I wonder how long it will be before we see our first open source MMORPG

I was thinking about how interesting it would be if there was a version of Everquest that let people run the servers themselves and configure the ruleset to play how ever they want. Not emulated, but the real thing.

That made me think of the fact that nearly everything these days has at least one open source project somewhere. Heck even Microsoft has gotten in to open sourcing with MVC.

So, I wondered... will we ever see an open source MMORPG, and what would it be like?

When ever the day comes that DBG turns off the lights for Everquest, it would be awesome if they opened the IP up to open source. It's not going to happen, but one can dream.

How would you host it?

Someone would have to host it, and pay for that hardware/service... unlesss you found a way to mesh it across all open clients, or it runs locally and then people can join via IP

I don't think open source would work well for an MMO. One of the most important things that the devs of any MMO have to be able to do is say no to the player base sometimes. Inevitably, the player base will ask for things to be easier and easier until everything is trivial. If the players can just modify the code to make it easier themselves, invariably they will do so.

I don't think it's practical. It's so time consuming and expensive to build an MMO (tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars) that it's not something that someone could whip up in their basement for free. How doe they recoup the investment?

What exactly would be the point of this?

He's not a troll, he's just looking for attention.

There's been a few attempts over the years, Planeshift comes to mind straight off. They are using a hybrid model, where the engine is open source, but resources are closed.

For a true OS MMORPG to have a chance, it'd have to be distributed, as otherwise the data and hosting would cost a bundle. And it would have to have a core of committed developers, willing to endure pain and derision from players who want Shield of Awesome Twinkiness to drop from rats, bats and skeletons.

Risiko accounts for half or more of the forums readable posts. F U and agent, all you two do is troll the outa these forums. You do realize there's only like 10 to 15 people that actually regularly log in here right? Keep em coming Risiko, even tho I don't understand your guy's nerd talk on this one =P

I would only run an open source mmo if i could own all the pixels and sell them to people for hookers and blow.

I think anybody that looks at this as too time consuming or costly to be done doesn't realize that half of it already is done in the emulators that exist today. Those emulators are the server code base, and they are owned by whomever wrote them because that part does not include any source code from the actual games they emulate.

Therefore, there is already proof that the server side can and has been written outside of a major development company.

The part that has not been written as of yet is the client side.

What I am thinking is that a MMORPG open source project would actually consist of 3 different parts:

1. Communication standardization
2. Server code
3. Client code

What I am getting at is that if a community truly wanted to break away from companies that don't seem to be progressing the industry in a positive direction, the way to start is to create an open standard and develop a client to replace the existing game clients. The game client can be linked up to the existing servers.

Would it be an over night thing? Hell no. It would take years, but in the end, there would be the foundation for a gaming engine that is not owned by any one company that can milk it to death instead of continuing it's progress.

The one and only common thread in all MMO forums on every MMO ever, is that nobody agrees on what the right MMO is. Like linux on the desktop, it never exists because there are too many cooks in the kitchen. It takes a company to stick a stake in the ground and say "this is what the game is", for its marketing to make us all want to try that thing and build a community that hates each other but may enjoy the game. In this I am ignoring forum trolls both of the player induced variety, as well as the corporate sponsored sock puppets that populate these forums, those are all obvious. But even real people have varying ideas of how certain things should be.

Some companies do not find the right formula and fail. EQ is an example, it was the best of what it was at the time, but Blizzard ate its breakfast. This is not saying that I think WoW is the be-all, end-all of MMOs, I definitely do not. But, back before they became the all-in-wonder generic BS MMO, when it was vanilla WoW, they still had identified the key discontent with EQ and pulled us away. Since then they've been losing people left and right, precisely because in their attempt to make everyone happy, they made everyone unhappy.

If DBG dropped the code on the world, we'd all make servers that only we played.

That's why I have multiple characters across multiple servers, play and raid on Agnarr currently, been to numerous conferences for Everquest, and run an Everquest web site.... because I have no actual interest in playing Everquest.

I think you are confusing game design with game development. I am referring to the possibility of an open source MMORPG project for the game development side. The design is purely up to the individual that implements the developed engine.

If the game engine is developed with enough built-in configurability, the people that use the engine can design the game to be what ever they want it to be.

Two different implementations of the same game engine might both be using the dark elf character model, but one might be referring to them as Dark Elves while another is referring to them as Drow. A third game implementation might have them referred to as the Dark Ones, an evil race of high technology based hackers in a non-fantasy based universe.

The idea is that there should be more than one game design, but there does not have to be multiple game engines to get there.

Now where a company could make money off of an open source project like this is to develop and sale game assets such as fully built out maps (aka zones), character models, monster models, sound packages, etc. Another company could develop and sale (or license) a game design package for putting it all together. And, of course, a company could develop and sale a server management suite for running and maintaining the games themselves.

The point is, there is room for a whole industry to be born around the concept of an open source game engine for MMORPGs.

And, for the record, I am perfectly fine with having a server I design that I only have a handful of friends ever play on. That's perfectly fine. There's nothing that says that every MMORPG has to be open to the mass public.

Go to all the conferences you want, every post you've ever made here has been an attempt to turn EQ into a completely different game. It's not trolling, it's just calling you on your bs.

I see this as what would be the mmorpg maker type of everquest server, thus in order for it to succeed people would have to be able to make the collabrative experience that people want and also be able
to have a adventurer who is a main hero in the world and it seems challenging to make the kind of
story that would let someone go around like they are a dragonborn who can save the world and have
a community of other people who are just as prestigious. but I think the way to do it is have a big story
that people can accomplish from any town in the world where they start to help someone and then they reach the end of the quest at a different point in the world and there would be a raid and if they manage to get the person there trying to save from the beginning place to the raid then they probably succeed
to save that person.
but the origional story that this sandbox mode is being done based on has to be able to connect in different ways to where the sandbox is going to take who there rescueing through the story and have it connect like lego's as a story even though one adventurer goes through it a different way.
To me it just seems fun because I enjoy trying to think of the different ways a story I make can be
played by changing little things from the last time I played it.
But I'm also able to use double sided cards where one side could be a double sided card with a Knight/Perception with perception equiped to find out what the knight can learn from the next
double sided card which could be Myself on one side and a scripted quest on the other side
where i find out if i can get the npc rescued from say blackburrow to qeynos. and the goal is from
the first card to find out what the knight can perceive from getting the target to the first safe zone.

There is an EQ paper and pencil rpg set of books. Want your own rules ? Buy those, make some house rules, and play it.

Games change man. Especially MMOs. If you want to keep playing the same game for years and years, maybe games that are in a CONSTANT STATE OF CHANGE are just not for you. This is not a troll. If you wanted this game to stay the same as it "was designed in 2000-2002" then you have lost this battle for over 15 years. The game HAS changed, and its NEVER going back to how it was in 2000-2002. Your posts are nothing but a plea to keep things the same....only the pleas are a DECADE TOO LATE.

So do yourself a favor and stop beating your head against the wall on trying to keep things the same. If you are anywhere near as smart as you think you are, you know the only constant in the universe is change.

Back on topic, there is an open source MMO. It's called PlaneShift. It's not the prettiest game out there, but it's an attempt at the concept.

That's the one, I knew something like this had been done before.

But what I think he really wants is not so much open source, I don't think he wants the game or mechanics to change, he just wants new assets. That does not require open source, someone just needs to find a way to package it all up in a such a way as to allow people to develop into it and reskin it. Kind of old-school Quake style where you could replace the packages and the game was still mostly the same but with giant Spongebobs running around.

It's not very interesting to me personally, I care about mechanics not artwork, as evidenced by the fact that I play an 18 year old game with, to be nice, dated graphics. Graphics that were dated even when the game wasn't dated.

I'm with you 100% on that one. It's hard to explain that to people though.