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Duma is a senior member of the Dungeon Fighter Online team. "Duma Speaks" is his regular column where he'll talk about the current state of the game and what to expect in the future.

*Duma Speaks*

Depending on whether you count it from the start of the beta or the actual launch, Dungeon Fighter Online is a few months or about a year old. For members of the DFO development team like the illustrious Lady Arad or myself, it's actually older. I've put nearly two years into this game and despite the hard work, I can honestly say that it's been one of the best times of my life. The dream of any game developer is to be able to point to a game and say with undisguised pride "I helped develop that." I get to do that every day with Dungeon Fighter Online.

One of the things that really surprised me when I first joined the DFO team was how much had to be done to bring a game from Korea to North America. There's a common misconception that goes, "How much work could there be in just changing text from Korean to English?" In fact, while we do handle translations, that's just one part of what we do. Making games is a lot like building a building. We need a foundation and structural beams in place and working before we can add on floors. As we add new content, we need to make sure it's working properly with all of the previous content before we open it up to our players. You can't have a 12th floor if you don't have a 1st floor. We need to test multiple OS's, hardware configurations, anti-virus packages, etc. to make sure everything is working properly. I was surprised at how things I never thought of - like the geographic differences between the United States and Canada, and Korea could result in massive changes and even more massive headaches. 

Other issues crop up because DFO game content differs from region to region. These differences in regional content require different development paths that affect what goes in and when. The North American version is no different. As such, the content and release schedule will vary as necessary and can't be directly compared to any other service.

Naturally, even with all of our work and testing, issues still make it through. This is frustrating for us, but it's even more frustrating for you. We know this and that's what pushes us to work harder than ever to fix them when they show up. We want you to have a good time in Dungeon Fighter Online because we're proud of our work. We love games and love bringing them to people. Still, there are times when, because there are a lot more of you than there are of us, you catch things we miss. Somewhere out there is a combination of hardware and software that we just didn't have at our disposal and it's going to cause an issue we have to scramble to fix.

Of course, this is not and should not be your concern. You're here, spending your free time with us. We're the ones who owe you our best efforts. One of the reasons I wanted to start this column, in fact, is to talk to the community and let you know what's going on with the game. Take the red hot issue of "The Priest Patch." You want it. Everyone wants it. We know. We hear you. The problem is that there is no "Priest Patch" the way most people think of it.

What's being called the "Priest Patch" isn't just the three Awakenings for the Priest and some character re-balancing. It's part of an upgrade intimately tied into one of the larger content updates that's coming up. The problem is we can't just re-sort content updates at will. The content in the so-called "Priest patch" update is completely dependent on systems that will be introduced in content updates that we're working on now. Without those updates up, running, and working, there simply is no "Priest patch." That being said, we understand why the community is so eager for it and we're working to get it out to you as quickly as possible this fall.

In the meantime, we hope you're enjoying the game. Get out there and fight for Arad!