So what's the bigger picture? (a theory)

[Fifth]

A few facts for starters:

1. There's no (major) game engines specifically designed for MMO's. Therefore, the code that handles the network layer is in all MMO's highly customized.
2. Takes a good programmer to write custom code that handles network traffic. Takes an exceptional programmer to write this custom code so that it's well optimized and works reliably.
3. Takes very smart management to understand this. It's so tempting to save all the money you have to give out every month to keep a good lead programmer (+ his team) and outsource it all to India.

I definitely do NOT have enough solid data to be certain if this scenario applies to EU. Just trying to fit together many seemingly unrelated "backstage" bits and pieces, plus looking at the recent developments. It seems, everything fits. Yet it's still only a theory, a little mind game of mine, if u wish...

 

[dalewj]

most MMO companies use their own home grown engine so I expect that the engines out there are real hard to take control of and port your code to (Note re-write).

As for programmers I think the problem we have is simply they are programmers not network types. They understand X% of what they need to know and have to learn the rest by trial and error. learning slows down the creation of MMOs (look at our other game and how slow development and learning is) and destroys porting of games (Haven't seen a successful one yet). When major changes happen in the backend like EU this month) the learning process starts all over again.

Learn to MMO program and setup a MMO network before you pick an engine. Pick it, learn it and run as fast as possible before a better one comes out. DO NOT consider a or upgrade your engine unless you have already ported 25-75% of your game to it and learned it enough to finish it. DO NOT BUY IN that a new engine is better then the last. odds are the bad programming/port in the new engine will make them both about equal in the long run..

IMHO...