Wow... where do I even start?

The first thing you've got to understand is that anything that starts with "MMO" is going to be a real challenge. I would never say "impossible", because if that were the case, no one would have done it, but "challenge" is probably an understatement.

Being "very stable and not have problems de-syncing" aside, writing an engine from scratch involves a large number of computing disciplines all working in unison. You've got to know about multithreaded software development, database (or file) structure, network architecture, network communications, just to name a few. You development team is going to have to be very, very organized.

I'm working on an MMORPG right now with my brothers. We're about two years into our development, and don't have a beta yet. We've made real progress, but it's slow-going when it's your hobby.

Anyway, the server architecture breaks down like this: we've got four distinct server systems (so far): the database server, the authentication server/controller, the zone server, and the communications server. These are written so that they can all be run on the same machine (for testing), or distributed over any number of different physical or virtual machines. They're all written in C++ and run on Fedora Redhat Linux.

I don't know if I answered your question, but I will watch this thread and if you have any more specific questions, I would be happy to answer them. Good luck!

I started reading through an article on gamedev about creating a game engine from scratch; a basic game engine, written in C++ and using SDL for the graphics.
It's a start, and I think after being able to successfully understand and create one like in this article, you can attempt to move on to something much more complicated, like this MMO RTS engine you want to make.
Of course, like PirateTUX explained, it'll be very complicated, and a skilled and highly-organized team of programmers can still take a couple years or so to pull it off. It really requires dedication.

Here's the article on 'Enginuity' (it's 5 parts) that you can give a read-through and follow along to.
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/pro...es/enginuity1/

Best of luck!

I'm working on one myself, and for 3D graphics I'm using Ogre3D (its pretty damn good). its LGPL so you wont (necicarily) have to release your source code if thats an issue for you... I'm working on my own networking engine because that was like my "target" as a completed product.... as for physics ( not sure about that) - but I'll probably implement something farely basic...

If you are interested in MMO development but are new to C++ing, then you might be interested to join an existing team such as planeshift (look at their "massively multiplayer online game development" talk on the youtube channel: "googletechtalks")... That might give you a bit of an idea as to how they do it.

Its quite a broad topic to cover - and for a sole programmer its an enoumous task ( I'm not the only person on the team )....

Also (not sure how helpful it will be) - but theres a youtube channel with the developers of a game for the PC and dreamcast from the user "GyroVorbis" so you might be interested to look there ( though theres no networking, and its more "fun" than "code")...

Finally, you might be interested to look at a few more simpler languages such as python if your new to coding. python addons such as PyGame are good - and as blender3D has a full python interpreter built in, you could use the blender game engine and write some networking if thats what your interested in ( running python on both the client and server?)..

anyway - good luck with whatever you decide to do... happy coding!

I'm looking for some good stepping stones, I'm probly even further back than the original poster (learning Javascript, going well but there a lot to go with C+ and C++)
I'm currently using Notepad++ to write my script in and I have MS SQL Server 2008 and MS Visual C++.

I'll be blunt, I'm having A LOT of UI trouble. If someone knows some good suggestions to familiarize myself with the UI of particularly NP++.
Anything will help.

So ya, were hoping to create an MMORPG, similar to Diablo style play, but with more warcrafty features (lets face it 12 mill players paying $15/month, must be doin somethin right)

So in a nutshell, im a noob looking for any help I can get =D
Ciao for now