So You Want to be an MMO Developer? : Vanguard News

Nick Parkinson, the Community Manager for Sigil's Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, pens the first of four articles that highlight their team and at the same time answer the question: "So You Want to be an MMO Developer?"

In the past four years, we have grown from a modest dozen initial employees to the current count of just over 100. Sigil is comprised of, 33 artists, 30 designers, 13 programmers, 13 customer support staff, 7 production staff, 3 community/marketing staff, 1 very, very angry and slightly off balance monkey, 3 administration staff and management (not to be confused with the monkey).

As you can see, it takes a big team to make an MMO and we'll have even more by the time we ship. Sigil employs a wide variety of people - young guys just starting out, old folks who have had a lot of experience, and even people over 30. When undertaking a project as massive in size as an MMO one of the challenges in managing a team this large is being able to actually find the right people. Some positions we get more applicants than we know what to do with, and others it takes quite a bit of patience and looking around to fill. With this article, we hope to give some insight into the way MMO developers work and how to become part of one. We'll take a look at the art department, the programming department, the design department and quality assurance, customer support and community - so stay tuned!

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setv ... 147/page/1