Firstly, a quick word about me and the whole game idea:

I'm Andy, a web developer and for a very long time I am interested in building or joining a team that builds an open source MMO.

Some time ago I discovered one of the most gorgeous games there is, the Ironbane project. It was for a long time in the hall of fame on google projects page, but for some reason a few years ago it just died out and its development just stopped.

Recently I felt a stong whish to revive this awesome project and since it still has all the code base on github, a couple of weeks ago I actually retried to install it and very surprisingly it worked (after a few hickups obviously).

So I've set it and left it running on a server as a fully playeable version. 

UPDATE APRIL 2022 - I actually found a brilliant developer - SimonDev - that started a "basic" (actually quite dvanced) MMO from scratch and the code is on github.

Unfortunatelly that didn't work when I installed it, but I found another developer that improved it a bit and made it more easily installable - code on github too.

In the end I was able to install it and it's almost playeable, with just one more main error: try it yourselves.

Now, however big my wish to do this is, I can't do it alone, so I need as many developers and artists to join the project and together we can do an awesome thing.  So please feel free to contact me whenever you want!

Let's join our forces and try to revive this project or start something from scratch and make a mighty game and community!

A quick snapshot of the alogin screen

Now, about the old Ironbane, even though the game still fully works and it has a lot of the basic structure already made, the code base is quite old and obsolete. Also, after I spoke with a couple of its main devs, they said they would strongly suggest to almost start from scratch if we want to do something modern. Of course we have tons of things we can still keep and use, but probably a clean slate would be an idea to think about and discuss...

In any case, I am absolutely convinced that the business/collaboration model I thought of is a good engine for us to move forward.
The whole new game concept and development collaboration is desccribed below.

So a recap of the info you need to make an idea. Please have a look in your own time and please send me some thoughts.

- The old Ironbane Google experimetns project, completely inactive, but just as an idea: https://experiments.withgoogle.com/ironbane-mmo

- The playeable game itself: Play original Ironbane

- The github repo: https://github.com/ironbane

- Their discord server (invite link): https://discord.gg/FzjUT7h8

(mind you not many people are there anymore, but that's one of my/our future tasks)

As a thought, the name is just what they chose, but it doesn't even have to be the same for the new game. Personally I think it sounds cool, but it's open to discussion.

In conclusion, I really hope you have enough interest and bit of time to join us.

I am looking forward to your feedback, whichever it is.

Thanks everyone for your time.

Andy

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This is the new concept I thought about and I think it would work.
Of course, I welcome any constructive criticism and I kindly ask for any amount of contribution.

New MMORPG Game Collaboration Concept (Ironbane or other name)

The game will always be free to play for the end-user.

Still, I am absolutely certain that a very strong engine will be a stream of income, so there will be various ways to make money, like in-game buying options that will not hinder anything from the free-to-play style.

Monetizing ideas:

• Products examples: skins, weapons (maybe, but should not get too OPd!!! as most of the players hate when they are killed nonstop by some guys that just bought superpowers…)
• IDEA: those can even be NFTs and we can create a marketplace for all of them. (this is in the very far future…)

• Another obvious money-making idea: ADVERTIZING!!! We will place in-game banners, like in real life: on buildings, on specially-designated posts and panels in key/most visible places.

• DONATIONS!!!

• (MAYBE) a user leveling-up system for which they can pay, but again, that can be deterrant as many people will say “O, those guys bought their way up in ranks and now I can’t play cause I’ll always lose!”, so we need to think carefully about this.

ETC.

All the people involved in the game development will split the revenue based on their contribution/effort to the system: developers, marketers, graphics people etc. We will create a fair system for everybody to be happy with.

Through this system, we will ensure our development continuity in the long run.

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Technicalities and resources

I found a few fully functional Threejs-based MMOs and other partial trials and they seem to use three.js and similar frameworks as Ironbane. We need to research a bit about these and start contacting those developers about collaboration and of course co-opt as many other devs as we can:

www.titansoftime.com - Fully working and kinda established game – using three.js and I think PHP/Mysql backend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IptkgFOoci0- Great dev did an amazing video about his process of building a MMO in Three.js

https://github.com/simondevyoutube/Quick_3D_MMORPG - His github repo for the game (but when I installed it, didn't work cause it didn't have any package.json file)

https://github.com/jeremy-coleman/simmo - This guy added some more files and made it run, but still I can't login to it

https://www.gameogre.com/forums/threads/webgl-with-three-js-is-great.48356/ - Game link in the forum

more will come soon…

Now please comment as much as you can and bring ideas and plans to the table.

THANKS!

Feel free to contact me by whatsup, contact form or other means.