None taken. Even when it's aimed at me, everyone deserves a kick in the nuts once in awhile. I'd count you among the provocateurs who serve a valid purpose. I swear i'm not just saying this, I'd always planned on seeing if you'd take a paying job once we got funded at a rate that would be worth your while since I respected your opinion.
And you're right on the subject of repackaging. That's all anyone wants to pay for. The problem is that MMOs take money to develop, but you need to get it from people who want to see a working product.
I thought that I could use mod culture to produce the prototype, but I was mistaken. Modelers are easy to find. That was one of my contributions to the project in fact. Programmers, animators, and texture artists are few and far between. They're either teenagers with no focus or they're decent to good and know they can leave at any time. Mods are over quickly and can translate to a demo reel. MMOs are major investments of overlapping work. As I'm sure you know, most programmers have an aversion to working with someone else's code - which is what indie-mmo programmers would have to do if they sign on to an existing project.
Even after:
* coming to a 80% complete design state
* assessing the most economical way to accomplish the work
* finding and contributing talent
* the product having some safe, some cutting-edge, and some bleeding-edge original ideas
* creating a centralized, non-wasteful production system
* setting goals that were clear, realistic (for volunteers) and meaningful
* using both carrots and sticks for motivation
* replenishing team members lost to life and disinterest AND
* making realistic assessments of accomplishments and deficiencies
MMO + volunteer project + limited funds just didnt work.
We ended up getting a whore's cunt hair away in one case (negotiating for months with Francois Maschiopinto of Atari, at his offices before they went under) and having other minor successes (getting feedback from industry (single-player and MMO) vets who liked the project more than casually) ... I couldnt keep all the plates in the air.
At one point I'd shelled out a lot of cash to have a programming group try just to make the Torque MMO toolkit work...and either I chose badly (probably) or the toolkit wasn't really ready (Minions of Mirth is thriving so it should work...although I'm thinking the programmer left out a little bit so that it never really worked for the rest of it). That was money I could have spent on buying the services of a business plan drafter (I'm business-minded but MMO industry stats as needed in those things are more heavily guarded than fort fricking knox. MMO Chart just doesnt cut it
)
So, I'm saving money and am waiting to have a large warchest to do this right the next time.