Unity for Sandbox MMO

Dear Unity Community,

I am a 3D content developer, with 7 years experience in the industry. While most of my work has been for government university, I have always had an interest in virtual world development.

I am aware most of the capabilities of this engine are dependent on the skill of coder and team. I however was hoping I could ask those with experience here if unity is a viable engine for a sandbox style mmo?

This is some of the primary hopes I have for the engines function capacity.

Features:

- Bounty System - Place a price on your enemies head, other players collect a reward for defeating a target player.
- Customizable Character Creation - Something similiar to oblivion, entropia - I believe players need to feel unique not see 12 carbon copies of themselves as soon as they login.
- Ability to give area/region item point restrictions for player placement of structures, or rezzable items.
- Localized Player Economy - Non globalized trade, will encourage travel, trade routes and community building.
- Localized Unique resource, mob spawns - Non global minerals, will give each region its own precious resources.
- Evolving Humanoid Mob - Monster AI will allow for looting of dead human players, will then equip and use found equipment in battle.
- Dye/Colouring System - Colour your armour, clothes, items and just about anything for any purpose or reason.
- Non class based skill system - Skill without confinement, limitation or restrictions.
- Divided free roam PVE/PVP environment - Venture out into the danger of player vs. player or enjoy the safety of a pure man vs. environment adventure.
- Customizable GUI - place huds where they feel natural.

I thank you in advance for any helpful information.

Cheers,

Perefim

 

Most of the stuff you've outlined is strictly game design related and can be implemented in almost any engine (Unity included). There are some really good AI pathfinding and behavior add-ons/ scripts but custom "intelligent" behavior like you've mentioned will have to be implemented by you.

As it stand right now (if Unity 3.0 didn't improve things), you're going to need an external networking implementation if you want to create a stable (bug free) networking application.

 

So with the proper implementations on top of the engine with scripting and code, the unity engine with a proper server engine and client would be powerful enough + capable of handling the development of a professional level mmo?

 

Can't say anything about this as I haven't tried Unity's versioning system (the Asset Server) and we're just a 3 man team with game development as a test/ secondary project. (similar backgrounds to your own)

IMHO the rest should be doable.

 

I was talking to a guy says, a couple of the mmo's out by some companies are now using unity 3d for their mmo development. So this answers my question.

I really appreciate everyones feed back, as I wanted to know I was even barking up the right tree for a development engine.