MMORPG.com contributor Shannon Drake has been in and around the game development business for a while now and today begins his journey of answering the question: Why exactly does developing an MMO take so long when the final product doesn't always seem perfectly polished?

The problem with creating an MMO is that you're constructing a world, with all that implies, and it requires accounting for everything under the sun. Unless there's two suns, or no suns, or eight suns, or a combination of suns and moons, and what would that do to gravity, to daylight, to the religions on the planet... Part of the reason for the legendarily long development timeline is this world building, bringing a coherent world with rules and people and a history out of the aether of the design document.

Read Why MMOs Take So Long.