Well it depends on what type of MMORPG you wanted. If you wanted a Text Based MMORPG you would want to know about php. you can buy pre-made php codes for a mafia game at McCodes. NJow if you want a flash game or something like that you would want to know C++, which you can make almost anything with that programming language.

Um actually if you wanted to make a Flash game you would want to know Flash...

Over all, however, exemption is correct. There are a lot of questions that you need to ask yourself and your team. I already mentioned some of them earlier, but exemption just added a couple more. What type of game do you want to make? Text Multi-User Dungeons will not require much more than PHP and MySQL. A more intensive game like World of Warcraft (Which I am going to assume the OP is shooting for) is going to require a lot of time, money, and experience so I would recommend you try something else first.

put your beta version online I like testing games...
I have also good imagination (I could say game design skills, maybe lots of us have them)... but the most important is to have good programming skills or someone who's good at it.. otherwise there's no game without that, it's just a concept.

Actually, the idea that you yourself need to know programming isn't necessarily true. If you have a legitimate idea for a game, all you have to do is design the game in a way that makes it, no only fun to play, but fun to create. A lot of ideas beginning designers have to create this huge mega-game are just way too complicated to be any real fun to make so they can't get the team. If you step back and scale down your project to a reasonable size-- and always stay open to suggestions-- you can get a game made with no programming skills.

Sage advice DemonFire. In addition you (OP) might want to spend some time pre-planning. A good way to approach any project is to create a set of requirements and specifications. Then you break those down into manageable chunks and milestones. MMOs are huge endeavors practically by default so you'll also want to spend some time researching the different approaches used to develop that kind of game.

There are a lot of books out there on game design. One good one I've read is Swords & Circuitry: A Designer's Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games, by Neal and Jana Hartford. It is not a technical book, so it won't show you how to exploit your graphics card's pixel shader routines. What it does do, and does very well I might add, is show you how to build a game-world for an RPG. It takes you through all the components that make up a RPG and breaks them down for you to better understand them. The book also contains several interviews with game designers, case studies and even sample game scripts and design documents so you can get a solid understanding of how Role Playing Games are structured at the design level.

If you take one thing away from this, remember to spend enough time on pre-planning. Once you have a clear map of where you want to go, you and more importantly your team will have a tangible goal in mind. A lot of projects end up still-born because they lacked proper planning. And don't be afraid to fail in your first couple of iterations. Failure can give you better insight into the development process so that next time around you will be better armed.

Good luck with your efforts.

This post has been edited by dimumurray: Aug 5 2008, 12:17 PM

I fully agree with dimumurray. Pre-planning is huge. As a matter of fact, I wrote a tutorial myself on pre-planning for game creation once. I will post it in the tutorial section here and I will give you a link once it gets approved.

(This is not a double post because it is a significant update more than 24 hours later, right?)

Ok, so I've got the tutorial posted and approved. It's helped a number of people I've already given it to so it should help you, too.

Check it out! http://www.trap17.com/forums/how-start-fir...ect-t60178.html