Ryan D. talks seasons, and how the passing of hours affect the player.

When Wizards of the Coast left to make Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition, the game was pretty much left in the hands of whoever wanted it, and Paizo quickly snatched up the rights and made possibly my favorite pen and paper RPG in the last several years - Pathfinder. Not until today did I realize the team is working on making an MMO, and they have a developer diary outlining the process.

Today the subject is time, which is a finicky and tricky beast in MMOs. Paizo talks at length about what space the game's time operates in, namely how its speed is multiplied by four, and how it pertains to horses, difficult terrain, fast travel, and the like. It's a lot of really unique stuff, since frequently seasonal change is ignored, and fast travel has become streamlined in big titles like World of Warcraft, be it via gryffon rides or magic boat teleportation. 

There's a ton of great stuff on the developer blog. As a longtime fan of Pathfinder, I'm going to be keeping a very close eye on this. Pathfinder has always been a great spinoff of the DND classic formula, so look for more fangushing from me in the future.