The Chronicles of Spellborn official site has bee updated with their weekly Tech Journal.  This time around the focus is on balancing design philosophies.

I used to play a little known MMORPG called Rubies of Eventide. It was barely finished. The total landmass consisted of five outdoor zones and a couple of dungeons. Like with most smaller games the community was great, but it was also very interesting. The developers took advice from the community so readily that I sometimes wondered if they even had their own designers. The forum section with suggestions had about as many threads as the general forum section. Eventually it seemed to bog down under the pressure of too many ideas, but after a restart as a shareware game it is still alive today.

The community of every MMORPG I've known has a substantial lobby for changing the game in this way or that. I believe I have illustrated in my previous journal that Spellborn is no exception. In other genres this user interest finds its way in the MOD community. This gamer involvement can be a great boon for those developers who know how to deal with it. Sometimes a MOD becomes a spin off game or increases the lifetime of your product. For an MMORPG it is great feedback on what your users like or don't like. From a business perspective it could be seen as free market research, but that is not entirely correct. It's only the raw data needed for market research. Interpreting the data correctly is the hardest part of research. To only listen to a vocal minority might hurt your game in the long run. For example listening to your PvP predators might chase away their victims. After the 'prey' leaves no one is happy. Someone needs to look at the big picture.

Read the full article here.