The folks at Fallen Earth have posted a State of the Game update where they detail where the game currently stands in the development process, talk about new strategies for working on the game, and provide some hard numbers on what's in the game so far.

As we start a New Year and ramp up for launch, we at Fallen Earth wanted to take a moment to review some milestones of 2008. We are also excited about many changes we’ve recently made to improve the player experience and look forward to milestones in the near future.

In 2008, we began a new production method to provide clear timelines for each town, as well as a place for artists, designers, scripters and QA to mix ideas and stay on the same page. Earlier on, we went back and forth between the design team and the art department with no real communication or verification of what the town would look like or what the teams wanted. Some good ideas were lost due to lack of communication, and we lacked solid deadlines and processes for QA. By implementing the scrum method, we have eliminated many communication issues between different teams working on the same end product and we have solidified our goals and deadlines.

We also recreated many towns in the first sector and thoroughly reviewed the rest. That’s a huge amount of content:

• 75,000+ text strings
• Almost 5,500 missions
• 6,000+ items
• 14,000+ unique characters/creatures
• 143,000+ in game objects
• 70 towns
• 600+ hrs of content

Read more here.