Best game engine for an MMO?

[Ironwolf]

I have Unity3d and Unreal UDK3. I find the Unreal Engine is extremely easy to work with.

I fact I was flying inside a small little area after just 30 minutes of tinkering. I know that the Unreal engine has limitations about 64 players - so how does Lineage 2 manage it?

I have also looked up 3 or 4 other MMO's who use the engine. Unreal 4 might be the best bet but it isn't out yet.

[General Idiot]

I know that the Unreal engine has limitations about 64 players - so how does Lineage 2 manage it?

I believe there's an alternate server setup you can get hold of if you have the cash for it that doesn't have that limitation. At the very least you can get a license to get access to the source code and reprogram it from there.

Alternately, you can use an instanced setup similar to what CoH used - too many people in one zone and it spawns a second running on a second server program linked to the first. CoH had a 100 player cap on most zones, but a 64 player cap is more than enough for most needs.

[Zerias]

When it comes to designing a mass-multiplayer game the paramount design goal is built around:  transfer as little data as you absolutely have to.

This is closely followed by: maximize the efficiency of the data you have to send.

To this end most true MMO games with greater than 64 concurrent players are designed around proprietary engines.

Most Unreal engine backed MMO games are only quasi-MMO, such as Global-Agenda. They rely on extensive instancing of any given map with relatively few players actually loaded into any single served map. It's been a few years, but I'm pretty sure Lineage II simply doubled the maximum number of players available on any given map to 128 over the 64 UE 2.5 was supposed to top out at.

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As to the best current engine for building an MMO?

Depends on what you want to do / how much money you have.

If you are on a limited budget, start with either ID Tech3 or ID Tech 4: http://ioquake3.org/  http://www.iodoom3.org/

With full access to the source code for either engine, and with the massive updates made to the Tech3 engine under IOQ3, either engine is capable of handling the requirements for building an action-oriented MMO.

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If you have some money to play with:

Valve Source: http://source.valvesoftware.com/

We already knew from late last year that Valve was pretty confident they could get CoH up and running on Source, so no question as to whether or not the engine is capable of running a proper MMO. The downside here is that for a lot of the community oriented features, such as chat and player identities, Source pretty much requires the usage of Steam. Not really a big deal to most players, but there are quite a few anti-Steam zealots out there.

* * *

Unigine: http://unigine.com/

Not the easiest engine to work with, but Unigine has some interesting terrain rendering capabilities.

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Forgelight: https://www.soe.com

Probably the best MMO engine available... good luck getting your hands on it though. Forgelight is Sony's internal MMO for Planetside 2 and the next Everquest. Reportedly the ForgeLight engine is being made available along with the Playstation 4 software development kit, so if you are gunning for a modern MMO, now might be a good time to start talking to Sony.

[downix]

I have Unity3d and Unreal UDK3. I find the Unreal Engine is extremely easy to work with.

I fact I was flying inside a small little area after just 30 minutes of tinkering. I know that the Unreal engine has limitations about 64 players - so how does Lineage 2 manage it?

I have also looked up 3 or 4 other MMO's who use the engine. Unreal 4 might be the best bet but it isn't out yet.

FYI, one of the CoH spiritual successors recently announced a switch to the Unreal engine, you might want to reach out to us:

http://www.missingworldsmedia.com

[Lightslinger]

I thought the Valve thing was just a rumor? They actually commented that they could get CoH running on their engine? I wasn't aware it was that serious and public of an offer.

[Ironwolf]

I have been looking at the Unreal engine a lot and in fact I found a very good tutorial with step by step walk throughs to publishing a basic game.

The MMO part has changed quite a lot since release of the engine. DCUO is based on the UDK. NCSoft has licensed 4 new MMO's based on UDK 4. Marvel Heroes will be using the Unreal 3 engine.

I am looking to make something a bit different from what you folks are - I am looking to make a childrens MMO for ages 6-12 or so using basic CoH gameplay style but with learning built into the game. I found Unreal extremely easy to use - I was flying around inside a map in less than 30 minutes and that made me smile!

In fact one of the things I am planning is that everyone can fly from the start in the game.

[Thazager]

partial list, with some prices and other features
http://www.esenthel.com/?id=compare

[downix]

partial list, with some prices and other features
http://www.esenthel.com/?id=compare

Realize that page is put out by a company... selling their own MMO engine. Of course theirs rates the highest, when in fact it is not even close to the top-end for game engines.

The list is also very incorrect. let us go over UDK:

Does have Mac, Android, X360 an PS3 support. Does support C++ through DLL's. Does support unlimited world size through streaming. Integrates with multiple version control systems. And the price is incorrect.