Not sure where to start.

Guys, I am 38 yr old high school drop out. No further education. Been gaming my entire life. It is my hobby. I dont know how to change an alternator on a car but i cant craft you the baddest flaming greatsword you have ever seen. I think you see where I'm coming from here. I have all of these great ideas rattling and I am not talking tiny flash games. I'm talking a bigger than WoW game. I believe with the right team I could blow peoples mind. I do not have any extra money. Nor would i know how to start this if i did. So what should i do?

Obviously this is mostly my opinion.

The thing is - ideas are a dime a dozen - many of us think we have that great mega-idea, nearly every day some kid here is making "The next" one or another. It's easy to think up a game that's "going to have all these cool features, and elements and everything's going to be SO cool" - realizing it is another thing entirely.

Very few people who actually do things will want to work for an idea. And even with sufficient funding an idea can go perfectly wrong - every year plenty of multi-million games flop loudly.

So if you don't have the art skills or the code skills you would need at least excellent leadership and planning skills. If you make a very detailed plan of your game idea, write down how everything should work, describe the systems well (i.e. not just "The guy does a cool attack", but "The player character does damage based on this and that, within this time, which is affected by the skills, etc") then you might be able to approach some people and, possibly, get them to do some of that base work. Then by actually checking that work, making sure it sticks to that plan you might arrive at a product.

The leadership skills and the planning skills i do have. If i spend a few days and get a rough draft on how this game would be would you look it over and tell me what you think?

I think you can be a good game designer, if you focus on that. You will need to stop playing like before and start studying the game while playing. Write down everything that you think about the game and start to answer some questions like that. Why is this game so fun? Why do i care about the plot? Is this a game that i would like to play again? If yes, why? If no, why? This is just some tips to help you. Of course this is just a small part of be a game designer.

About the idea bigger than WoW that you have in mind.

Games like WoW, Guild War 2, League of Legends, Dota 2 need a really massive budget and a lot of excellent professionals. If you wanna be a game developer, you need to start with something simple and fun. Save the big ideas for when you have money and a good team. And the most important, why you wanna be a game developer? This is a profession that you really need to love and have a solid motivation, because it's really hard to succeed, if don't have a good reason for doing this, you will have more chances to fail or give up.

That's my opinion of course. I hope that helps.

-Gleison

I have already gone through just about every game i have ever played and wrote down all the likes and dislikes not just from me but from from a lot of the population. What I run into most of the time in a game is well this is great but why wouldn't they have added that. It would be great had it been like this. Take Destiny for instance. Insane load times. Open world and hey how about i get to fly my ship around. Once I maxed out my char in 2 weeks now I would only play on raid reset day for a few hours then do it again next week. I did not even buy the expansion. I remember there was a few games that when i was at work or school i just couldn't wait to get home too. I do not see that much anymore. It is great if ya have a lot of dough and you can just buy every random game that releases but in my case and most others I know we sit back and wait for the next best thing. So we watch for a fun game that we can play together that has great replay value. I play all the Cod games (AW atm) which is great for some quick fun with friends. But not something i can do all the time. So I needed something else so i had my sis get me dragon age inquisition for Christmas. Really enjoying it and have about 84 hours logged into it in the last 14 days. With that said I'm just about done with it. Don't even get me started on the multiplayer. Could have been so much better. Will I ever play it again. Probably not. It will sit on my shelf with Skyrim. Well I have the idea to make a great game and not only that but to also be involved in it on a daily basis. What ever happen to admins or devs taking on a roll in the game trying to take over the town and everyone gets together and tries to kill him. lol great fun. Not something ya see much. But anyhow I do not mean to ramble on. Thanks for listening and I very much appreciate and value your opinions.

xFreakinouTx Here are some tips:

• You should start thinking smaller. You won't make the new WoW before you make a simpler game. It just doesn't work like that.
• Ideas are worthless. Make prototypes, try your ideas. You'll see most of them are not THAT good when put into motion.
• Don't get too attached to your ideas. Know when to just throw them away.
• Educate yourself. You don't need a degree, but there are several books out there that would help you become a better game designer.
• Play games, both digital and non-digital. This will help you build a game vocabulary.
• Forget your favorite games. You must play everything: fighting games, games with ponies on them, racing games, whatever. Not only what you like.

This is a start.

Lastly, I can take a look at your draft if you want. I've been designing games professionally for a decade, now, so I guess I could give you a good opinion on your idea.

Besides all that, good luck!