Figured this should go in off topic : ).
Well, I've been on eqemulator and a few other things for awhile. I've run a few successful games, a few successful groups, been on many servers, haven't really run any of my own because I'm too much of a perfectionist to solo it (they never get released), but yea, I've decided to try my hand at making a real MMO now ^_^.
I think most games are designed wrong, or that they are missing a lot that they could have. There are a lot of innovative and creative things that are done out there that never make it into a real game, they only ever make it into mods. One of the reasons for this is that commercial games are mostly controlled by large corporate entities like Walmart. These entities are the main buyers of the game (they in turn sell to the consumers), and so they have the main say as to what goes into the game and what doesn't. This means that those amazing games that the game developers want to make eithern ever get made or are radically skewed by these entities.
The team I'm fashioning together is a team that designs the entire game together. Everyone on the team is require to be able to supply a resource for making the game (programming, modelling, music, etc), but everyone is allowed to fashion the game : ). We have design software so that people can lay out areas and so on without having to be artists, which I think is very nice =D.
We're on a very limited budget, so we wouldn't provide any tools, everyone has to get what they need with their own money, but when this game is released, hopefully we'll be able to start our own small business and reap the profits from it ^_^.
Everyone on the team so far has a lot of creativity and a lot of new ideas that have never been done before in any game. We strive to do new things for the resources as well (new ways of doing graphics, music, programming, etc). I suppose that the reason for this is that we don't like following the rules : ).
In a formal education of a given topic, an individual is taught rules that they should follow. We disregard many of these rules as we always seek new and better ways to do anything. If we can't find any better way, we end up following the rules, but yea, most of the time we find something a lot better.
So who exactly is on the team right now and what can these people do?
Matt-
A graphics artist that can do anything from textures to models to animations. He has Maya, Photoshop CS4 Extended, 3ds max, and a few other tools o-o.
Me-
I do music and programming of any type, including web development. I also do Database design ; ).
Trevor-
He's going to be a programmer : D. He's also an extremely, and I have to stress extremely, gifted city designer. Apparently his family is all about figuring out how things start and how they progress into what they are, so when he designs a city, he'll design it follow a flowchart of logical paths (a timeline).
We all absolutely love designing games, and we are looking for more people to design this MMO with us.
So, what exactly are we using? Do we have an engine?
We are using Torque 3D for the game engine. We'll also have FMOD for sound engine, PhysX for physics engine, RPG Kit or MMO kit, w/e it will be called, for the networking (i really don't want to program all of the MMO networking stuff). We have profantasy software (
www.profantasy.com) for pre-design, Finale for music, Maya, photoshop, a bundle of sound effects libraries, and a few other tools.
We really have just about everything we need to do this, even a development server (it really can't handle much, when the time comes will get a full fledged server). All we need are more people looking to design a masterpiece like we are : D.