I was out of town the past few days, stuck with absolutely hor­rid Inter­net access at my hotel. I tried to post what I could dur­ing that time, but some things fell to the way­side. Namely, devel­oper diaries.

Tur­bine has posted three new ones, all of which I think are worth reading.

One is far more developer-centric in that they dis­cuss how ideas were reached and com­po­nents of the game were con­structed. It deals with the con­cept of “clus­ters” for raids (and sev­eral ideas that sound really promis­ing for the expansion).

The sec­ond deals with the art of the game. It’s a great arti­cle on how areas affect one another and what choices were made with Moria, in par­tic­u­lar, to bring it to life. This arti­cle also reveals the most about their new engine for the expan­sion than I’ve seen pre­vi­ously. It’s referred to as “heightmap tech­nol­ogy”, which appar­ently allows them to put two land­scapes on top of eachother (one fac­ing up, the other fac­ing down) and cre­ate really humon­gous indoor areas.

The third is a more humor­ous look at the cre­ation of mon­sters for the game. It dis­cusses the var­i­ous teams that have a part in this and explains their roles. There’s some good parts about mak­ing the mon­sters more in your face.

Be sure to check them out.