Our agenda was simple. Stefan and I were to head to Seoul and meet with the Bluehole Production team and discuss such trivial issues such as closed beta, PvP servers, end game content, the Western leveling curve, and production status. In other words, it was a very important trip. Our first meeting revolved around the scheduling and features necessary to run a successful closed beta in North America. This is a key difference between territories in the operation of betas and the eventual launch of a product. Some of our time was spent discussing the "why." It’s important in Westernizing a game that you never assume someone else understands your reasons. Simple things we take for granted—like the lead time required to create a game box—are not always obvious (especially in a country where there is no boxed product). The rest of the meeting went pretty well in determining feature specs and making sure we can make our timeline for insert beta start dates here (sorry, still no announcements).

After this was a catered lunch during which we got to sample the local food.

Believe it or not, this was the first time I ever had a Big Mac—always been a double-quarter-pounder-with-cheese guy. Then we caught up with the localization crew, and we all high-fived because things are going so smoothly. The major take-away from that meeting was "Let's not rock the boat, cause we rollin'!" Next, BHS treated us to a day in the life of a level 60 in TERA. We talked endgame for a good 2 hours, and came away quite happy with what’s in store for a max level player. After this we rolled by a programmer’s cube and he quickly compiled the latest TERA client to show us a console controller in action. Controller support is even better than I’d hoped, and integration for utilizing the UI has been implemented. Pretty slick. I asked the programmer if he had ever integrated a controller into a game before—everyone laughed because in Korea, keyboard-and-mouse is king.

We ended the day with some Korean BBQ and a discussion of the latest and greatest games out (Civ 5 anyone?), then turned in early to be at our best for the meetings the next day.

Our first day-two meeting kicked off with a development status update. We went over some of the big changes in the next version, talked about release timing, and fired off a bunch of questions about current and future content. It was all very informative. From there we went right into the discussion of Western leveling curve adjustments. We've agreed for some time now that a different curve is necessary for the West, but until this meeting we hadn't put numbers to it. We discussed all the details of a change as substantial as this, and Mr. Park, the head of the development team, was understanding. We’ll continue to talk over the next few weeks and hopefully nail down the right pace for the Western market.

Our last meeting was a discussion about PvP and PvE servers for the west. Korea will just have one server set, so we needed to think through the changes necessary for our market. This was a great collaborative effort, as we each brought up points the other side wasn’t aware of. More work and research to do on this front!

We rounded off the night with some more Korean BBQ for dinner, then drinks and Karaoke for dessert. Yes I have pictures; no I won't post them :) Instead I will leave you with our beloved Stefan Ramirez kicking it at the palace the next day before our flight.

We've got all kinds of new things going on today at TERA-online! In addition to launching our new site with new lore and updated materials, we're pleased to announce the launch of our long-awaited blog.

We're not calling it a developer blog because we plan to use it for more than just developer posts. We've got a lot going on at En Masse—a massive Westernization effort by our writers, community events, updates from our producers here in Seattle and Korea—in short, all kinds of things we want to talk to you about. This blog will serve as our soapbox.

We have some content to help get the party started, but if you want to hear about anything in particular, hit us up in the comments. We always look forward to your thoughts on what we write—we plan to put a lot of time into this, so we hope you get a lot out of it!

Ahoy ahoy,

How's it going TERA community? I just got back from a week-long trip to Korea, where key members of our Ops team (COO Pat Wyatt, Director of CS Adam Stayer, and me, Sam Kim—our resident Guy in the Corner) met with Bluehole developers for discussions regarding our publishing platform. It was an intense week of collaborations, meetings, brainstorming, question-and-answer sessions, and discussions, but it’s been great working with such an experienced and talented team intent on building a high quality publishing platform focused on great user experiences and streamlined support.

"What in the world is a publishing platform?" you ask? It is the aggregation of features and technology that allows us to publish and service the game efficiently and effectively. This includes features such as an account management system, subscription engine, payment method acceptance, customer support portal, knowledge database, security, moderation and CS support tools, analytics, bot detection, and so much more. The goal is to ensure a high quality experience for our players beyond the actual gameplay, everything from account creation to customer support to billing, and all the surrounding and supporting features required for a great overall user experience. But in order to ensure a great experience, it’s extremely important to build the platform specifically tailored to the appropriate audience—in En Masse’s case, North America.

This recent trip was just one of countless examples of the effort that both En Masse and Bluehole are investing into building a great game and platform for TERA players. It was an incredibly busy and productive trip, but we didn’t forget to do one of the things that make working in this industry so awesome: have fun! In fact, I’m happy to report that between Pat, Adam, and me, En Masse held their own against the drinking prowess of the team at Bluehole, a feat not easily accomplished and always regrettable (the following morning)!

Greetings!

I'd like to take the opportunity to talk a bit about the upcoming months for us here at En Masse. You may have noticed some interesting information coming out of NHN (TERA's publisher in Korea).  We think it is important that the TERA community understands our process and how we coordinate information releases for a global product. Most importantly, we want to stress that TERA will be different in the west; this is a key thing to remember when reading information released from NHN or players experiencing TERA in Korea.

Every publisher for TERA is going to get exclusive content releases and have their time to shine. G-Star-the biggest game show in Korea-is this month, and NHN is going to do it up big-and I promise you it will be awesome. From there NHN will be first up to launch TERA, so they will continue to receive a large amount of focus in terms of information released about TERA.  We will maintain the flow of information that you've come to expect from En Masse, but the big announcements will be coming from NHN. There will be times when you'll see information coming from NHN that is not immediately translated by us and reposted. This isn't because we're not talking to NHN (quite the opposite actually!), but because they need to have their exclusives just like we do.

We know you guys are starving for information and it will come directly from us eventually-we promise you.   In the meantime we ask that you do not read any translations of the information coming from Korea... What? You can't promise that?!?!  Ok, let's settle on this: let's agree to take the fan translations with a grain of salt. Our fans do a great job of translating articles very quickly but the fact is there will be differences--in terminology, game play mechanics, and services provided by the publisher-between the Western release and NHN's release of TERA.  With these translations there will certainly be some misinterpretation, and we will do our best to react and clarify to the community.

The other cool thing about a global product is that much of your feedback and our Westernization process has impacted the Eastern release as well. You will see many of the features we designed and iterated here at En Masse in the NHN version of TERA. This is part of being a global product: taking the best from each territory and using what will work for your market. This is a good thing!  We are working hard to ensure this game is ready for the West and takes your feedback into account.

So please stay patient, stay hungry, and enjoy the upcoming months as TERA develops-it should be an exciting experience for everyone!