One of the key steps to release a game is to define what features will need to be present to reach an official launch. In the latest Pathfinder Online developer diary, the team talks about that progress and what other things they've been up to in the last several weeks.
Our vision for a next-gen design relies on the idea that players create content for themselves in their interactions with one another. That enables us to focus on designing systems rather than content. That allows us to speed up the release dramatically. But it also means that we'll have a fairly small space ready for the players to experience, so we'll carefully regulate the initial size and growth rate of the game to achieve a good balance of character diversity and density. It's the opposite of the theme park feedback loop. The better the sandbox systems are at making interaction between players interesting, the fewer players we need in the game to make it fun to play, which means we need less content and can get the game out faster.
Read the rest of the developer diary on the Pathfinder Online site.