard what they are really trying to say is "its time consuming".

I believe that anyone can strategically achieve anything alone, whether a MMO or world domination (ok that was a stretch), theres been far too many cases in the world where a single person has achieved so much alone or at least in a much smaller team but sadly these "I want to make the next best thing" people usually have money on the mind, no real goal except to 'finish the game' and their project / plan is little more than a post it saying "Make WoW clone before birthday!" and typically their learning material is a "Making an MMO for dummies" book.

Saying that making an MMO imo is probably one of the best projects a person can do, it covers massive areas of programming and learning in general, its a fun effort filled project and even if you fail you will have obtained enormous amounts of knowledge just trying to make one, the engine / framework you will likely create will be reusable for smaller projects anyway so you could quite possibly fall back to a standard game too. However if you dont like reading, dont enjoy researching and dont have patience or time this is likely a bad idea from the start, making a game (MMO or not) covers a lot of fun areas of programming and maths, the learning experience alone makes it an excellent goal, sadly most people focus on all the $$/fame they will obtain and not the knowledge they will acquire.

I think the Dunning-Kruger effect link is one of the best sarcastic comments I have ever seen on this site. I have used it when answering questions on Yahoo Answers and other forums.