Tale of Two Cities: Five Years of MapleStory

Seriously, we actually we go through four stages:

- Stage 1: Brainstorm, collect suggestions and discuss ideas with each other. We also review player feedback about what the players are interested in seeing.
- Stage 2: After we’ve winnowed the ideas down to something manageable, we start the planning process. We determine the difficulty of implementation of the ideas and adjust the concepts as needed. Then we lay out the fine details so designers and programmers can take on the next task.
- Stage 3: Designers and programmers start the physical process of turning ideas into reality. Designers draw up concepts and programmers put together code to create a system to sustain it.
- Stage 4: Once we have a something that looks remotely playable we try it out on a test server. Content goes through many testing phases both day and night to sort out any bugs and glitches.
- Stage 5: Once a piece of content comes out of testing, we patch it into the game and monitor it. While we work hard to minimize any bugs or glitches in content they regrettably sometimes find their way into the game. If we receive notice about a bug we then have to investigate and make a fix for it.

Nexon can count!