The Truth Behind Bugs

[Morreion]

MMORP.com Scott Jennings: The Truth Behind Bugs

MMORPGs are, actually, fairly difficult to make. This may seem self-evident (which is true). This may also seem like a fairly lame excuse for failure (which is also true). However, the core of what makes an MMORPG what it is – a server that can in real time process thousands of people having fairly complex interactions in the same “world” – is not a trivial engineering problem to solve. There’s no “MMO-In-A-Box” solution that developers can use to shortcut this (although a few are sold as such, none are yet used in a large-scale live MMORPG), so unless you can manage to hire some of the few hundred or so people in the world who have experience working on a server for a launched and successful MMORPG, you’re going to have to reinvent that particular wheel.

[Regolyth]

While it's true that it takes a really good programming staff to code the interactivity for an MMO, it doesn't excuse the poor content or lack of balancing within the game (or bugs for that matter). The interaction is actually the easy part if you think about it. The inter-workings of that aspect are fairly simple. It either works or it doesn't. However, the balancing and content for a game are something that has varying levels of working. I think bad game design comes from a lack of creativity among it's developers, not bad programmers programming the game's interaction.