Irony: EQ2 has it

[Aule]

<p><em><strong><span style="color: #c0c0c0;">Patch Notes</span></strong></em></p><p><span style="color: #c0c0c0;"></span></p><div><blockquote><p><span style="color: #000000; font-weight: bold; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px;"><span style="color: #c0c0c0;">BUG BASH</span></span></p><ul><li><span style="color: #000000;"><span style="color: #c0c0c0;">A great deal of effort was put forth in this update to fix as many old, annoying bugs as possible.  Players will notice many existing issues once thought perhaps forgotten are now fixed. All told, nearly 800 bugfixes are in found within GU54, which should help provide a much more polished and streamlined gameplay experience for existing content. As a result, players will notice the patch note section below is significantly longer than in updates past.</span></span></li></ul></blockquote></div><p><span style="color: #c0c0c0;">Who else finds the irony in the "Bug Bash" game update including some of the most significant gear related bugs of any patch this year?</span></p>

[Deveryn]

<p>Welcome to the world of MMOs?</p>

[PinChaser]

<p>new coding alway messes up old coding. the bug bash went through and fixed a bunch of old code issues. Of course this may have screwed up stuff that had built up on top of those bugs (built a house on a shaky foundation, now the timbers are cracked and they just patched the cement)</p>

[madha]

<p>what does grammer fixes have to do with coding of any sort?</p>

[Deveryn]

<p><cite>madhatr wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>what does grammer fixes have to do with coding of any sort?</p></blockquote><p>It was the other 700+ fixes that had to do with coding.</p>

[Anurra]

<p><cite>PinChaser wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>new coding alway messes up old coding. the bug bash went through and fixed a bunch of old code issues. Of course this may have screwed up stuff that had built up on top of those bugs (built a house on a shaky foundation, now the timbers are cracked and they just patched the cement)</p></blockquote><p>While this is true, if a proper regression enviroment exists, it can be mitigated greatly. Based on EQ2's performance over the years, I would say that they do not have an acceptable regression enviroment in place. Well, the word acceptable is up for debate. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Dasein]

<p><cite>Lawrs@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>PinChaser wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>new coding alway messes up old coding. the bug bash went through and fixed a bunch of old code issues. Of course this may have screwed up stuff that had built up on top of those bugs (built a house on a shaky foundation, now the timbers are cracked and they just patched the cement)</p></blockquote><p>While this is true, if a proper regression enviroment exists, it can be mitigated greatly. Based on EQ2's performance over the years, I would say that they do not have an acceptable regression enviroment in place. Well, the word acceptable is up for debate. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></p></blockquote><p>Given the complexity and volume of code that makes up EQ2, and the age of this code, compared to the actual errors we see, I would say they do a very good job. Bugs by their very nature produce a strong confirmation bias in that we only get to see the bugs that make it into production and have no way to measure what does get fixed prior to launch. As we only see the mistakes that do make it through, this leads us to believe that SOE's quality control is lacking, but that is obviouslly based on our very incomplete data.</p>

[Tehom]

<p>In general, it seems like most of the bugs that get through are errors in data migration - things which are intended for the expansion or bad versions of things, that sort of deal. It seems hard to imagine that more testing of the correct versions which aren't copied over correctly would prevent that sort of thing.</p>

[RogueSpideyChick]

<p>bug fixes...yes...cause all those grammar changes were bugs that MUST be fixed now...& all the random cosmetic bug fixes...game breaking zomg!</p><p>fix the REAL bugs that effect game mechanics & game play, not this random junk that nobody really cares about.</p>

[bks6721]

<p><cite>Erynnyes@Mistmoore wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>bug fixes...yes...cause all those grammar changes were bugs that MUST be fixed now...& all the random cosmetic bug fixes...game breaking zomg!</p><p>fix the REAL bugs that effect game mechanics & game play, not this random junk that nobody really cares about.</p></blockquote><p>you mean like my Conj not being able to send my pet after something that is standing 10 feet in front of me but unable to target?  lol</p>

[hayaikaze]

<p>No kidding. Bug bash patch and the EQ2 team said they made a new commitment to quality with their updates.</p><p>Patch 54 casued so many things to break, to the point where the game is quite unstable. Mobs are bugged, stuck in the work, can't hit them, screen flicker on various textures (walls, water). Procs go off when out of combat just at dock or room, combat arts take seconds at times to respond and increased game lag in general, PVP issues, GPU shadows are broken causing hitching and other issues, CPU shadow options are gone (grey), etc, etc.</p><p>It's really sad.</p>

[Mythanote]

<p><cite>Erynnyes@Mistmoore wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>bug fixes...yes...cause all those grammar changes were bugs that MUST be fixed now...& all the random cosmetic bug fixes...game breaking zomg!</p><p>fix the bugs that MATTER TO ME, not this random junk that I don't really care about.</p></blockquote><p>There, fixed that for ya.</p><p>Cheers.</p>

[Trellium]

<p>These are all current bugs, new ones due to the GU itself. Like always, those get fixed up over the next week and things settle down.</p>

[RogueSpideyChick]

<p>yes SOME mechanic bugs were fixed, but not many. if u look at the update notes, most r grammar changes or the relabeling of a quest has heroic or whatever because some ppl thought it was too hard for the previous label or omg anashti's wearing different clothes in the instance than she does in sinking sands! then LOADS more stuff was broken with this update that WERE mechanics-related. so if it was truly a "bug bash" as they keep calling it, it would fix relevant stuff instead of omg, this npc needs a comma in his sentence!  it would also have been thoroughly tested to not cause LOADS more bugs to pop up because of it.</p>

[Hecula]

<p>I don't know how much of the live environment of GU54 actually made it to testcopy. Some of the serious bugs now seen on live weren't on test (ex: the Anashti choker). So the builds going to live contain things that were never QAed. I'm not a programmer, but I used to be in QA and this will cause problems. If I'm wrong about this multiple versions thing, call me out on it please. But I think I'm right. This has happened before.</p><p>A full build should go to test, be QAed, then fixed if needed then QAed then sent to live. There is plenty of time to do this.</p>

[Trellium]

<p><cite>Hecula wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I don't know how much of the live environment of GU54 actually made it to testcopy. Some of the serious bugs now seen on live weren't on test (ex: the Anashti choker). So the builds going to live contain things that were never QAed. I'm not a programmer, but I used to be in QA and this will cause problems. If I'm wrong about this multiple versions thing, call me out on it please. But I think I'm right. This has happened before.</p><p>A full build should go to test, be QAed, then fixed if needed then QAed then sent to live. There is plenty of time to do this.</p></blockquote><p>Some things went to Test, but as I understand it other things got mixed in (like some of the coding for items). Those are issues with the migration of the code to Live servers. Since they have some code go in that wasn't intended, there are all sorts of potential issues from that.</p><p>It was the same way on EQ1 updates going to live too. Seemed like they unfixed previous fixes or sent out new code that was not on Test so I am not sure how they test all things together. I assume there is an inhouse QA server on which all code exists that is to go live (they want some surprises so some code bypasses the open test servers). That's probably the one that gets sent to Live, but even at that the migration system appears to have some issues.</p><p>Oh yes, and sometimes they bypass Test altogether, like with the anniversary events. For once they were tested on live before migrating to Test. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/ed515dbff23a0ee3241dcc0a601c9ed6.gif" border="0" /></p>