This is my journey into developing an MMORPG. Lessons learned over the years, to be applied. Ideas to flow into the development, but also random thoughts and musings along the way. This is no how to. It isn't a how not to either.
Ideas, we have plenty. The idea to start this little collection of posts has been in my head for years. Even posts I want to write have been festering there. So has the idea for the game. I will not give it any other name than the game on here.
Ideas are easy to come by. I have ten before I get out of bed. A hundred before I reach my desk. Ask anyone, they have a lot of ideas. Ideas are cheap. But you begin with one.
The idea for the game is old. It was back in the times of Ultima VIII and Quake World that I thought it would be cool if the two would be more alike. The exact idea was to have Ultima, but play it with other players or against them online, just like in Quake World. I searched (which was a pain back then) and stumbled across something called "OWO" or Origin Worlds Online. That later got renamed to something a bit more catchy, namely Ultima Online. Started in 1997 it broke the 15 years mark at the time of this writing. So congratulations to me, my idea is not only already in the head of someone else, but they actually made the game and it will be released shortly after my idea was spawning.
So now what, my idea is crap, right? Someone else has done it already, time to find something else. If that was true we would not have had Everquest, Asherons Call, World of Warcraft, Eve Online and a host of other interesting games. As I played UO for 5 years I saw many things, things I loved, things I despised. So there comes the natural instinct where there is that thought in your mind that goes a bit like "I can do that better".
Many many more ideas came together, a lot of writing happened, and the ideas coalesced into a concept. Now we have something solid. That idea to make a role playing game that you can play with and against others, is the base of the game I'm writing about here.
