Accountant Looking to get involved in an MMORPG

[DubZio]

Hey UDK Community,

Im a qualified public Accountant in Australia, I am an avid and longstanding fan and player of the MMORPG genre (dating back to the T2A ultima online days), I enjoy Beta testing the new MMORPGS. That being said I would like to offer my skillset to work, casually, for free on a fantasy MMORPG. I see my reward as being able to get an understanding of the industry and the enjoyment of pursuing a hobby that

My skills could assist in things like:

Basic Financial and Management Accounting skills:

- Dealing with investors, marketers, setting up a kickstarter program;

- Advising how to allocate funds, calculating budgets or various business ratios, for example - calculating how many subscriptions or show acquisitions are needed per month to break even;

- Calculating the possibility for f2p options and estimating how the revenue stream will be brought in.

In game skills:

- Calculating in game skill, damage, possibility tables, for example crafting success rates

- Assisting with determining what prices vendor items are in game.

- Assisting to determining how hard skills are raised.

I understand there are more things that require consideration but any comments of the community would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
DubZio
Chris

[ambershee]

You're in the wrong place. You can't make MMORPGs using UDK (it's also extremely unlikely an indie effort will ever get an MMO to the point where they'll need an accountant anyway).

[Saishy]

While not a MMORPG we are doing an MMO if you are interested: http://forums.epicgames.com/threads/...Gate-Project-M

Please notice that thread is kinda old and the game have changed over time.

[Bjorn]

MMORPGS can be made with UDK, check out their website, a while back I received a newsletter about some development company in China creating a MMORPG with UDK, google around if your looking for more information.

[ironbelly]

A dev company in china is trying to make an mmorpg with UDK perhaps.. Call us when it's actually released. I suppose as an accountant my standard advice would be the same with all other poeple looking to get involve with an indie team. Why on earth don't you get involved with a team that would actually have a chance in hell at getting a product out the door and not try to take on the financial planning of the single most complicated and volatile type of game out there?

[seenooh]

That company you guys are talking about uses full UE3.

[ambershee]

Any Unreal MMOGs will use a full license and a whole bucketload of additional tech, whether internal or middleware. You cannot make reasonably an MMOG using UDK.

try to take on the financial planning of the single most complicated and volatile type of game out there?

Let's face it, even a company with the real muscle to do so can't seem to get it right at the moment; there are only very few long running MMOGs (WoW, EVE, Guild Wars), and their profitability is still questionable. Even massive efforts like the recent Star Wars MMOG are failing to get traction.

[Saishy]

You guys are only considering open world mmos.

There are room based too like Vindictus. I see no problems for UDK to do something like it.
Also, many "open world" mmos have channels, which are just rooms discretely on your face.

TERA would also be doable in UDK, each map have like 8-10 channels and you can see the seam between maps (other characters start to disappear and then reconnect on the other side)

Then you also have like Ragnarok Online, which each map is a separate server.

[ambershee]

You're talking about Instanced games, which to be honest, aren't really MMOs

[Saishy]

You're talking about Instanced games, which to be honest, aren't really MMOs

Yes they are.

Even WoW uses instances, it's "open world" just as much as you can fake that you don't have instances. At the seam of each WoW map players disappear and then reappear on the other side as they connect. But the maps are made in such a way that you will rarely see someone walking at a map transition area, just smart map design.

Then there is always people who say "oh but you can have 200 people in a city", they are basically defining being a mmo or not by the sole amount of numbers specific maps can hold, and how much would that be to a game be considered an mmo?

Wow certainly can't hold all of the server population on the same map, most of times orgrimmar servers goes down on high populated servers. This means a single city can't hold even the peak of players from a certain faction that are on a certain map.

Being a mmo or not is much of a gray area.
I like the definition of how many and how much people actually interfere on your game.

Counter-Strike can have millions of people playing, but how many of them are interfering with your game?
Vindictus can have millions of people playing, you can argue that only around 20 people can appear on the same map, yeah but every single one of them is interfering with your game. They can join your party, go to adventures together, defeat bosses, the whole economic binds every single one of them even if every single one can't actually see each other at the same time.

I think it's too narrow minded to just say "open world is mmo and instanced is not".

Putting the graphic representation of a character as a requirement to be a MMO would also remove any possibility of chat based mmo games.

[Eternal Dusk]

Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, just having 40 people in an instance can make it a MMORPG

[ironbelly]

Doesn't sound very Massive to me

[Cronnix]

I think it's too narrow minded to just say "open world is mmo and instanced is not".

The term "MMO" been misused a lot lately, even to describe such lobby based games as World of Tanks and Leage of Legends. MMO doesn't mean how many players are playing in total, to me it is how many players can be in a single world together with me, whatever technology (server cluseters, seams, ect) is used I don't quite care as long as I see them. In counter-strike too anyone can join your game and go defeat the opposite team together, same as in your vindictus example :P

But yeah, as you said it "MMO" is kind of a gray term as it is hard to define. Vindictus is on the very verge of it as it is more of big multiplayer rather than "massive". There is nothing massive about it, but that's personal opinion.