who else started out wanting to create a MMO game?

It was not an MMO but an epic!!!1111 FPS me and a friend wanted to make, since we were not really into the MMO genre. It was basically the idea of Battlefield 1942: "Oh yeah let's have vehicles and you can use them all, airplanes, open maps, a death ticket counter, blah blah, yadda yadda..." We were shocked when some months later or so Battlefield was announced. We asked ourselves how it could be that they did the exact game we came up with and were joking that they must have somehow sneaked into our homes and stole the idea. ;-)

Of course now I know that ideas are a dime a dozen and what really counts is the execution. We would have never been able to pull that trick. But it was a great time and today we are still sometimes joking about how Dice stole our idea and made battlefield. hehe

Fortunatly for me MMOs didn't exist when i started making games so i actually "completed" my first proper game attempt. it was a 2D non-scrolling shooter with 3 levels (i did want to make more my my goto mess didn't let me), i even printed proper labels for the floppies and distributed the game to a few friends via the allmighty sneakernet so i count it as a success.

My second game, a snake game with some twists also went really well, it was only a bit later on that i started biting off more than i can chew, i got a half-finished MUD lying around somewhere (it was based on ROM so it was perfectly playable, just far too small to be worth putting online),a FPS tech demo, a GUI system and stuff like that, still no MMO though (I've played with the idea of making one but the timing of my MMO ideas have always been awful, (i had a great idea for a 2D:ish elite/space rangers inspired space MMO(i was planning on having each solar system on its own virtual server and have a "hyperspace" zone to travel between them to keep the backend complexity down), i didn't even have time to actually plan out the gameplay details before EvE was announced though so atleast i didn't waste any time on it, My online soccer manager idea was scrapped for a similar reason (Sports Interactive is not worth competing with in that field)

I'd still like to make a MMO but it is getting quite hard to find a niche that hasn't allready been filled. (I might pick up my space MMO idea again in the future and bring it to mobiles where it could be more competetive though (But i have a bunch of less financially risky games that i want to make first)

haha interesting! i had the same experience but with planet side 2... i basically had that game on paper and then they started beta testing... i was a bit depressed, thinking i couldnt make my new awesome MMO because they had done it. lol

Was a Pokemon MMORPG later we got Cease & Desist from Nintendo, then I started another MMO project, but as going from scratch I got stuck with over designing, which lead to all the recruited members become inactive and losing their interest. Well there still is actually colored web comic running based on the world of the game idea. Publishing about one page per month.

Later I actually did some calculations if the idea would even be possible, but the world would be too huge for current hardware. Though I have not done any games lately, but been thinking how to bootstrap large company able to actually create at least little bit of the MMORPG Ihave in my head, but that requires ton of work if it ever is going to happen.

I never started wanting to make one, but I thought of making one. I'm sure at some point everyone has. I've always wanted to make more of a Mega Man FPS MMO.

I've never even played an MMO.

I've never even played an MMO.

im so sorry for your loss ;(

MMOs barely existed when I got interested in game development, but my first inspirations were the final fantasy series and the myst series, which are almost as impossibly ambitious. Heck, I'd love to design an MMO now, it's just a genre with so much potential and social relevance - don't we all feel the desire to make something like the best games we play?

i would love to design my MMO also. just the sheer time effort and people needed are all thats stopping me

It was definitely one of my many wonderful and useless ideas. But reality hit when I couldn't complete my non-MMO ideas so the MMO became clearly impossible.

That said, I still have two ideas for non-MMO online game. One is still unrealistic. The other seems doable. Just waiting for Leadwerks 3D to be released to create a prototype.

Leadwerks 3D? (TO GOOGLE!)

Bah. When I started making games, the internet wasn't even a thing outside of universities and government institutions.

Damn kids, my lawn, get thereoff, etc. ;-)

Leadwerks 3D? (TO GOOGLE!)

Current version, without networking:
http://www.leadwerks...ge/Products/le2

Josh Klint's blog, mostly about the development of Leadwerks 3D:
http://www.leadwerks...oshklints-blog/
Expected to be released in a month or two.

Bah. When I started making games, the internet wasn't even a thing outside of universities and government institutions.

Damn kids, my lawn, get thereoff, etc. ;-)

This!

Damned kids today don't know how lucky they have it; if I wanted info I had to trawl book shops looking for things or, around 1994/5 started using a local internet cafe where I would download technical stuff/source and have to copy it home on 3 1/2" floppies!

And I had to walk up hill both ways to do that!

[quote name='ApochPiQ' timestamp='1343679788' post='4964592']
Bah. When I started making games, the internet wasn't even a thing outside of universities and government institutions.

Damn kids, my lawn, get thereoff, etc. ;-)

This!

Damned kids today don't know how lucky they have it; if I wanted info I had to trawl book shops looking for things or, around 1994/5 started using a local internet cafe where I would download technical stuff/source and have to copy it home on 3 1/2" floppies!

And I had to walk up hill both ways to do that!
[/quote]

I got a copy of the A86/D86 Assembler/Debugger on a 5 1/4 shareware floppy, that also had a game called Nethack on it. Both pieces of software changed my life. By the time I had an understanding of what an MMO was I already a) Knew that I didn't know enough to make one and b) Had built up a healthy disdain for other game-playing people, enough so that I had no desire to play with them, much less make a game to cater to them.

I'm pretty much in this boat:

I've never even played an MMO.

And this one, too:

By the time I had an understanding of what an MMO was I already a) Knew that I didn't know enough to make one

However, I did once try rolling a custom BBS (anyone remember those?) on my Amiga - I had to scrap it, though, when my parents got fed up with me jamming up the phone line.

A bit later in college I tried creating my own MUD (anyone remember those?) on the local VAX/VMS system, but being young and stupid I wasted most of my time trying to find a way to crack the school's encrypted password file - both pursuits ending in predictable failure, of course.

when i was 12 i found a game called EVE online and got officially addicted and wasted about 3 years playing that damn game! haha i still love it and play sometimes, and its what influenced my aspiration to become a game designer! i wanted to deliver a feeling that eve did to me! that accomplishment you get when youve worked with the same people for over a year abd complete a goal you all strived for. even tho i know i wont be making an mmo like that(anytime soon at least) i am still learning C#, now im learning how to use XNA, and unity 3d, and blender. and im working on a project right now! and doing my best to do what i love.

The first game I ever wrote was a pseudo-mmo in a way (at the time at least!) It was an expansion for the multiplayer BBS door game LORD, and I followed that up with my own door game, and then a MUD. Of course this was eons ago pre-UO and Meridian times

I somewhat had an MMO in mind, still do, still kindda working on one, I am working on 2 projects atm which arent even game related and it seems everytime I have a chance to move onto something it isnt even a game yet the same principles apply and it makes use of graphics API so my gfx framework can be used for a game I suppose.

The idea at the beginning wasnt to make an MMO but to make something that could be reused for all my projects efficiently and at the time I had 3 projects in mind that I wanted to do (MMO being one, but also the last). For me making an MMO wasnt about becoming rich or famous but to make an MMO that wasnt dumbed down like WoW and wasnt all about numbers like EVE ;) and really it is only on my roadmap for something to do after these projects are complete