Category Archives: Design

We’ve all grouped with great healers. It’s not really very hard to be a great healer: just keep track of all the little health meters and make sure nobody dies. But have you ever been in a group where the … Continue reading →

One hard lesson that new developers have to learn is that not all game difficulty is equally fun. Some types of difficulty are perceived as fair, but other types are perceived as unfair… or worse, buggy. The classics can teach … Continue reading →

When I buy a AAA game from the store, I have a vested interest in liking the game. I’ve plonked $60 down for it, so there’s less of a chance I’ll abandon it just because the installer is annoying, or … Continue reading →

I’ve been fascinated with Cataclysm, the latest World of Warcraft expansion, since I first heard about it. In many ways this expansion is a live team’s dream: an opportunity to fix the whole goddamned mess that the previous teams have … Continue reading →

Can you perfectly predict the weather? No, because it’s too complex — the “chaos factor” makes it impossible to perfectly predict. The same holds true of the balance of any modern MMO. This may be surprising. We create every aspect … Continue reading →

It is December of 2002, and Asheron’s Call 2 has been launched for a month. It is already clear that the game is not going to be a huge success, but I still want to work on it. I have … Continue reading →

I make fun of systems designers a lot because I am one. I wear a lot of hats, and I actually love to code, but deep down, it’s all about the game systems. People who think like me are really … Continue reading →

It was a viral video going around for a while — the Invisible Gorilla experiment. (If you never saw it, you can watch it here… the rest of this blog-post is a spoiler!) (Although to be fair, just saying the … Continue reading →

Our indie MMORPG development continues! Together, Sandra and I are able to put about 20 hours a week toward the game, which isn’t much, but makes continuous progress. It’s coming along well, and it’s been very exciting to get past … Continue reading →

Blizzard has been revealing newly-revised classes recently. The Priest has a new power that sounds pretty fun: Leap of Faith (level 85): Pull a party or raid member to your location. Leap of Faith (or “Life Grip”) is intended to … Continue reading →