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I wonder if it's a different story with longer-running MMORPG's like WoW, FFXI, etc. Wouldn't the situation force the development process to be more stable and

I wonder if it's a different story with longer-running MMORPG's like WoW, FFXI, etc. Wouldn't the situation force the development process to be more stable and follow best practices?

SoftwareMaven 15y ago
I worked at Riot Games (makers of League of Legends) for a while. In some ways, it was much better: good, iterative practices, tracking technical debt, etc. In other ways, it was no different: long hours, little regard for anything but the release, etc. Now that they've been released for a while, it would be interesting to see how things have changed.
zach 15y ago
Even following best practices, the top priority of the project should be to fulfill the players' expectations and realize the designers' vision. That's not as compatible with technical excellence at every stage of the project as you'd hope it would be. On well-planned projects, best practices of development help achieve that priority throughout the project. However, the more problematic development becomes, the more things come into conflict with that top priority. And in practice, planning is almost never good enough to prevent that as the project wears on. Project management that can push back the day when that vicious cycle kicks in is invaluable. Usually, in reality, the top priority is to ensure the short-term viability of the project or (worse) the studio or (much worse) the studio management. It's like Robocop's hidden directive, sadly. That diversion of focus, especially early in a project, is totally poisonous. If anything, MMOs are more susceptible to these kinds of existential threats than most projects. They're incredibly challenging feats for even a massively skilled development team. The ability to produce an MMO is actually a fairly good way to measure how well-buffered a development environment is from this kind of insecurity.

I wonder if it's a different story with longer-running MMORPG's like WoW, FFXI, etc. Wouldn't the situation force the development process to be more stable and follow best practices?

SoftwareMaven 15y ago

I worked at Riot Games (makers of League of Legends) for a while. In some ways, it was much better: good, iterative practices, tracking technical debt, etc. In other ways, it was no different: long hours, little regard for anything but the release, etc. Now that they've been released for a while, it would be interesting to see how things have changed.

zach 15y ago

Even following best practices, the top priority of the project should be to fulfill the players' expectations and realize the designers' vision. That's not as compatible with technical excellence at every stage of the project as you'd hope it would be. On well-planned projects, best practices of development help achieve that priority throughout the project. However, the more problematic development becomes, the more things come into conflict with that top priority. And in practice, planning is almost never good enough to prevent that as the project wears on. Project management that can push back the day when that vicious cycle kicks in is invaluable. Usually, in reality, the top priority is to ensure the short-term viability of the project or (worse) the studio or (much worse) the studio management. It's like Robocop's hidden directive, sadly. That diversion of focus, especially early in a project, is totally poisonous. If anything, MMOs are more susceptible to these kinds of existential threats than most projects. They're incredibly challenging feats for even a massively skilled development team. The ability to produce an MMO is actually a fairly good way to measure how well-buffered a development environment is from this kind of insecurity.