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Bringing TERA to the Western market was more than a business decision; it gave us a chance to change how people play MMOs. More specifically, TERA gave us the opportunity to reshape combat so battles could move beyond “Tab target, press 1, press 2, press 3, repeat until out of combat.”

To explain the decisions that went into TERA’s action combat system—and all the calculations behind them—we went to the source: Seungmo Koo, the server architect for TERA.

Vice President of Publishing Chris Lee recently wrote an exclusive “dev diary” for VentureBeat. The full article is now available right here, so read on—or view the latest TERA dev diary on VentureBeat.

This article originally featured on VentureBeat.com:

TERA: Time to “level up”

By Chris Lee, Publishing VP at En Masse Entertainment

My memory of the last two-and-a-half years is a blur of starting a new company, westernizing an MMO, and promoting a game. Some specific moments stand out in my mind, like our first day as a company when we met in our real estate agent’s back room, or the epic yoga-ball jousting match we had in the hallway of our first office, or last Halloween when the new office was full of Starfleet Academy graduates, Mad Men ad agents, and Tetris cube costumes.

As I walked into the office, I nearly tripped when I saw the countdown of days before we launch TERA had hit single digits. Two and a half years have passed since I helped start En Masse Entertainment and began the journey of bringing TERA to North America, and here we are—just days away from launch.

En Masse is not a publisher with millions of dollars or thousands of employees. We are less than one hundred strong, equipped with the desire to succeed and the talent to achieve. We all relished the challenge, believed in TERA as a product, and set out on a path to make our dream a reality. We were challenged with doing what hasn't been done before—successfully bring a triple-A Korean MMO to the Western market.

En Masse started with just five people and grew to meet this challenge. I was, and still am, humbled by the talented individuals I have the opportunity to work with and learn from each day. We have built a team at En Masse that has the passion and talent to overcome this challenge. Other publishers have tried to bring products from Korea to the West with moderate success, but no one has achieved the level of success some of those games deserved.

Over the last couple of years, we've been working to release TERA. We're close to getting the job done right, as TERA closed beta test players can attest. But since February, we've been subjected to entirely too much innuendo related to a lawsuit filed against our startup by NCsoft in the United States—a suit that seems designed to disrupt the launch of TERA in North America. The latest round of that innuendo even goes so far as to try to drag in a separate case that was brought in Korea not against Bluehole, but against certain former employees of NCSoft.

En Masse Entertainment, a publisher built by gamers, focused on delivering fun and innovative online games, announced today that its award-winning and highly anticipated action MMO title, TERA, will launch on May 1, 2012.

As a special feature for Thanksgiving late last month, game industry blog Industry Gamers recently spoke with En Masse Entertainment's Publishing VP, Chris Lee. Chris shared what he was most thankful for in the game industry alongside other notable names in the field.

In this inaugural podcast, En Masse Entertainment’s Publishing VP Chris Lee and and Senior Producer Brian Knox get together to discuss the ins and outs of starting a video game company, the latest happenings at En Masse, and their favorite moments in gaming.

En Masse Entertainment was featured in the latest issue of DFC Intelligence's market research and strategic analysis report, the DFC Dossier. The DFC Dossier is distributed to thousands of upper management professionals for insight into the latest technology (and game) industry trends.

Convention. Even the word evokes excitement: tens of thousands of zealous gamers gravitating to a single city for a weekend of celebrating their collective passion. The pageantry, the people, the panels…and, of course, the parties.