The Chronicles of Spellborn official site has been updated with another edition of the Technical Developer Journal.  The focus of this week's article is on quests, character advancement, and the content system.

Quests are one of the defining elements that make a game a roleplaying game. Character advancement is another. These things are naturally tied into each other. It is no secret that especially computer games put the focus on character development and online roleplaying games even more so. The most obvious reason for this is that the character advancement provides the game with a very easily obtained longelivity. When the two pillars of roleplaying are too out of whack, this creates a problem. The storylines that provide the means for the player's progress are stretched beyond a healthy limit for providing an engaging adventure. Instead of supporting each other they become competing goals.

In terms of development the character progression is a relatively easy task. The quests on the other hand require a lot of manpower to write, implement, translate and test. Meanwhile the overview has to be maintained. Everything needs to be consistent with the lore and it needs to somehow work up to a climax. With such a mountain of work it becomes very hard to make every quest interesting and different from the previous one. Good writing is the most convenient way to do this. The people the player interacts with should have character, the story should have emotion and it should preferably reveal a little about the world. All things I know nothing about since I'm not a writer. There is one thing I as a programmer am able to help with though: the player needs to become involved. There needs to be action. Spectacular violent explosive action.

Read more here.