Putting It All Together - Wizards and Warriors: Massively Multiplayer Online Game Creation - page 274

Team and Outsourcing
You may need other people to help you complete your MMO. These could be
friends, people you pay, or people who volunteer.

It would be possible to create certain types of small MMOs on your own, but the
work and effort required would be quite large. So it is very likely that you ' ll

recruit other people to help you out. This doesn t mean you will employ a team

of people to work on your MMO, but you might decide to get people to do
certain aspects of the work that you are unable to complete, such as the music or
3D creation.

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Outsourcing means using other people (contractors) or companies to complete
various aspects of your game, which in most cases means payment. You should
ensure any costs associated with outsourcing are included in your budget.

Note

Chapter 18 covers more about the types of team members that you might need when making an
MMO.

Design and Story
MMOs are usually very large, contain lots of content, and have a lot of quests
that contain aspects of the game story.

Before you start making any physical part of your MMO, such as coding or
creating graphics, you should complete the design and story. As an MMO is
usually quite complex, starting on the graphics and code before you have an idea
of the story would probably mean going back and redoing a lot of the content
once you have completed the design. You ' ll lose time, effort, and potentially

money. So it s essential you write at least a draft copy of the design and story

before you start. It

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s very common for the game design to evolve while you are
making it, because ideas and problems will appear that you didn

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t think about in
the original design. This is quite normal and nothing to worry about.

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The story of an MMO can be quite complex. Not only must you develop the
initial story, you also have to take the players through the ongoing story as they
complete the quests available to them. Not all quests will necessarily contain
something that will move the game world story forward, but they do need to