Q: What were the peaks and the valleys of design? Were there things that clicked and ran horribly smooth, and were there trouble spots?

A: In fairness, there were definitely points that we reached where we really had to sit down and think our way through it. What we tried to accomplish at first seems impossible. Because a role playing game, the entire design of a role playing game is to progress, is to level. Is to reward you for the amount of time that you’re playing it. In a traditional on-line role playing game, if you’re level 15 and I’m level 7, you got there because you’ve just played a lot longer than I have. So there is no real concept of competition between us, because you’re just mathematically more powerful player than I am, it doesn’t matter how good I am. But even worse, it’s hard for us to play together. If you and I just want to meet up online to play and you have more time to play and sometimes you play without me, you progress to a point to where it’s no longer fun for me to play with you. That really bothered us. You know, I prefer games, and I know everybody at Arena prefer games, where you can always just meet up with your friends and play and have a good time.