MMO Development Lesson #19
Make decisions. Sometimes it’s better just to make a decision on something you’ve been thinking about for a long period of time and go with it. You’ll discover pretty quickly if that decision was the wrong one, and you can, in fact, change your mind on decisions you made before. It is not a crime to delete what you wrote down for System X and start it over–in the end, your game is better for it, because you know WHY the original System X isn’t as good as the new one. Note: Don’t go live with said decision until you know it is the right one.
But sometimes living with the decision for a little bit before you invest fully can help you determine whether its worth the investment. Pilot programs are a great way to prevent a failure from becoming catastrophic. They ferret out the little issues you didn’t anticipate and allow you to correct for them before you go all-in. Mind you, piloting a second system after you’ve just invested fully in a first can only lead to tragedy.
My beleives are that pilot-programs are a pro-active method to acheive or establish the very core of it’s purpose. Wether some decicions while testing doesnt make it to LIVE or seems to be entirely deviant from the original goals of the crew, what I keep telling myself is they were part of the same system. And contrary to what I beleive from the HQ perspective, must appear to be a retro-active impression, the experience, journey and the lore of it ( be it an under-lore or not ) keeps their ties as long as both ends understand the intentions.
Let’s use this UI as an exemple;
Lady Vox and Lord Nagafen in EverQuest2. They belonged together, but the designers were clever enough to keep em in their lair, away and tie them with Lore making sure the upcoming adventures would be leading instead of ending.