LFG

Since I'm not in beta, I have an entire month of free time I can use to help from the sidelines.

So I went ahead and drafted this Interoffice Memo for Gallenite to send out to the EQ2 Team at this 11th hour before the scheduled release of EoF. These procedures are based on historical precedent and what has happened in the last two expansions, so hopefully he will find it useful and can just cut and paste it into a broadcast email for the staff.


To: EQ2 Team
From: Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, EQ II
Date: October 12, 2006
Re: Ooops, we're fucked again

Well, team, we've again failed to employ generally accepted project management and planning techniques, and predictably find ourselves rapidly approaching a release date with an untested product.

Just like with the past two expansions, Smed has declared "Code Blue" on EoF and has ordered us to begin the "911" phase of development. This is NOT a drill. I repeat, this is NOT a drill.

I probably don't need to remind many of you what this means, but based on staff turnover, I'll go ahead and spell it out for the nubs:

1. Stop working on raid instances, we'll get to those a couple months after the expansion is released.

2. Run the random loot generator and populate all loot tables with whatever it spits out, we'll change some of the flowing thought effects later to minimize subscriber loss.

3. Don't worry about whether raid encounters are perfectly tuned. Set the degree of difficulty on less accessible encounters to "impossible" for now, so they remain unbeaten until we are close to releasing our next unfinished expansion. We'll go ahead and stealth patch in adjustments as usual when we are good and ready for these encounters to be defeated, and then publicly congratulate our beta partner guilds who beat them first.

4. Divert all resources from tradeskills into adventure content. Since we already converted the EQ2 crafting system from a career path into a sideline hobby, it will minimize our losses if we confine them to unimportant niche subscriber sections like this one. Besides, crafters will complain no matter what we do, so why bother.

5. Make sure the new "prismatic" quest for this expansion requires at least two contested raid mobs, and also requires entry to a "flagged" zone that requires at least two other contested raid mobs. This will delay 95 percent of our subscribers from progressing and consuming EoF content too rapidly. We can instance all these required mobs later when enough people complain that uber guilds are "cockblocking" their progress and preventing them from completing quests they are "entitled" to complete.

6. Make certain that subscribers outside the US can't purchase the new release until at least one week after the US launch date. We don't have a valid reason for doing this, but since it usually happens anyway, we want to prove we are good at something, even if we are only good at being consistently late.

Please feel free to add your own suggestions below mine.

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"Bottom line: we're not all being honest with ourselves here." Become, Kraken forums

Khalan

*cough* proffession hats *cough*

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Victicus

I seriously cant understand what the employees of the EQ2 divison of SoE do all day.

Hundreds of things could be fixed, but they arent. Hundreds of things left undone for months. What are the working on? Working on the next expansion due out 2009 when curent content is left unfinished, unbalanced, and untested?

I could understand if they could only afford to hire 2-3 employees. But thats certainly not the case.

Before i played eq1 i used to code for text based games called MUDS. MUDS are much more simple than large scale MMO's, so maybe this isnt the best comparison. But in a single days work on my mud, i could accomplish tons of things, add tons of content and fix tons of bugs.

One thing i have always been curious about is if EQ2 devs are also coders/programmers. If they arent then i could understand some of the huge delays in getting content done. I know Moorguard has an english degree, I have no idea if he has any computer related degrees though. This alone makes me want to puke. Its like telling a guy with a degree in History, who as a hobby builds model airplanes, to go build real airplanes for Boeing. He knows how the outside of the plane fits together, but he doesnt understand the internal workings.

Honestly, from what i can tell, all a dev does is fill in the blanks. They use tools the programmers make to create things. Want to make an item?? There is a blank template already made, all you have to do is fill in the blanks. Use the program the coder made, type in the name, stats, effects, give it an item ID and your done. Want to make a Mob? Its all fill in the blanks. How hard is it to fill in these motherfucking blanks?? If something is wrong you edit the info in the blanks.

There is no skill in being a "fill in the blank" dev. Being a REAL dev is being able to create and code your own unique effects, abilities, scripts, then going outside the bounds of the "normal" template and creating new never before seen things.

Sit me in front of a SoE computer with all the damn development tools they have and we would have a fucking game.

Pronoia

Depends what the role of the Dev is. Top drawer programmers don't necessarily make decent storytellers, encounter designers or any other role preceived to be the remit of the Dev's. Conversly,Great storytellers, mechanics/spell designers don't necessarily have to know much about scripting.

Pro.

Victicus

They are making games. On a computer. They should know. I dont want William Shakespere creating the spells for my wizard.

Shaggis

You left out go chase all the chicks or pseudo-chicks around on beta that we let in because they flirt with us.

Crazedmutha

- Prepare Unexplainable Process Of Nerfing (UPON) for any arbitrary Tier 1/2 DPS Class for no apparent reason other than to give us a huge bunch of chuckles. DOF we nerfed the Rangers and during KoS the Sorcerers felt the shaft. After this, implement a series of apparent "nerfs" to other classes to make them feel better, but in reality make sure the class that ends up being nerfed so badly stays that way. This way they have to betray, making us feel much better as people will then actually use our Betrayl questline we forfeited precious bug fixing time to implement.

MeridianR

This is what they do after the fact:

LFG

hahaha that owns.

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"Bottom line: we're not all being honest with ourselves here." Become, Kraken forums

Illuminator

That's just priceless. :smiley-very-happy:

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80/140 Wizard, 80/140 Illusionist, 80/140 Warden, 80/128 Troubador, etc.



HA HA fuck you, Roger. And don't vote for Obama.