Almost 18 years ago I worked in an open-source project for an MMORPG server and it was so much fun. Later I joined WoW and some other well-known games. I soon discovered that I have a different approach and style than most others I met.
I was known to be the guy who spends hours of fishing, running a low-level character through areas which he shouldn't step on to push his profession skills or just walking around and exploring the environment. I liked collecting items - whether they were considered to be of any value by the general public or not. The most interesting parts where usually the professions and skills but I had less ambitions for the global level. I levelled this figure when the engine forced me to do that so I could explore more skills and collect better resources. I joined raids and PvP only when I had to and usually hated the experience of running through a quest in the least amount of time. Groups forced me to hurry through unknown terrain without any time to look around, read dialogs and just do my duty. That's not what I enjoy in a game so I discarded all of the games and accounts.
After some time working on the server side and trying to implement things I missed I spent a considerable time writing down what I'd like to see in a game and started to work on that. Unfortunately game development was quite hard at that time and the project was stopped because I realized I would never ever be able to do that on my own. The logic was less of a problem than the obvious basic visual aspects like the terrain, rigged and animated characters with at least some variations and all of the objects you need.
The project found an end but I could not really forget it. Late in 2017 I started to fool around in Unity and some of the ideas came back. Now with a so much more modern and convenient environment and resource pool I play around to see what could be accomplished.
It's a fun project and a distraction of daily problems. I really enjoy it.
Of course the idea to create something more than a playground project came up again. Hence I started to work on some of the aspects, like a skill-based system and NPC AI. Surprisingly the preliminaries like character behaviour, all the UI stuff, the environment and adaptable character models were so much easier and it starts to look and work the way I want.
The basic for the quest and skill system is done and currently I'm working on the character customization, i.e. the look and clothing. Thanks to the opensource UMA project it's feasible to create unique avatars which can be adapted by the player and clothing that fits.
Still I'm unsure whether I'm about to create a game just for my own pleasure while all others strive to get the latest rig and run through raids. But time and hopefully some discussion will tell.