online games

We are planning on making an online game (e.g. planeterion or earth 2025), and we would like to know what people want in an online game.
It would be nice if u could tell us what kind of stuff u like in a game.

in the "early days" before the internet, i used to fanatically play a game called "tradewars 2002".
somewhat elite-like, but text-only (you have your own trading-spaceship that you can equip with engines, weapons, storage room).
you warp from one planet to the other, from one system to the next and each task you perform takes a specific amount of time (it was round-based).

for modern needs i would look out for a mixture of wing-commander and civilization in an ultima-online like world. full real-time interaction with other users online and a good trading concept. and a unique look for your character / spaceship.

don´t go for ego-shooters. there is too many already...

but i fear most of this has already been done (in a more or less professional way)...... i just cannot find a good one.

do you have experience in playing online-games? (and programming too?)

there are two of us who will make it, and we are only 17, so i guess that would make us amateur programmers, though i dont think that means we are bad programmers. We think we can do it.
In online games, we have experience, and we were thinking we will do a game where about 10 people are on each planet, and each person has to do a seperate thing for the community. i.e. some people make food, some make research etc, apart from an army, which every player has to make. After you have enough things you can attack other planets. What do u think?

for 10 people on one match, you should consider a round-based game maybe. a round is over after everybody did his (10, 20, 100) tasks / time units.

i like the kind of games where you can do your actions, come back a few hrs later / the next day, see what the others did and then you go on... long-time gaming fun, if it has a good gameplay... (do you know "tradewars"?)

or should it be real-time?

I think the problem with your idea is that ppl will have to wait for their next turn, and if someone is say on holiday, every1 else has to wait as well.
We were thinking that you have to build mines, and depending on the number of mines, every 5 minutes you get resources. From those you can do everything

say, if someone does not go online for one day, his "time" will be put on a "bank" and he can play when he´s back from hollidays. would this be an option?

this does not have to be a day. maybe hours or even minutes.

your ressources approach is somewhat the same i think. should be ok, if you don´t need to be online all the time

i would be happy to do some beta-testing once you got the basic engine running

if you put up a website for the development of the game or put it on sourceforge, maybe i´ll join you (depending on my spare time)...

theres still two months till we start it, but after that you could help if u want. We'll be doing it in ASP, i prefer PHP but hey.
All this is just preparation.

Sorry, i have no ASP knowledge at all

ok,
we're using PHP in the end
However, we need a name. Can anyone think of something?
We were thinking something like Coalition...?
What do u think?

tradewars? c'mon man.. L.O.R.D. is where it's at! i used to love that game more than my mother, and i had actually planned on creating a similar game in php/mysql (since the new owner is an asshole and won't let anyone develop it even though he doesn't have the know how) but then i remembered that i was lazy and that dream drifted away. i'd probably still be willing to do it if i had a good storyline and enough supporters hehe