pojung I get what you are saying, and I just said anything is possible and I hope you are successful and make a great game. I still disagree with your figures to make a game and would almost require the aligning of the stars and some phenomenal luck on your side with MANY things to pull it off.

If the stars align for you and you could pull it off with 10 million that would be great but it would be very much the ultra rare exception not the rule in the MMO space.

Biofells I was replying to things that were posted as responses in this thread here that are directly related and not off topic to what is being discussed here.

If I was saying you all are stupid for even trying this, or talking about something completely off topic ect then I would be trolling.

Why I am not making or would not make one at this point a MMO is simple the market is way to crowded with 100's of titles coming onto the market in the next few years with the realistic capital requirements along with the barriers to entry. F2P  now has 100's of titles with a lot more coming, the window has closed on the newness of the idea and the market has been set already and the barrier to entry that will increase as a result of this. Allods has been made already you have to make something "better" than this if you want to compete in that space.

This is important since everyone is using Allods. Allods was made in Russia as I pointed out it was made by gPotato "the premier game company" in Russia and established business that had access to capital needed to make the game. You are acting as if gPotato is some small company and Allods was a hobby game that made it to the big time with a small budget. gPotato did not start out as its first project Allods, they started with small flash games and built up a reputation as a game maker. That is not the premise that is being presented here. Look them up they had been in business for years before this and had many other games prior to Allods being made. And that budget would be in access of $25 million if the same game would have been made in the US.

And you may want to dismiss this but the barriers are very high even for people who have been lead developers, famous in the industry with a decade or longer track record have a very very hard time getting capital. People with 0 experience in running a business, with 0 experience in making game, with 0 programming experience in the industry equal almost 0 ability to raise capital that are all paramount requirements and this thread has made it seem this is something easily viable if you just have a plan. It is not. Starting a small business even when you have your own niche market is difficult enough, competing in the same space as people outspending you by 10 to 20 times with a similar product with a limited market share is even more difficult.

I wish you all the luck in the world if you go forward but I want you to do it with eyes wide open and not with the assumptions that have been made here that this is something remotely close to easily viable, it would be like winning the lottery for a small hobby project being developed by someone with all the things I mentioned above. Sure you could win but the odds doing so are very stacked against you, you would have a better chance of being struck by lightening 4x in your life and living. *Just for ha-ha’s and off topic the odds of winning Powerball are higher than that LOL. Which is what I am trying to point out.

Anything is possible but is it realistic?

Pojung you still HIRER and PAY the lawyers and paten filing fee's SCORE does not do that for you..... And you are not going to get 50 talented people to work for your 45k figure because that would put your average employee salary at under $30,000. Do you even understand what a lead programmer is going to cost you? Let alone an art director? Have you looked into what the average salaries are for the position you will need to fill?

Based on your business cost of 45k per employee I am not sure you do so below are the average actual salaries not including the additional cost to business you need to add in all that on top of these. So your figures would be less than 50% of the average current US salary at 2007 levels for programmers with less than 3 years expierence.  So if you are going to make a MMO in the US with the help of SCORE you will need to dramatically increase your salary figure because they are highly unrealistic.

“Salaries for game programmers vary from company to company and country to country. In general, however, pay for game programming is generally about the same for comparable jobs in the business sector. This is despite the fact that game programming is some of the most difficult of any type and usually requires longer hours than mainstream programming. However, most game programmers feel it is worth the sacrifice for the fun and casual working environments. Results of a 2007 survey indicate” that the average salary for a game programmer is $83,383 annually. The least experienced programmers (with less than 3 years experience) generally earn about $57,665, while developers with over six years experience on average earn $94,525. Generally, lead programmers are the most well compensated, though some 3D graphics programmers may challenge or surpass their salaries. According to the same survey above, lead programmers on average earn $103,409 annually.

Reference:

Fleming, Jeffrey (April 2008). "7th Annual Salary Survey". Game Developer (United Business Media) 15 (4): 8

Allods was made by gPotato which is the premier game maker in Russia that has the access and means to raise capital. And speaking of $12 million dollars in rubles it goes a lot further than it would here. Just so you know that equates to $369,656,950.83 rubles which is case you are not aware is a tremendous amount of money in Russia.  If you where to make Allods in the US you would be over $25 miilion.   Oh so you are going to relocate over sea’s? Score is not going to help you much in Russia.  You are going to need a lot more lawyers if you plan oversea's production and requires a lot more logistical work, 2 offices, international business filings, taxes in 2 or more countries, accountants, and making a game oversea's would be yet another barrier in raising captial because it adds in more risk.

What you should do is put your ideas on paper, file patents for those ideas, put together a working demo because you will need this before you can get a dime in private capital. If you really want to make an MMO I first focus on making a browser based game, or one for facebook there you could actually possibly do something small to get yourself known, establish a reputation, and have a track record or go put in 10 plus years and work your way to lead programmer for a successful MMO first. But starting as your first project with no experience at all, with no track record an MMO is just silly.

And here is the definition of trolling for you, it does not mean having a on topic debate about what you have said.

"Trolling is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community. "

I have done none of this. What is wrong with the community is not being able to handle anyone disagreeing with your idea or opinion. You have every right to your dream even though it is highly unrealistic as do I to point that out that is not trolling.

Originally posted by pojung

I'll tell you through firsthand experience of dealing with SCORE and payroll functions that 10 million and 3 years of dev time with a team of 50 is perfectly fine to cover all overhead, salaries, and hardware. My outside proof of this claim is easily referenced via Allods who accomplished this with less.

50 people will say making an average of a conservative number $50,000 a year including taxes/benefits would be $7.5 million of your 10 million budget over 3 years.    And just to be clear that would mean 50 people making a salary of around $32,000 because the typical cost of benefts is 1.4% of salary, then you have Social Security/FICA, unemployment insurance, workers compensation and medicare.  And good luck getting even remotely close to quality talent that is needed for 32k a year.  No benefits to save money even less of a chance.  

That is 75% of your budget.  That means you must be developing your own graphics engine because you do not have much budget left to license a top end one on the market, which would blow your 3 year plan out of the water if you are doing that from scratch.  Going to use an old very dated crappy one or LOL a free one?  Nail 1 in the coffin.    I guess your marketing budget is going to be strickly word of mouth?  What about the lawyers and all the patents you will need?  

But even still need to have a business plan in place to be able to raise that kind of money.  And with the world economy being in the crapper for at least the next 5 years good luck with even raising 10 mill for a MMO as newb developer with no track record in good times let alone the current state of the world economy. 

You could make a very basic MMO for less than 1 million like puzzle pirates if you wanted to, but would it be viable in todays very crowded market, that is highly doubtful.  I was referring to making a game that would be commerically viable in todays market with even having a chance of competing with the AAA companies spending $50 to SW:OR $150 million.

If you want to make a crap game and try to compete with the 1000 other free to play games being churned out of Asia and Eastern Europe I can think of a lot better uses for even your 10 million figure. 

If you want to actually make an MMO (not work on one as an employee)  the first thing you should do is figure out a business plan for how you are going to raise at least $25 million dollars.  And that $25 million means you will be way behind the curve graphically and also one without a lot of bells and whistles.

If you are looking for a AAA MMO you will need $80-$120 million dollars.  Making MMO's has long since passed where hobbiest, a small group, or even a small company can make them.   Unless you are talking about a MUD without graphics. 

I wonder how much the patches will be on the store?

DarK Ages is not open world PvP.  It is frontier based pvp.  While you can level in the frontier the game does have a lot of pve only area's. 

As to your question that is up to you.  I would check to see if they have a free trial, if they do then it could not hurt if you are not doing anything else.

Originally posted by SaintViktor

 Well you are 100% correct but let me let you in on a little bit of a secret about the forums here. It is ok to criticize companies B,C and D but don't you dare go and criticize company A because company A makes me money,company A makes me popular and company A makes my favorite game. See what I am saying ? What is good for the goose is not always good for the gander here. There is no doubt Cryptic could be doing alot better with their games and hopefully they can improve with the next one.

If a company puts out a bad product once, and there next product is much better showing what they learned and corrected the mistakes then I would see your point..  What they did with STO was amplified the mistakes they made with Champions.  And now they are item malling the suckers who did a lifetime. 

What Cryptic has done with releasing not 1 but 2 unfinished badly designed games is put themselves in a position where the VAST majority of MMO community thinks they are a garbage company who makes bad games. 

In an already very crowded market with some AAA titles coming out from studios that do not suck over the next 3 years this is not a good place to be even with having a IP like NWN. 

Mythic is now in the same league as Cryptic to me I would not touch a game from either of them.

It will be Never Winter Nights, this is no secret if you follow the MMO business. 

Odds are given the track record Cryptic has this game will also not be very good at best and mostly likely be the suck that Champions and STO both are.

In my crystal ball I see this new game with a item mall while also giving the very special people amoung us another chance to buy a life time sub.....

As stated the endless free trial for WAR as long as you do not leave it because if you do you will not have the time needed to compete in the regular game. 

You may want to look at some of the singleplayer/multiplayer games on the market those we be more suited for the time you have to play such as Battlefield 2 or even Left4Dead2 you can pve as well as play versus.  Unfortuantly almost every MMO is designed around time sinks and gear grinds you can not do with the time you said you have to play.

Couple of reason you will never see a playable 3rd realm in WAR:

1.  It would take a complete redesign of the core game

2.  EA is dumping stupid money on talking Wookies....With EA's stock price and balance sheet I doubt they are going to give Mythic money needed for what would be required (world redesign, 9 new class's, game balance, ect given there track record.

3.  Given the current population that if various WAR forums are to be believed finally has stabalized this would destroy what little community and realm balance that they finally achieved.  To many existing players would move to the new shiney.  I realize Mythic has never thought things through but if they do not realize messing with the balance they have after finally stopping the bleeding after over a year they should not be in the MMO business.

I would like to see a modern graphics update for UO never gonna happen but neither is some on this list.

You never played on the pvp servers in Conan.

LOL, This is  taken from his blog:

"WARNING: This blog and all posts within are my property and are thus protected by copyright. It is also subject to revisions as things progress. Unless you really – truly – want to hear from my attorneys – DO NOT reprint it. If you must, just link to the URL."

Least he could have done is include the link to the Bioware site :)

The problem with PVP in MMO's is you can not have a gear, level, ability difference that so gives someone and advantage that the majority the player base have 0 chance of winning.  

When you can one or two shot players or farm them in a premade at will the "average" player either stops pvping or if a pvp game leaves it.

When pvp sucks for a majority of the player base do to the above it kills the fun and in the end why pvp fails in most MMO's.  

If I was a developer I would avoid any IP like the plague unless you own it outright like Blizz/WoW. 

Just about every other IP has crashed and burned with one having limited success (LotR) but no were close to what it should have had given its history and world wide following the IP has. 

To many people will have unreasonable expectations on what the game should be and it limits developer freedom because of the lore and story of the IP.

Why WoW is still the elephant in the room is very, very simple. Every new MMO since has been a big pile of crap. Now why would anyone leave WoW to go play a broken half assed copy of it.

If WoW players would be honest with you I would estimate 60% and probably more are bored with the game.

Most of those would play another MMO if one came out that did not suck and here is the key ready for it, it something that developers can not seem to comprehend at all.......the elusive secret.....DIFFERENT than WoW but with the same polish.

SW:OR is going to be WoW with talking Wookies that is it.  Quest level train track treadmill to max mostly solo with end game raiding.

One day my hope is the developers will realize you are not going to kill the elephant in the room with its "special needs" cousin. 

A game should have some solo content but the fact is all the games since WoW  the optimal way and the way the games are DESIGNED TO BE PLAYED  is to solo level up by yourself.  The quest are not designed for groups and in fact penalize you in most cases for doing them as a group.  That is the bitch you are seeing here from all of us who prefer to see more group content not less. 

The solo to max way these games are now all designed to be played has completely killed early player base community development and in turn I believe is one of the major reason people have such an easy time just walking away from these games. 

For the first time since launch they do not have sub growth and have started a trend downward.   This is a way to plug that gap and continue revenue growth it really is that simple.  A lot more of this to come.  Revenue growth for a publically traded company is king and rules every choice they make and will. 

Did not buy any banner ad's and it is not from Asia?    :P