It would be pretty simple to get basic features up and running. Register, Login, User-profile, boards, shops, inventory etc... The battle script would also be very easy. In fact I could probably get those quickly just by modifying existing RPG scripts that can be found around the net.
I guess the most difficult part would be making sure theres no bugs, and maintaining a stable economy. I would create various shops and such, with random restocking. Only problem is, the more items there are the more the value of them goes down. Unless they have a specific use.
Example: If I had a shop that was selling a certain item for 1000, and sold about 6 of these per day. Twice a day the item is released for 800 meaning there would be 200 profit. If a user bought both of those a day he would sell them in a user shop for 1000. now let's say that the item came out for 800 about 8 times a day, he would be able to lower the price and still gain good profit.
I would have to find a way to limit the amount of objects, a script that would read user shop prices and how many items are on the market in order to determine a price. As well as I am sure a haggle script would not be easy to program either.
Like I said, most of it is just basic PHP. I could start out with a basic pet site and as long as I keep working on new features that would make the game more interesting (new features that can not be found on other pet sites), I don't see a reason why this would not succeed.
