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Hiding within an isolated hovel upon the mountain, the second disciple of the North Cave Mystic worked on his game design. How he labored and toiled, pushing the pen to scribe the perfect experience, one that fills the very soul of the player with emotion and feelings! How he calculated, to ensure a depth of strategy in which mastery of it would be as gratifyingly as finding the Deep Pearl of the Southern Dragon Sea!

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In the beginning there was the void. Perfect, still, without form or shape. Pangu’s Axe then cleaved the void into two and there springs into existence the Perfect Pair; One and Zeros. Sages from the North, South, East and West embraced the Tao of Computing but of the Tao of Games Development, who have yet understood?

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1. You are always just short of that tiny-weensy-little-bit of Movement Point to grab that resource node
2. Treasures are hidden in hard to reach corner — and you have to walk all the way back after you have grabbed it (Heroes of Might and Magic)
3. Passing next turn again and again just to accumulate enough resources to build something and there is nothing else constructive you can do
4. It’s turn 101 and the final enemy stack has become a horde large enough to conquer the entire world (Heroes of Might and Magic)
5. It’s always game-over when you lose your superhero stack (Heroes of Might and Magic, Disciples II…)

So previously, we talk about quest models. That is, the ‘template’ for a quest. The next step is to let the player knows that there are quests; or else all your hard work will go to naught. There are many ways to tell players where to get quests – here are the common and uncommonly used methods.
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After more than two decades of computer role-playing games, we run into the same quirks and annoyances and wonder why the developers couldn’t remove them. Then along come some games which feature some great ideas, but never see much widespread acceptance. Here are ten of them.
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2008 was not a year good for MMOs – many bite the dust, such as Hellgate London and Tablua Rasa, and some still struggling, such as Age of Conan. This article over at T=Machine discusses what has been going on and provides an insight what might be the most favourite genre that beginning game developers want to try. Can you really fail a MMO even before it launches? Take a look.

And here’s another one over at Broken Toys on the fate of Tablua Rasa.