Know when to stop. Beta is not a time for you to pack in new features that you weren’t sure you could get into the game, it’s a time for you to polish all of your core features and ensure that everything that will be in the game at launch is up to snuff. If you find yourself with the desire to add that neat little feature you always wanted, ask yourself two questions: 1) Is everything currently in the game polished and ready to go for paying players? 2) Do we have time to implement this feature and get it polished to a fine sheen? If the answer to either of those questions is “no,” under no circumstances should you try to implement it. Know when to stop, and quit while you’re ahead.

Inconvenience does not make a game harder, it makes it less convenient. Tedium does not equal difficulty. Making something unnecessarily complex, tedious, or in some way inconvenient doesn’t make the game more challenging or more fun. Is having an extremely limited amount of inventory space fun or challenging? No, it’s tedious. It’s not fun gameplay for most people, even if there are some freaks out there who want to painstakingly manage their inventory and consider the absence of that unfun. Don’t design for those people unless you are making a niche game. Make a game challenging via gameplay, not tedious barriers to fun.

Just because you have a good idea doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to implement it. Sometimes a good idea isn’t completely cohesive with the core focus of the game. Sometimes a good idea is very difficult and time-consuming to implement, and that time would be better spent on other things. Sometimes a good idea is cohesive and may not necessarily take forever to implement on its own, but preexisting systems would not mesh very well with it. Whatever the case may be, just because someone has a good idea does not mean it should be or even can be implemented. Remember, when someone who can make calls does not include your good idea in a game, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea or that they simply don’t like it; there are usually other reasons that it doesn’t get implemented.

A good idea stands on its own. It doesn’t matter where a good idea comes from, it’s still a good idea. Let go of your ego and learn to identify a good idea no matter where it comes from, even it’s from a non-designer, player, or even your mortal enemy. I’ve had a few good ideas in my life (I like to think, anyway), but the total number of good ideas I’ve heard from other people dwarfs the number of good ideas I’ve ever had myself. Learn to get over yourself and recognize good ideas when you see them.

It’s better to start with a great shell than a jumbled mass of crap. Okay, that wasn’t articulated well, but the point is this: If you are outlining a system or some content or whatever it is, don’t mash a bunch of random ideas together and hope they will work out. Instead, create a notes document in which you jot down all of your random ideas for whatever you are creating, then write a structured and cohesive document as the document. You will thank yourself later, because trying to revise a jumbled mess is even harder than writing something completely new (I tend to just wipe things clean and start over if I don’t have the notes doc).

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.

Quality Assurance is not a four letter word. Test is, but that is beside the point. The point is, QA is vital to the success of your MMO. These games are simply too big for you to catch everything on the first pass. Never underestimate the power and passion of QA testers–and don’t treat them like crap just because they aren’t “on the dev team.” I prefer to consider anyone who makes a game better part of the dev team. Utilize and respect your QA team, and do the very same for those dedicated Testers who are part of your community.

Every feature demands a sacrifice. Anything you put in the game will almost invariably require you to sacrifice another potential feature or idea. Be willing to make the appropriate sacrifice. What feature belongs in your game more? Does it adhere to the game’s vision? Will it benefit the game more overall than whatever it is you have to sacrifice? This is one of the most difficult aspects of game design, in my opinion, because you really have to determine the impact of everything you do before you do it.

Don’t be different for the sake of being different. Be different for the sake of being better. If the core tenets (or vision) of your game dictate that a standard MMO feature be removed or changed, then so be it. Most everything currently counted as a standard is there for a good reason, not just because everyone else does it (despite some claims to the contrary). I’m not advocating cloning, but it is important to examine why things are the way they are, and avoid being different just for the sake of not being the same as other games (you may find that your game would benefit from that feature you wanted to change).

Make a great game first. One of the fallacies in MMO design is that you need to start with all the other games in the genre as a baseline, then work your way from there. This is not true. You need to first try to make a great game. Make sure the game is fun. Would the game be fun if there were no persistence or multiplayer aspect to the game? If not, is that okay? Take advantage of the benefits of the massively multiplayer genre, don’t use them as a crutch for poor game design. There are definitely many reasons MMOs are the way they are, but don’t put features in them just because you think they are supposed to be there, put them in because they should be there. Which leads to another lesson about why things are the way they are in many MMOs…