1 – “There are no MMO engines for sale that can make robust games.” nobody said that the job have to be easy, trying to innovate technology is not a task for anyone.

2 – “You need a major investment of money … they expect to earn 500% return on investment for every dollar they give you”. what are you thinking? what a wonderful world?, if you have no money to produce a great idea (no matter in game industrie or not) you look for investment and the pressure over you will always be very hard.

3 – work with technology is something related with research, evolution and love, do this job is not easy and the people who make, have to overwork to reach they self goals. brilliant minds in the past had to work hard to make a new step and is always amazing to see that still exists people like that.

sorry but you need vacations.

Even if management went smoothly we would still be inundated with the same game. Would just like to inform everyone that the “same game” was almost perfected several years ago, and another company made the same game (with a better content/customer support) and has had great success with it.

Spellborne is stuck in marketing woes limiting its exposure to the US, and causing concern across Europe – a shame because it looks terrific.

I don’t know enough about Aion other than it looks incredible to make a comment.

I think successfully made MMOs smaller in scope than the current games, that can significantly define themselves from the current 10^x same games can find success, developers just aren’t addressing it properly in a way that the consumers care, so it can’t advance to a point where organization is stable and not panic inducing.

As to a “standards” engine, it is my understanding that the “HeroEngine” is being pushed as the defacto standard down the road. With visuals, database code, and the whole 9 yards in one place, and Bioware is going to be there to prove if it can work.
“Bigworld” out of Australia is growing, and Stargate Worlds is being developed on that platform…
Do you not believe either of these engines can be the ones “that could…” (hehe)

Cheers

I didn’t think much about the engine and staffing problems till you brough it up, but looking at 38 Studios as an example I see all your points illustrated quite well.

They keep hiring top tallent, which means that all those highly skilled people were looking for new jobs for some reason. Proves your point by anctedote at least. (my spelling sucks, so sorry if that’s wrong)

They also keep buying or licensing little pieces of stuff like they’re going to bolt it all together to create an engine (vivox, azeroth advizor, Morpheme animation, Unreal 3 engine, etc). How they plan to use the Unreal 3 engine for an MMO is my question, but oh well.

I actually have experienced impending doom in programming myself. I was working on some enterprise software for Lab One Inc before they got bought by Quest Diagnostics. I was told that they would not be using our software, but was told to hurry up and complete the project anyway. I also was told that my department would no longer exist after New Years Eve, but work long hours to complete our software anyway on salary. However, that was a special situation, not really the same as what you’re talking about.

I’ve run out of time so I’ll leave this post as it is, though my thought isn’t really complete or reviewed yet. More tomorrow perhaps.

If you could push out an Unreal Engine for MMO’s… Well documented, feature rich, plug-in based, quest-driven warrior. Man.

I wish I were rich.

Since MMO engines are currently one of the limiting factors to entrance into the space, this makes a company’s engine a huge edge in the marketplace. There is probably considerable resistance to give that up in exchange for some small short-term revenue.

MMO engines are HUGE and typically held together by tribal knowledge. They don’t have nice documentation, tutorials, and samples (the shipped games themselves tend to have assets that can’t be licensed.) Thus the supporting your license holders will be a non-trivial burden to a company that releases their engine.

But I think it will happen. The market wants it, and there are already companies trying to provide it. And I think it will change the face of the industry when an MMO equivalent of Gamebryo, or the Unreal Engine, (etc) comes out.