About three years ago myself, my wife, and some longterm friends decided to try to develop an MMO together. I know - insane! But we had no idea just how insane. ;)

It started with my wife and I talking over a long weekend. We theorized about a very popular television IP and how it would be perfect for an MMO. It had interesting races, a really cool (modern day) setting, and tons of other things that made it, in our minds, a perfect IP for an MMO. Of course, we do not have and in no way could ever afford a license to use said IP - so we figured there would only be two ways to pull it off. One, it could be done "on the sly" and then if it was cool enough the owners of the IP might be on board with continuing the project. Or two, change just enough that it appeals to fans of the IP, but make it different enough that no legal guns could be aimed at the project.

We then began talking about this idea on the forums where the aforementioned friends hang out, and several of them thought the idea sounded cool and wanted in on the project! It was now a "project!" I setup separate (and very private) forums and a (equally hidden/private) wiki for the project and we went forth with it.

Some concept art was created - in fact the artwork in this post is concept art from that project; one of our friends is a very talented artist. For about a month or two, it seemed like this could be a reality. No, we didn't believe we could create a full blown MMO with "just us"; rather we hoped to get the bare workings of something to show, and then try to find venture capital to make it happen for real. We had two programmers (myself - I've been programming as a hobby since I was 10, and professionally since I was 19; and another friend on the project), a excellent artist, several very creative design/story type people. We really did have the right mix to make something barely showable.

As things started to get more and more detailed, that's when problems started happening. The whole project ended up being a very interesting insight into what must happen in MMO development. First it was races. We fought bitterly over which races would be included. Hell, we had some knock down, drag out fights over what to name the races! Yes, race names. Fights. Seriously! Haha.

Perhaps the worst fight was over the magic system. I'm a longterm caster player; I always play casters, and usually pet-based casters. I have always wanted a very complex, deep magic system in an MMO, instead of the simplistic "buy a spell and cast it" type of system that has become the norm. I'm maybe the only player that liked Asheron's Call's original magic system, where things were randomized on character creation, and spell power was greater/lesser based on how many in the world knew a spell. Hell, I didn't think it was quite complex enough! But it was a start. A friend that was on the project is a similar caster fan, so I figured we'd be totally in sync on a complex magic system. Oh hell no. Not even close! Heh. The crude mockup of a research interface preceding this paragraph is my work. I spent perhaps 100 hours documenting my ideas for a magic system that was complex and based on personally researching spells and so forth. The other caster person... didn't quite get it and ... well, we ended up not speaking for a few months when the project was aborted.

Actually, most of us didn't speak for a few months. We're all still friends and we're all over the failure of the project. :) But, wow, what an insight it ended up being! If actual, longterm friends get into fights that badly over game design issues... imagine what people who's only connection is being employed by the same company must go through! Heh. And this was confirmed recently when someone in another community I'm a part of gave us all an insight into what goes on. He's on the dev team for a very big upcoming title, and he detailed how some meetings go. There have been near fist-fights in some of them! And this is an AAA+ title we're talking about. Bottom line: game development is passionate!

Shame our project never went anywhere though; we really did have a lot of good ideas, and looking back over the wiki we created, that's still true. I'm glad I've kept the wiki and forums to look back on.