This should be settled as fast as possible between those interested. Some people may immediately aim for an improved MUD, but I can see "the next WoW" in some people'e eyes.
I don't read this thread often, so let me just remind of an earlier post:

People who played a MUD or similar have a better view of what can be done at a indie programmer's level. I pointed at the amount of artwork, but even then, I'm certain only hardcore network programmers can achieve real-time smooth movement with more than several characters at a time (and people here talk about whole realms!

Retroremakes recently posted about a multiplayer Ultima game : maybe there are ideas to borrow there, in terms of user interface and doability.

I was looking at a thing called RealmCrafter that a friend of mine recomended some time ago. Does anyone have any experience in this? Would it even be suitable for our kind of game? It does look like a complete engine though, so....

Anyway, if not, than a 'MUD' it is. I happen to have a bit more experience with these anyway Anyway, I'd suggest we turn away from traditional code bases, and make our own, as I doubt any would have the features we want anyway.

A few suggestions:
-We use Allegro for the Client This way we still get text output support, but can use different colours/bitmaps to "spice things up" on all plaforms.
-If we want to port this to a graphical environment (of any sort), I suggest we have a concrete map format that splits the world into zones->tiles. This way, when we get to the graphical bit, we just modify the client to display whatever model/mesh that represents what we want, whilst still sending the same data back to the server.

That actualy gives me an idea, why not "Officialy" support a text based client, but then later have a bunch of users fork from the main project, and modify the client to fit their own needs? Even better, why not create a re-usable lib, that we release to the public, and automates client/server relationships, so the programmer just needs to define functions that respond to these things?
I think that'd take away the pressure of worrying about our interface, atleast for now.

Tell you what, once we get to some sort of agreement on this, I'll start coding on Sunday

Here's what i think we could do:

We could go super low-tech and make this in GameMaker^[1]

We could use that realm crafter engine you mentioned

We could write our own graphics library

Or we could write an engine in openGL.

I'd apt for GM or openGl.

An allegro client sounds nice too.

So what do you think we should use?

Oh, and i'm not great programmer... Just to remind you... but i could work with an engine.

Well, game maker is the only game editor I'VE ever used [Hence the "Super low-tech ]. I have LITTLE openGL experience, but other than that, i mostly make games with darkBASIC, or just C++.

A MUD would be OK, but, as BAF said, then we have two different clients accessing one server. :-\

O.k, looking back over that idea, maybe it is a little stupid But can you blame a guy after half a carton of beer for trying? Maybe the "library" should just be a dev. thingy... I would still like both a MUD and 3d MMO for this anyway.

"Game Maker" Is the bane of all existence. Several years ago in high-school, I did a complete Break-Out clone in C++ based off my own engine and Allegro - sharders, effective resource management, etc and the teacher marked be down because "I didn't use Game Maker" (not even a part of the course!). Mole.

Anyway, M.U.D library for a start it is. Like I said, I presume I can start that Monday, however does anyone know of any good, free networking libs? Multiplatform, of course. I really, really don't feel like writing my own protocol using sockets/using ftp & http...

Someone said something about a language already being developed... it would be cool if the game let people use their own language, and then, when you needed to talk to someone in game who didn't speak your language, you would have to find an interpreter or learn some of the language, just like it would have been done before.

just a thought..

Yea, people of the same language can barley communicate as it is, much less having to LEARN a language just to play a game.

However, a simple rune script for some objects might be kinda cool, but not the whole game!

Oh, i thought he meant creating a language for the game...

My bad.

What, this one? I'll go look.

It would be still easier then other challenges I have faced and overcame in my life. I am completely confident in my ability to face and overcome this particular challenge.

Cantr feature of the day: You can hunt Gorillas with a dungfork.
There's a lot of weird shit you can do in this game, but you have to imagine it all inside your mind...

Ah, ok. But still... There is enough of a language barrier .