I've wanted to make a multiplayer RPG for a long time, though not necessarily an MMO. In a lot of ways, Neverwinter Nights is what I want to make, if only it were... IDK... not such a shitty interface.

I was first interested in game design and programming back when I was in elementary school during the early 1990s. I made a bunch of pixel art on the family Atari ST. Some of it was used in a roguelike game my dad programmed. I was already making really simple games in Basic and then C before I found out about MMOs.

I think the first one I ever knew about was som game by Sierra called The Realm. There was an article in it in one of the Interaction magazines we would get from Sierra (We had a bunch of their adventure games such as Space Quest 5, Lighthouse and Shivers, and so were subscribed to their magazine.) I think Ultima Online was the first really big MMO, and that was around 1997 I think. I hadn't even played an MMO until several years later than that.

The first game I ever thought of making was a small room in Google SketchUp. You would do nothing but walk around the room. I wanted to make it in XNA. Of course, that never happened. About the same time, I also had the idea to make a game where you execute little kittens. Again in XNA, and again it never happened. I had learned a little bit from the Microsoft XNA tutorials, but I eventually quit. I learned quite a bit about everything since then, and in my spare time have ventured into more stormy waters, without having ever finished anything in the first place. It's ironic, really. My first ideas not being the conventional "WoW clone" or CoD copy as some unexperienced people ask about today (*ahem* Yahoo Answers askers), but rather being simple. I think I have made my ideas too complex, though, and need to come back to reality (C's reality, not real reality).

I wanted to take USGS datasets to render the world terrain to real scale and then be able to walk around in my own virtual world with just randomly generated trees, and textures that matched its region.

Then I wanted to make a war game out of it like you got a handful of spy drones and a few satellites and you had to use them to find another person playing. Then when you found them you had to hit them with cruise missiles.

Modern games are so unimaginative and I really wish I had the skill alot of game developers have. I am still years away from being able to do it. I know how to code (albeit slowly), and I know how to use DirectX, it would still take me awhile.

Nowadays I have more interest in making tools and science. Like making things to secure my computer or carry out chemical reactions. I also would like to learn more about making servers and databases. And making my own operating system even.

And things like parallel computing, hardware design, etc.

Basically just stuff that interests me in a hobby type of way.

I was more interested in game design when I was in the hacking scene. I never thought about an MMO idea until way later, I was more into RPG's, but not MMORPG's.

The first multi-player game I ever made was a text game played over telnet in the school's computer lab ( 1992 ). It was "high tech" for the time.

My recent attempts have been a lot harder.
The framework is set in 3 different languages, however I keep running into the same issues that prevent me from moving forward.
1 - Networking
2 - Graphical Manipulation ( simple photo editing )
3 - Distributing to a cross platform audience.

My "game" is a MUD were folks can connect to my server, and build their own 2D map(s), which they can than connect to an "over world". The goal is to create an environment were folks can make their own "world", and do as they wish with it. Anything from a 2D chat room, to a full 2D game would be possible.

* My current framework supports 2 and 4 frame animated sprites, movement, "shops", "trading", custom character actions, and custom scripting .
* Players can create their own sprite sheets, map sheets, item sheets( see problem # 2 ), to make their own customized map(s).
* The map has 4 layers which the player can customize. Background - Layer #2 - Player Layer - Foreground - Zones.
* Built in sprite creator / sheet creator, map editor, and "store" creator are point and click.
* Built in scripting language ( haven't written parsing yet ) is based off of my own custom version of ZZT-oop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZZT-oop

I really want to say that I've never played an MMO, except that that's what EVE Online is. I've never desired to make one, and when I first started programming, I wanted to make a sidescroller. I would be sooner be interested in a puzzle or board game now.