First of all, MMORPG games have always been an important part of video games for me. Whether it's roleplaying or grinding, I have always enjoyed MMORPGs from the bottom of my heart. Personally, I think that where the current world is rather drawn of away from these games. Battle royale games or FPS shooters are currently taking over the industry. Therefore, current MMORPGS fall behind, even more, when they fail to satisfy the gamer's needs the game usually gets abandoned.

On the other hand, I strongly believe, that since our current society is making a rather big breakthrough with all the technological development, VR and AR are not that far from us. As a consequence, I think people will more likely be drawn back to these open world series of games and roleplay to the bottom of their hearts.
 

What I want to ask or just gain criticism of my foolishness is what does MMORPG take?

I have some experience in C++ and Python as coding languages, some experience working on application development.
I am currently writing a pretty detailed Game Design Document, so I know what I want from the game and what it should do.
I know such task is not for a single person to handle, therefore I am just saying I have couple of friends willing to help me along.
What languages of coding should I learn, and what aspects should I take to approach MMORPGs. I am currently pretty unsure where to start, and what to prepare. I am fully aware it is not a short term project, but I am ready to improve and adapt for this

 

A Massive Multiplayer Online Games requires millions of dollars and a huge team. MMORPG games died because there is too many of them. Too much cost and too few players, simple as that.

If you just want to make a multiplayer game then you don't need much, just time really. Grab a engine and get started.

Whether I am naive or optimistic, I would still like to believe that there is hope for such games to be reborn.

So, an MMO RPG requires everything needed to make:

• An RPG
• A multi-player online game
• A massive-scale game

Each one of those alone can be a tiny garage hobby project, or a professional 1 to 100 million-dollar project, and mixing all three together multiplies their complexities (not just adding together). Asking how to make an MMO as your first project is like asking how to make a Jurassic Park feature film as your first movie making project.

That's why people will answer with: you need money  (and/or experience) 

Content is expensive. RPG's need a lot of content. Massive games need a lot of content. It's normal to have 50 to 1000 highly skilled artists / content creators on big projects like that!
To get around that... you have to work out how to make content as cheaply / quickly as possible. Find out what kind of content you and your friends can pump out cheaply. Pages of text? Tile-based dungeons? Procedural world generation?

Online games take all the complexity of single-player / split-screen / offline games, and then raise it to be exponentially more complicated. Networking is not just a feature you can bolt onto a game -- it has to be architected from the ground up, and the correct architecture depends heavily on the game features / style / genre / player expectations / hosting infrastructure / etc...

Massively-multiplayer online games take the complexity of regular online games and add an entirely new level of cloud hosting insanity (and infrastructure expenses).

FWIW, you can just go download an engine like GameMaker, Unity, Unreal, etc, and start on this project now. You'll at least want to use an existing game engine, because building that too is just another complexity multiplier on top of all of the above!!!
However, it's probably much more useful to keep planning this magnum opus as a future project, and instead start on a few smaller projects to build up experience. e.g. a small single-player RPG, a small online pong game, etc...

I want to chip in saying that there are some MMOs created by a very small indie team at low or no budget. I think Wurm/Vendetta Online was only two or three guys.

I'm working on my own MMO but I haven't gotten very far. I'm doing procedural world generation which I'm currently debugging.  At some point when I get all the kinks out, I'm going to try to see if I can get some help. On the up side, I don't have to hold down a real job so I have time and I think I'm making reasonable progress. 

6 hours ago, flodihn said:

I want to chip in saying that there are some MMOs created by a very small indie team at low or no budget.

Then I just want to expand this by saying that none of them are considered Indie any more.Vendetta Online, Runescape, MineCraft etc.

There exists no Indie MMO, because to be a Massive Multi Player game, you need more than a million (1 000 000) players. Once you have that many players you need a large team to run things and you stop being Indie.

It's completely possible to grow a multiplayer game into a MMO game, using the money made by the multiplayer game. However the makers of the MMO games mentioned where all professionals, with years of experience.

In short, the MMO games wasn't the first games these developers made and there knowledge made up for a lot of funding. It is really a long term goal.

8 hours ago, Liudvikas Lazauskas said:

Whether I am naive or optimistic, I would still like to believe that there is hope for such games to be reborn.

The good news is there is more than a little hope of the MMORPG returning to popularity.

The way the game market works is it gets so over saturated that people get desperate for a new experience. Considering how good Multiplayer teck is growing and how saturated shooters are getting. 

It is only a matter of time before someone makes a smash hit RPG Multiplayer game by breaking the normal limits of these types of games; or by doing something else original and refreshing.

You'll need to ask yourself a few questions before starting.

1. Do I have the current ability to program an online game realistically that will house thousands of players, and maintain competitive content to what is already out there?

2. Do I have the money to upkeep servers which are made to hold hundreds of thousands of players (Many games will use shards to divide the player base)

3. What is my objective in making an MMORPG? (Are you attempting to do this 100% as a commercial based project?)

4. How will I plan on justifying my time and money spent considering the MMORPG market is over-saturated and very competitive?

I see zero point in making an MMORPG unless it's for commercial reasons. Hobbyist projects should just stick to online rpgs.

7 hours ago, Scouting Ninja said:

There exists no Indie MMO, because to be a Massive Multi Player game, you need more than a million (1 000 000) players. Once you have that many players you need a large team to run things and you stop being Indie.

FWIW, "indie" means independent, not "unpopular" or "unprofitable". Also, I know of a few tiny indie dev teams (as small as 2/3 people) who regularly make mobile free to play games with a million players, but are still definitely making indie games! 

14 minutes ago, Hodgman said:

Also, I know of a few tiny indie dev teams (as small as 2/3 people) who regularly make mobile free to play games with a million players, but are still definitely making indie games! 

Sorry, maybe I didn't phrase it right. I meant around a million players playing at the same time. Although some people say more than 500 active players.

17 minutes ago, Hodgman said:

FWIW, "indie" means independent, not "unpopular" or "unprofitable".

Yes, but independent from what?

For example PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds was considered indie but Fortnite never was. Yet both were made by registered corporations. PUBG corporation and Epic Games. 

The only reason Fortnite isn't indie is because Epic Games is owned? Yet most MMO games of a large scale sell there shares and as such is also owned.

Ironically Fortnite is the most independent, it was made on a engine owned by Epic Games and was published by Epic games. While PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds used someone else's engine(Epic Games) and later was published by two other publishers.

What I meant was that most of these games either sell when they grow too large or are owned by corporations so large that they started owning branch companies. Considering them indie at this stage is the same as saying Epic Games is a indie company.

Success does have a large influence, especially when the indie games have more staff and more money than most publishers.