Is it possible to make a mmorpg for the iPhone using PHP and MySQL(1,000+ players)? I was thinking of using MySQL to store all of the player information (name,username,pass,location,position). Then I would make that data accessible through php(pass a location to the php page and it returns all the player info for that area). Would PHP and MySQL be fast enough for something like that? If not, what would be some other solutions for the backend? Also, would a VPS (http://www.linode.com/) be fast enough or should I go with a dedicated server?
Thanks
Well. Tough question since you – as justin points out – don’t mention anything about how massive the game is.
However, my answer to your question is ‘yes’. PHP and MySQL will definitely be capable of running such a system. The more relevant question is whether it is the right choice – and the answer to that question is most likely that is probably not the right choice.
MMORPGs are normally quite real-time, which would mean that each client will have several requests/second to your server. Even if you use keep-alive HTTP connections, etc. I am convinced that you’d get a better result using a non-HTTP based approach.
You could of course use PHP for serving requests and then format them with JSON or similar and have the client react on that data. I however would choose an entirely different programming language like C or similar, because of the latency requirements that MMORPGs have.
I am not a gaming expert or a C expert so these are just my humble concerns.