RE: MMO in development
"We" is myself and 5 other people (currently talking with a 6th person)-kind of hard to make introductions in an online environment. I approached friends and my business partners (for my "real" job-I own a small business) who all have various skills ranging from graphic design to programming to creative writing. They all decided that they wanted to help. I use "I" a lot because the initial concept and idea to try to make the game in the first place was mine and because that is the way the team prefers that we work-I'm the boss. We collaborate on the game of course, but I'm the one with the final say so and I'm the one who is in charge of marketing, promotion, communications, etc. They prefer to remain in the background and do their work. That's what we've chosen, it's what works well for us. Their names are Steve, Justin, Tim, Joe, and Amanda. The people with the highest level of skills and experience in the team are myself, Joe, and Steve.
I'm leaning towards Raknet but haven't chosen an account management company yet. I was looking at Velocity but you can't get a price quote unless you are pretty much already established and ready to go. It will be at least a year before we are (if all goes as planned). I haven't had much luck in my search for other companies. I found an affordable company called Billing Orchard but they have a maximum of 5000 monthly transactions. Now we don't expect to get hundreds of thousands of players, but I also don't want to choose a company that could limit growth potential. They would be good to start out with but if the game is one of the few out there that becomes successful enough to sustain more than 5000 players then I don't want to have to go to the trouble of switching companies and possibly creating an inconvenience for already registered players. Does anyone have any other company suggestions?
I will be purchasing the bulk of the assets from artists at daz3d. The 6th person I'm talking with is a great artist and I'm hoping he comes onboard. If so, he will be creating custom assets.
Anything else we can't do ourselves will be contracted out.
Initially I was going to purchase the Abyssal MMORPG package which supplied the foundation of an MMORPG-4 zones already created, game mechanics already integrated, a huge assets package, etc. So that is why I used snipets from them-it is what we were going to use for the foundation of the game to build on.
But now we've axed that entire idea and decided on the Esenthel and only recently started working with it (for about a week). So no, I don't have much else to show other than what I have posted on the blog, kickstarter updates, website, etc. We have started to create the PvP area with Esenthel but until we can purchase the whole license (hence kickstarter) we can't provide the meat because we can't create it physically. I refuse to publish publicly the design document because I naturally don't want every detail of the game out in the public before it is created.
One thing I've learned in the indie game industry rather quickly is that when someone posts on a message forum anywhere within the gaming community that they are creating an MMO they are met with a pretty bad attitude. People seem to assume that they don't know what they're doing and that they can't do it. I've found myself having to defend myself and prove that I'm not just some 10 year old who has some uber cool idea to make the next WoW. It's sad that so many of these posts saying, "hey, I'm 10 years old and I want to make an MMO but don't know how to make graphics and don't know how to program and don't have any money and want people on my team but I can't pay you so please please help me because I want to be like WoW or Runescape!" has kind of ruined it for serious adults who do have a peg on what they are doing.
Hedron Online is in its early stages. Once we have the full license and can get things rolling then more things will be posted on the website blog.
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