MMORPGs are hard to make. Before I started Nin Online, I already had 6 years of Game Development experience, a diploma in Game Dev, multiple awards locally, a number of successful MMORPG projects I had worked on.
Don't let the fact that I made Nin Online with almost no resources fool you into thinking that anyone can do it easily.
Thousands of online game projects are started every year by individuals, small teams and companies, 90% of them are vaporware.
Making what looks like it could be an MMORPG is very easy.
For reference, I made this "MMORPG" in one day a few years back. http://www.ninonline.org/nindemo/
This looks like it could be an MMORPG like Nin Online. But no, this took one day, and if I wanted to turn this into what Nin is today, it would take another 6 years to do it (Minus the time taken for art and lessons learnt). Making the start of any project is easy, with a fully networked MMORPG, every system is intertwined and makes development exponentially more tedious and slow. I've put 6 years into Nin Online. That's how long a studied, experienced and very very fast working developer would take to make Nin Online what it is as a full-time commitment.
World of Warcraft took 50 million dollars to create the first version of classic.
Games like Wizards101 have teams of 50+ full time employees to develop and maintain it.
It's very very easy to create BYOND games. It's also very very easy to create the start of a Unity MMORPG with an engine like uMMORPG or Photon. But it soon becomes hard to continue past that.
Nin Online doesn't make enough money to justify the years of work put into the game by a lot of people. But it's made as a labor of love and I have no-lifed it myself to do it.
Before and besides Nin Online existed, there have been atleast a hundred projects that were trying to make a game like Nin Online, some by very talented people. None of them ever got released. These are just a few notable ones: 2D Projects
NarutoRealm https://web.archive.org/web/20070916045404/http://s13.invisionfree.com/NarutoQuest/
NarutoQuest
Last Ninja Online (https://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?p=1748872) https://www.indiedb.com/games/naruto-realm
ShinobiRealm https://www.indiedb.com/games/ninjubook
NInjuBook (This one is only worth a mention because it's made by someone who has been trying to make a Naruto MMORPG since before me circa 2004) 3D Projects
NarutoRivals
NarutoAbunai
There's also all of this.. https://www.indiedb.com/games?filter=t&kw=Naruto&released=&genre=&theme=&indie=&players=&timeframe=#gamesbrowse
You'll also find some here https://www.indiedb.com/games?filter=t&kw=Shinobi&released=&genre=&theme=&indie=&players=&timeframe=
More recently in 2014, a bunch of Nin staff who were kicked from the team decided to make an MMORPG, and it failed. It was a new version of Naruto GOA.
In 2017, a Nin staff who was kicked tried to make one again, but this time joined up with another game project which was pandering money from Nin Online players on discord. A lot of people supported the project and sent them money. The project was ShinobiRising and has since been inactive from 2018 after announcing their third or fourth release date to be in Jan-Feb 2019. https://twitter.com/shinobirising?lang=en
Just putting this all out there, before you think that it's a good idea to throw a lot of money at game projects that are in early stages.
I'm also in no way saying don't support new games and/or try them, I'm just trying to put it out there that making MMORPG projects are hard, and most of it is vaporware, so if you do decide to give you money to projects that aren't very far along, be prepared to get nothing from it.
I'm a fan of Naruto MMORPGs no matter what and I've been registered to and followed the development of all the games above since 2003. The reason I started making Nin Online in 2013 was because it had been 10 years and nobody had made a successful one. I would love to play a new Naruto MMORPG project, that would be awesome. But it's been 16 years and the only Naruto-based MMORPGs to be released have been: Nin Online, Jutsu Online (WoW Private Server) Byond Games and Roblox Servers.
So sharing my experience.
Not trying to turn anyone away from trying. I'm saying just be aware of the history of Vaporware Naruto MMORPG projects that are not documented anywhere and the difficulty in general of the task at hand being discussed. EDIT: I also want to mention that there is currently a project being developed by multiple very experienced industry programmers to make a new MMORPG that is going to license Nin Online's artwork and be targeting more platforms. The project has been in development for awhile now and is starting to gain more traction. It's not being developed by anyone in our existing team, and I'm only overseeing it as a partner. But this project will be a grander version of Nin Online eventually. We're not collecting any money to have this developed and it'll come eventually and it's not a call to action of any sorts.