8 hours ago, Lactose said:

Do you mean making a game from scratch, or do you mean taking an existing MMO (which you do not own the rights to) and converting that into a single player game? You mention modding and private servers...

Yes! Taking an existing MMO (which I do not own the rights to) and turn it into a game customized for me, no profit or anything like that.

7 hours ago, thesargento said:

Yes! Taking an existing MMO (which I do not own the rights to) and turn it into a game customized for me, no profit or anything like that.

I hope you understand "no profit for you" doesn't make it ok to promote or release it anywhere.

Best/worst case scenario: IF and WHEN I pull it off, I still have no rights on it, so the only ones I can contact are the original developers. Here is how the conversation would go:

"Me: Hey guys, I've made a single-player version of your game 'cause I like your game but I don't like the MMO system. Here is the code.

Devs: Ah! you SOB! we'll sue you till you die! no, wait...

Me: Okay, I'll be here having the time of my life, nice talking to u guys."

...or: I pull it off, don't tell anyone, have the time of my life modding-playing until the end of days  

14 hours ago, Satharis said:

I'm honestly rather confused what the OP is even interested in doing. What defines turning an MMO into a single player game? Wouldn't that just be an RPG?

Isn't the OP after making some kind of offline version(clone) of a MMO game.

I think a single player MMORPG isn't exactly a RPG. Because I remember when World of Warcraft first released there was a mod to play it offline. The resulting game was not what I would call a RPG but it had bots and you could do all things you could in the game.

Because of how MMORPGs are structured they actually make bad single player RPGs.

Edit: Grinders is what I would call it. A game that is designed to last but without the social part doesn't have much point. But some people liked it so maybe there is a player base for it.

Ok, looks like we've passed all the judgments, opinions, whys and why nots... Now, can someone share some light on the matter? Some guidelines? The original question stands the same.

Thnx in advance, any help is appreciated  

58 minutes ago, thesargento said:

Ok, looks like we've passed all the judgments, opinions, whys and why nots

At least you didn't give up that is a good start.

58 minutes ago, thesargento said:

Some guidelines? The original question stands the same.

What are you actually asking with: Where to start?

Do you know how to create object classes? Do you know how to design mechanics?

See we don't know what you mean by start, because I already explained how to turn a MMORPG into a single player game and that would have been the starting point for me. 

Have you ever made a game before and do you know how to code?

I have some understanding of it. Learned on the fly by modding many games. As stated in my first post, I have some knowledge of a few languages. Willing to learn any and everything I need to get my goal. Will u help me with some advice?  

17 minutes ago, thesargento said:

knowledge of a few languages. Willing to learn any and everything I need to get my goal.

So this tells as you can program and load in art, so you can probably skip starting with a small game.

If your using a engine you can go strait to designing the combat, considering that combat a key part of most of these types of games it would be my starting point.

At the same time you can start designing the game flow. Like how does the game go from menu to game play, is there some kind of character designer or such. Then when your done you can start making the menu.

Starting with combat actually is a good place if you never developed a game before but have most of the skills needed. I often find when working with modders they understand advance concepts but never implemented simple things like health bars before.

You will also need many files for the same game, as you will do things like design combat outside of the game, then bring it into your main loop when it's done. This way you can also test new combat mechanics without breaking the game.

Software I recommend is Blender, Gimp/ Inkscape and Audacity as they are all free and good. But if you made mods then you probably have software you are comfortable with.

For a Engine Unity if you like working with code, Unreal if you like working more on the art side of games.

My biggest piece of advice is you will need to do it all by yourself, at least when you start, but you don't need to do it all well.

For example I always write messy code and just use sound samples I get from the net.Then when my game starts taking form I look for people to help me. This way they can see the idea I had, even if I didn't have the skill to do it well.

People turned Elder Scroll games into multiplayer with modding, the other way around is also possible.

It depends on how modable the game is. Some games have modding tools powerful enough to change core mechanics while other games don't have any way to mod other than very basic things.

I would first find the game that you want to play and find out how modable it is. Then learn all the modding tools and you should be on your way.

Not to in any way suggest that I sanction this course of action, but there are complete private server implementations on github for quite a few existing MMOs (for example, Vanilla WoW).

If your goal is literally to play such a game by yourself, you can grab one of those, install it on a home server, and be playing sometime later today.