Warhammer Alliance Daily News: June 30th

[samwise75]

Warhammer Alliance News

Tome Tuesdays: Quoting Shcolar Timothy Ehrlichmann, Aeternis talks about some Land of the Dead bugs. No, not those kinds of bugs! We are talking about Giant Scarabs, Khepra beetles and Tomb Swarms.

News From The Herald

All is quiet on the Herald, and an interesting Developer Post Tells us why!

Developer Posts

Andy Belford, Community Coordinator, sheds light on the quiet emanating from Mythic offices.

"We're mostly out of the office on vacation this week.
We have some folks, such as myself and James checking the boards and responding as well as an emergency team available, but for the most part it's a few days off for folks.

We'll be back at it on Monday."

[Zeathy]

I think they said somewhere before it even began that they would be taking a break.

Enjoy the break Mythic.

[dunehunter]

Hey, atleast they're not breaking anything right now.

[Schmapdi]

IMHO Mythic is always way too quiet, vacation or no.

[Ancient Crone]

I think it was very considerate of him to let us know. Thanks, Andy!!!

[melx]

So one could say, Mythic offices are now the land of the dead.

[Talc]

Originally Posted by Schmapdi

IMHO Mythic is always way too quiet, vacation or no.

I thought they were doing a great job with the community until about 3 months ago. Now it's just average interaction.

[radishlaw]

Originally Posted by Talc

I thought they were doing a great job with the community until about 3 months ago. Now it's just average interaction.

Personally I think this period after 1.3 is the best, with Chris Byrant deciding to reply to posts on bugs.

Since release, dev posts regarding bugs had always been sparse at best. This leads to players feeling negated and they stop giving meaningful bug reports, and start whining instead. Since whining post got dev's attention, people have been using that as a means to get attention. This lead to very negative opinions and made Mythic look bad.

Sometimes all people want is for the devs to acknowledge, publicly, that the bugs are known by the devs are in the process of fixing it. Vague letters/herald posts of "we are fixing 300 bugs" are nothing because we don't know what bugs are being fixed, and leads to players thinking devs are not aware of the problems. Byrant's posts is specific, targeted at specific bug report, sometimes reporting back on progress of the fix. This, for me, is exactly the right approach to bug reports. A direct acknowledgment, no defences, just professional interaction.

I am sorry to say, despite trying very hard, Andy wasn't able to act very publicly as a bridge between other developers and the players in this regard. If I am able to have a suggestion, I hope Andy can keep getting in touch and update his bug list to include everything acknowledged by Byrant and other devs on the OF, at least in some kind of interval. This collaboration would both show that Mythic's people are working together, and give a one-stop place to see and react on bugs by the players.

[Andy_Mythic]

Originally Posted by radishlaw

Personally I think this period after 1.3 is the best, with Chris Byrant deciding to reply to posts on bugs.

Since release, dev posts regarding bugs had always been sparse at best. This leads to players feeling negated and they stop giving meaningful bug reports, and start whining instead. Since whining post got dev's attention, people have been using that as a means to get attention. This lead to very negative opinions and made Mythic look bad.

Sometimes all people want is for the devs to acknowledge, publicly, that the bugs are known by the devs are in the process of fixing it. Vague letters/herald posts of "we are fixing 300 bugs" are nothing because we don't know what bugs are being fixed, and leads to players thinking devs are not aware of the problems. Byrant's posts is specific, targeted at specific bug report, sometimes reporting back on progress of the fix. This, for me, is exactly the right approach to bug reports. A direct acknowledgment, no defences, just professional interaction.

I am sorry to say, despite trying very hard, Andy wasn't able to act very publicly as a bridge between other developers and the players in this regard. If I am able to have a suggestion, I hope Andy can keep getting in touch and update his bug list to include everything acknowledged by Byrant and other devs on the OF, at least in some kind of interval. This collaboration would both show that Mythic's people are working together, and give a one-stop place to see and react on bugs by the players.

I don't maintain a bug list. That would be James and the forum mods who have been doing so since 1.3 went live.

Chris Bryant is QA. His team is responsible for finding and reporting bugs to the development team. he does a great job at responding to bug reports in the bug report forums and for that we're extremely satisfied and greatful for his level of interaction.

The community team has a different focus than ferreting out all the bugs and we tend to focus on issues that are wider in scope, in addition to maintaining the Herald, running the Core Tester program, etc..etc...That's not to say that we do not report bugs that are PM'd to us or that we come across in the forums, however for the most part we aren't the ones pouring through the bug forums on a daily basis.

If you'll look at the majority of my posts, they are more focused on communicating different issues than bugs.

[Schmapdi]

The only really good communication lately was when they were previewing how things would work in the now delayed C&C stuff that was supposed to be in 1.3.

A real developer getting down and dirty with the numbers and insight on how the game is designed and why, and what they are doing to make it better.

I'd like to see one of those a week. Something like this:

"Hi, I'm Bill, in charge of RVR design. Here's what we think works well with keep attacks. Here's what we think sucks with keep attacks. This is what we're doing to make the sucky parts work well, and this is why we think it will work."

Coming from each of the various departments of the developers. I know WoW comparison is Taboo around here, but I still keep tabs at MMO Champion and the level of feedback and communication (from the devs) there is fantastic.

From WAR - we've barely gotten vague tidbits from the producer's letters every other month or so. And almost everything in the last one was old news.

[Cathen]

Originally Posted by Andy_Mythic

I don't maintain a bug list. That would be James and the forum mods who have been doing so since 1.3 went live.

Chris Bryant is QA. His team is responsible for finding and reporting bugs to the development team. he does a great job at responding to bug reports in the bug report forums and for that we're extremely satisfied and greatful for his level of interaction.

The community team has a different focus than ferreting out all the bugs and we tend to focus on issues that are wider in scope, in addition to maintaining the Herald, running the Core Tester program, etc..etc...That's not to say that we do not report bugs that are PM'd to us or that we come across in the forums, however for the most part we aren't the ones pouring through the bug forums on a daily basis.

If you'll look at the majority of my posts, they are more focused on communicating different issues than bugs.

Out of curiosity (since I've always wondered if this was feasible), is there anyway to maintain a searchable bug list that is currently in your tracker so that the player base could/would know if a bug they find in game is already reported and aware of...or something they should post more info about.

[Cutzu]

"I once asked God for my bike back. Then I realized God didn't work that way. So I found and then killed the person who stole my bike, and asked for God's forgiveness."

[Wire]

Originally Posted by Schmapdi

The only really good communication lately was when they were previewing how things would work in the now delayed C&C stuff that was supposed to be in 1.3.

A real developer getting down and dirty with the numbers and insight on how the game is designed and why, and what they are doing to make it better.

I'd like to see one of those a week. Something like this:

"Hi, I'm Bill, in charge of RVR design. Here's what we think works well with keep attacks. Here's what we think sucks with keep attacks. This is what we're doing to make the sucky parts work well, and this is why we think it will work."

Coming from each of the various departments of the developers. I know WoW comparison is Taboo around here, but I still keep tabs at MMO Champion and the level of feedback and communication (from the devs) there is fantastic.

From WAR - we've barely gotten vague tidbits from the producer's letters every other month or so. And almost everything in the last one was old news.

I do agree with most of your post. It's pretty hard to figure out whats going on over there at Mythic as the communication is sparse at best lately, and the little tidbits we do get about upcoming changes are vague.

The really, really high level of developer interaction and feedback is nice in WoW, but I just wanted to point out it wasn't always like that. Before Greg Street, aka 'Ghostcrawler', took over as lead game systems designer, communication was not all that great. Tigole and Chilton rarely posted on the forums, and most of the vague information we got were from community managers.

Regardless, I've always felt the level of communication between the War dev team and the players should be more frequent and more insightful

[radishlaw]

Originally Posted by Andy_Mythic

I don't maintain a bug list. That would be James and the forum mods who have been doing so since 1.3 went live.

Chris Bryant is QA. His team is responsible for finding and reporting bugs to the development team. he does a great job at responding to bug reports in the bug report forums and for that we're extremely satisfied and greatful for his level of interaction.

The community team has a different focus than ferreting out all the bugs and we tend to focus on issues that are wider in scope, in addition to maintaining the Herald, running the Core Tester program, etc..etc...That's not to say that we do not report bugs that are PM'd to us or that we come across in the forums, however for the most part we aren't the ones pouring through the bug forums on a daily basis.

If you'll look at the majority of my posts, they are more focused on communicating different issues than bugs.

I am sorry Andy, I keep mistaking the scope of your work and mistaking you for James.
I guess most of what you actually do will never be known except to a select few like core testers and other devs in Mythic, that's why I keep thinking you have other duties as well.