The Call of Live Design

If there is one thing that Live Designers share in common across Turbine, it is our desire to (try to) do everything ourselves. It is not uncommon to see a single designer writing quests, developing deeds, making scripts (both story and game), and tinkering with game systems. We do this out of a sense of ownership in our work – we want to make something our own from start to finish.

In our current development environment, it is difficult for a designer to truly say they did everything from start to finish on a single piece of content. Sometimes it is our schedules that prohibit us from doing so (we are very busy people, some more so than we ought to be), sometimes it is a general lack of understanding of how a certain system functions (my current weakness is the loot system, I look at it and have a greater respect for all the number crunching our Game Systems Designers do) or a missing skill set (as much as we’d like, very few of us are artists). Make no mistake, collaborative efforts are equally rewarding – but sometimes it is fun to challenge yourself by striking towards the unknown on your own.

As the development of Moria concluded, I found myself yearning to take a temporary step away from managing the World Design Team and back towards my foundations as a live designer. This is the story of how I spent my four weeks after Moria went live.