Jonric: Looking back to the inception of the project, how well did you understand the magnitude and the complexity of the task? And what were the kinds of things that took you by surprise?

Mark Kern: We understood that it was going to be a big project, bigger than anything we had done before. But, I don't think anything can prepare you for just how complicated these games are to make. You are creating a whole world, with hundreds of quests, thousands of items and miles of terrain that must be packed with cool things to do.

I think we planned as well as we could, and some things came easier to us than others. I think the biggest challenge we faced was the sheer amount of design that had to be done. We had to quickly staff up spawning teams, questing teams and have specialist designers for classes, items and dungeons.