Hello folks,

A lot has happened since my last journal. We've had several updates which added a number of features and improvements to the game. We've managed to cross a few of the items from my previous journal off the list, with Pandora's Box and anytime-use consumables out. We also implemented support for SOE Chat.

Though my previous disclaimer still stands, I am happy to say that our team is still driving forward with everything I touched on in the last journal. Today's journal will give you some insight into what it took to get Pandora's Box into the game, a few notes on combat revision, melee free-fire, and a look at a couple of new features.

Pandora's Box

You've all had some time to play with Pandora's Box and by all accounts the feature is a success. Thousands of box activations have occurred since we launched the feature in August. Pandora's Box was a challenging feature to design and implement, and we had to overcome a lot of hurdles to get it to you, the players.

Pandora's Box started as a bare-bones idea in a design meeting shortly after launch. The initial idea centered on spawning challenging encounters in exterior areas. The scope was small and not really all that involved, but it didn't stay that way for long.

Shortly after the initial design, I had second thoughts about the scope. I felt that by just adding the encounters the content would come off as being thin. I convinced my producer to push out the deadline so that we could concentrate on turning Pandora's Box into a fuller feature which would combine the best aspects of our existing game systems to present content in a new and interesting way...