Need advice on mmorpg

I may be setting one of these up. I don't have any experiance as a programmer so I will be paying someone to design it for me.

I want to make a text based game eg. Like the mafia ones you see every where. e.g. themafianetwork.net

How much do you think it would cost to pay the web designer?

What servers shall I use?

Any other advice on this will be very much appreciated

 

That's pretty ambitious. Do you already have experience in this sort of thing?

 

No I don't actually lol but I think I could market the website and get a lot of visitors

 

You can download some free scripts

Design meaning look of the site doesn't matter, its more the gameplay

That being said, its better and probably easier in the long run to code it yourself

 

I've played with this idea myself in the past and without exception I've been incredibly disappointed with the free scripts available. I've not been concentrating on mafia type games but I threw the net fairly wide and couldn't find anything I would be happy promoting.

There is definitely a market here though, given the number of players in some of these games it always surprises me just how badly they are promoted.

If you have the funds to get someone else to do it or the time to code it yourself I would suggest you go down this route, I think you'll have a greater chance of success.

 

It'll probably cost in the $xxxx's and then another $xxx a month for the server, and then some more to add more features (or people would just leave).

 

For the design costs I would say this is a fair estimate.

Server costs are a little harder to quantify as they depend largely on how much bandwidth you use. If a programmer knows what they are doing there is no reason why a game site would require more resources than a forum with a similar number of visitors in my opinion. you could probably start at under $100 a month without any issues.

 

I have a bit of experience with this. I researched this idea pretty extensively before I started. There are some pretty interesting things I learned before I started. I ran a MMORG for a few months. I bought a canned script and ran it on one of my servers. This was a text based fantasy game. It ran on cron jobs that advanced the game by a turn every time the cron job ran. There are a few problems if you go this route.

1. Any script you either buy on the cheap or use for free will have limitations. Once you get it setup and running you will almost immediately see things you want to change. This is going to cost you additional $$$ if you can’t do it yourself.

2. It is very hard to monetize these. Remember that things like Adsense and Overture are based on content. So the ads that will be displayed are going to be worthless. To make money you will probably have to charge some sort of basic subscription. There are very few people out there that are going to pay money to play on a brand new game that is based on a free or cheap script. Your only bet IMO will be to sell text ads on the home page.

3. These games take up a huge amount of processing power and bandwidth. I overloaded the space I had allocated on my server after I had about 50 active players. I could have tweaked the settings to accommodate more players by slowing down the game but then people would probably have lost interest.

4. All the figures for those text based Pimp’en and Mafia games are fake. The number of active players is a fraction of the one they advertise. All the prize money they hype is bogus. There is a team of employee/players in each one that make sure you don’t win and they don’t have to pay the prize money.

5. There is a crop of free EQ and WOW MMORG games out there now. Editors have been released for people who want to go out there and make their own 3D MMORGs. With this new development, even fewer people will want to play text games.

Hope this helps.

 

omg, thank you soooo much everyone!!! + rep to everyone

if anyone has any more advice please post

 

you know the servers you use, could set up one at home to accomodate like 500 players +

I could buy a really powerful computer but how am I going to make my internet connection like 500 meg if you know what I mean? lol

 

Even when you do have a few hundred/thousand people playing (assuming you get this far) my research suggests you may only have 7% of these people willing to sign up for a premium account.

I've seen an article on runescape today (been searching for the link for the past 5 mins and still can't find it ) claiming that they have a 20% rate. Certainly something to aim for and if you actively market a premium account probably achieveable.

There is still a huge market amongst people who have a bit of spare time sat in front of a computer they can't install software on. I'm thinking bored office workers and school kids mainly. Sadly very few school kids have credit cards with which to sign up for a premium account.

James12513, I wouldn't go down the route of hosting the site yourself. People playing these games tend to be extremely unaccomodating when it comes to downtime.

 

buying a server/computer and setting it up at home wouldnt really be a good idea, you would need to be home 24/7 in case something goes wrong with the server.

 

The text-based games shouldn't be too hard to do. The hard part is just getting the scripts and bringing in the traffic. The rest should come naturally.

Good luck, and if you get the project done, let me know so I can test it!

 

What is the game gonna be about, like is it gonna be fantast, mafia or w/e.

 

Forums based RPGs are very popular, can be just as interactive as other forms of MMORPGs, will cost way less to set up, and can be monetized via AdSense and other forms of PPC income.

Check out:

http://www.vbulletin.com

and

http://www.infernotechnologies.net

 

Be sure not to make it too easy for a person to get 10000000 credits and monopolize everything..