Epic Weapon Quests and Why We Haven't Seen Them [Archive]

Eriol

11-13-2007, 03:23 AM

Does anybody remember who it was on a panel in Atlanta FF (2006) that said that they'd never do eq2 epics because he remembered how much work it was to do epic 1.5 & 2.0 for everybody in eq1? Not complaining, just wanting to know who to poke once in a while. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Fairly expected news, so not good or bad IMO.Working in a mid-size software development company, I really do boggle at 1300 bugs per week though. WOW! Our QA and development managers could only WISH for that type of rate (though they're also glad we don't have quite that rate of bugs). I think we'd need like 4-5 times as much staff at LEAST, though I'm sure our releases would push through faster./em walks away, shaking his head in wonder at 1300 bugs a week.

Argul

11-13-2007, 04:13 AM

Hmm, at least we got some news on that. Thanks for posting! <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Spaceweed

11-13-2007, 11:57 AM

Hmm, a week lost due the fires <best wishes to all> means a 2 month delay to the epics?Call me a cynic <yes, I'm a cynic>, but it seems they were never going to make it into the expansion from a long way previously. I'm all for adding 'finished' content at the first attempt, but don't try to blow fairy smoke up our fannies <I'm from the UK, so I love being able to use that word legally>, and expect us to swallow it.Anyway, I'm a returning player from the original beta and looking forward to the game now it has some decent content <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> A lot to be said for letting a game 'mature' before playing it. Just a shame new games can't start from launch, with the equivalent of the game 'plus' at least 2 expansions worth of stuff to do. Would go a long way towards keeping a thriving community happy for a much longer period of time.I know I wouldn't have left easily 2 years ago, had the above been true.

Ama

11-13-2007, 12:06 PM

Thanks for the info about the epic weapons Sav. It is dissapointing that they arn't going to be in the game at launch time, but it is understandable. Just hope things go smoothly and the epic weapons are what we were promised. <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />

SenorPhrog

11-13-2007, 12:08 PM

TheSpin

11-13-2007, 12:15 PM

Lets just say, theoretically, that they were going to dedicate that entire week to epics. Now they can't just take a week off from everything else they had going on so they have to fit in time to work on epics between other projects.That could easily convert 1 weeks worth of work into a couple months.

Kidd1112

11-13-2007, 12:23 PM

finally some answers about epics

Twsly76

11-13-2007, 12:32 PM

so 11 months in the making, they loose 1 week and everything falls behind? Typical...

Cyanbane

11-13-2007, 12:35 PM

Nice interview, strait and to the point.I added to our <a href="http://www.eq2-daily.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">news</a>.

Meinen

11-13-2007, 12:57 PM

seems kinda silly to add it after the holidays for epics to be put in place...its gonna take all of, what, 3weeks (3wks if they have lives i mean) for most hardcore players to get to 80. Oh well, what can ya do?

Valadhiel

11-13-2007, 01:00 PM

Yea I find it kinda silly too, but like you said there's nothing that we can do bout it.

110euph

11-13-2007, 01:06 PM

I remember, from the first set of Epics (1.0) in EQ1, there were at least PICTURES of the weapons... what they would look like, if not stat blocks, available on the net. Would this be possible? C'mon, we're desperate for anything right about now! =) Thanks!Edited: fixed spelling

evhallion

11-13-2007, 01:09 PM

<cite>Spaceweed wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hmm, a week lost due the fires <best wishes to all> means a 2 month delay to the epics?Call me a cynic <yes, I'm a cynic>, but it seems they were never going to make it into the expansion from a long way previously. I'm all for adding 'finished' content at the first attempt, but don't try to blow fairy smoke up our fannies <I'm from the UK, so I love being able to use that word legally>, and expect us to swallow it.</blockquote>Yea I'm with you Spaceweed I'm finding that hard to swallow too. 1 week = 2 months? I am a fan of not putting things out til they are finished but this..... Since I'm not from the UK i'm not sure if I have a "fanny" but i'm sure that if I do it's blowing smoke rings after reading that.It's been rumored that the epic weapon quests are no longer going to be a part of the Rise of Kunark expansion, is this true?"With the fires we had here in San Diego we had our office shut down and we had a lot of folks displaced for a little while. When we came back we evaluated where we were with all the epics and where everything was sitting with the rest of the expansion. The decision we had to make was, what happens if we get this all out at the same time and do we have any alternatives? ""What we were faced with was a bug count in which nothing had been touched in a week. When we are in our bug fix mode, the team is capable of fixing anywhere between 13 to 17 hundred bugs in a week, so losing a week is a big thing. At the end of the day it came down to well, we obviously need to focus on the overall launch of our expansion first. Epic weapons are something that yes, we've got a number of them in the bag, but the choice we had to make was, do we launch a game with 1500 bugs and epics that are 75% awesome and 25% less than awesome, or do we launch a game that's going to be as clean as we can make it and then push the epics out on an update? " "So what it looks like right now is our updates are going to be launching just after the holiday season. We are very intentionally not wanting to rush them out the door at the expense of the quality of the both the epics and the expansion launch. "

Elrohan

11-13-2007, 01:12 PM

I'm just glad they're going to include them PERIOD! <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />

Savanja

11-13-2007, 01:14 PM

It is disappointing. So many were looking forward to them.As for the delay, well, I can only speculate, but my thoughts would be, the team will be busy with launch details for a few weeks, Then of course the holidays are always busy for people in general. At this point, they KNOW they will be delayed, perhaps the thought is that they will take their time and get in some extra effort?

ke'la

11-13-2007, 04:50 PM

<cite>Eriol wrote:</cite><blockquote>Does anybody remember who it was on a panel in Atlanta FF (2006) that said that they'd never do eq2 epics because he remembered how much work it was to do epic 1.5 & 2.0 for everybody in eq1? Not complaining, just wanting to know who to poke once in a while. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" width="15" height="15" />Fairly expected news, so not good or bad IMO.Working in a mid-size software development company, I really do boggle at 1300 bugs per week though. WOW! Our QA and development managers could only WISH for that type of rate (though they're also glad we don't have quite that rate of bugs). I think we'd need like 4-5 times as much staff at LEAST, though I'm sure our releases would push through faster./em walks away, shaking his head in wonder at 1300 bugs a week.</blockquote>Well think about it for a second, once it was taken out of the to do list for the expaintion they stoped working on it, the fires where 2 weeks ago and the fire shut them down for a week so that is 3 weeks of accuall Work on them that is not getting done, and consitering the next week is going to be devoted to chasing verious bugs, they probly won't start working on them again until sometime next week, if not the week after, so IF they do the work in "crunch time" mode they might get them to the point of testing some where between Dec 11 and Dec 18th. That is to late to get it into the "Frostfell" Live Update, wich means it won't be able to go into the game(eventhough complete) until the following update in Jan.

Prodigus

11-13-2007, 05:02 PM

<cite>Elrohan@Blackburrow wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'm just glad they're going to include them PERIOD! <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" /></blockquote>Same here.Thanks for the interview.

Teak

11-13-2007, 08:15 PM

I don't fully buy it. How long ago do you suppose the box art was done for the expansion? After the box art is "approved" they have to then have it printed on several hundred thousand boxes. Now I would think that process wouldn't take extremely long... few days or so for the actual creation of the boxes... but don't you think it would have all been finalized a couple months ago? Yet, there is no mention of the epics on the box. Kind of like they knew it wasn't going to happen and the fires were just a convenient excuse. In the end, I don't actually care. I can wait a couple months. I'll have fun exploring the lands and other stuff. And in a couple months when I'm done with that I can then concentrate more on the epic questing. I just don't like being lied to, and it seems to me that is what is going on. /shrug

Siodenne

11-14-2007, 12:39 AM

I would rather have them take their time and do a great job on the epics instead of rushing it personally. That being said yeah it seems like a lot of time however you have the holidays, and then there are the pesky bugs that are going to show up now that didn't during beta simply because they didn't have the numbers of folks running around on beta that are going to be playing live. RoK is a HUGE expansion and as such I'm sure they've dedicated some folks to squashing/fixing/changing stuff that the live server players will run into/complain about. You know how it goes . . so and so isn't happy because their class can't blah, blah, blah posts that we'll see for weeks after the launch.I'll just sit and patiently await the epics weapons release.

Greedly

11-14-2007, 04:12 AM

sadly sounds like a ploy to keep people around since there are entire guilds that go back to other games once they have beat end-game =/

ke'la

11-14-2007, 05:16 AM

<cite>Teeke@Blackburrow wrote:</cite><blockquote>I don't fully buy it. How long ago do you suppose the box art was done for the expansion? After the box art is "approved" they have to then have it printed on several hundred thousand boxes. Now I would think that process wouldn't take extremely long... few days or so for the actual creation of the boxes... but don't you think it would have all been finalized a couple months ago? Yet, there is no mention of the epics on the box. Kind of like they knew it wasn't going to happen and the fires were just a convenient excuse. In the end, I don't actually care. I can wait a couple months. I'll have fun exploring the lands and other stuff. And in a couple months when I'm done with that I can then concentrate more on the epic questing. I just don't like being lied to, and it seems to me that is what is going on. /shrug</blockquote>You do know that Box are and the Text that is printed on the box are 2 completly differant things, and it would be real easy befor the box got to the printers to remove the line about the epics, remember they did know that there would be no epics 3 weeks ago, thats enough time to change the Text on the boxes(though it could account for the large numbers of delays)

Lodrelhai

11-14-2007, 06:44 AM

I don't know how long box art for an international release takes, but having worked for a national magazine, I know we had everything for it, all articles, ads, art, etc, finalized and into printing 2 weeks in advance of mailing. So yeah, I'd think they could adjust the boxes in about that time, especially considering that whoever does the box art and write-ups would probably not be the same people who're working on creating the content itself.I can also easily believe that one week of work lost equates to two months, or more, of delay for content. Figure it wasn't just epic weapons that weren't worked on that week - everything was dropped. All the quest, zone, guild, tradeskill, mount, etc content for a new expansion was left untouched for a week. And when they're able to get back to it, there's other issues coming up all the time which are added to that list of things to do - some of it takes higher priority than the stuff that was skipped that week. So they decided leave off the epics until after launch, which means they're not losing 1 week of work on those, but 3-4. All that time they're spending trying to catch up on that lost week while still keeping up-to-date with the normal work required for a launch. Now that the expansion is live, those bugs that no amount of betaing can find because things respond differently when there's 15 people in a zone vs 138 people get to be found and worked on too.It adds up. I'm betting there's more than a few things that were launched without final tweaks in place - still playable, but not exactly what was intended. I'm willing to be patient - gives us something to look forward to. And I'm certainly happier that they come right out and tell us "it's not in game yet" than if they let us search endlessly for the quest starters, and then slipped them in on a later update. Anyone else remember the froglok fiasco?

Spiritunico

11-14-2007, 09:22 AM

Thank you for this article, its good to see that epic weapons are on their way if a little delayed.I'm guessing the art is probably done with the quests themselves presenting the huge work mountain to climb so it would be really nice to see a Friday feature on the new epic weapons to give us something to drool over until the quests go live. ^_^I wonder if we will see the return of the old epic look revised for EQ2s better graphics engine, or will the new epics be totally different?

denmom

11-14-2007, 09:43 AM

As for the fires...Some employees lost their homes. Some were in evacuation centers. Some were in hotels. There's the stress, worry, pain, upset, emotional upheaval.Yes, the fires shut down the office for a week, but it was two or three weeks before people could move out of the evacuation centers and back to their homes. Dealing with the damage that the fires left behind, physical and emotional, will wear down a person.I live in San Diego, and the Qualcomm Stadium, the main evac center, was lit up bright for nearly two weeks after SOE employees went back to work.Most of the dev team lives in North County, hardest hit by the fires. Some even blogged about being evacuated, have photos of the fires and the smoke and devastation.All this happened and you're going to begrudge them a week off from work. Blame them and claim "Liar!" because you do not have the empathy to even consider how wild fires could impact working.If you've not been through a county-wide wild fire, if you've not been through evacuation and the loss of your home, you don't know what it can do to you. The effects can last for weeks, even months afterwards.And yes, I've been there. The 2003 fires in San Diego. One was literally blocks away but was turned by the efforts of the fire fighters and the change in weather.

Spiritunico

11-14-2007, 09:49 AM

<cite>Pheep@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>As for the fires...Some employees lost their homes. Some were in evacuation centers. Some were in hotels. There's the stress, worry, pain, upset, emotional upheaval.Yes, the fires shut down the office for a week, but it was two or three weeks before people could move out of the evacuation centers and back to their homes. Dealing with the damage that the fires left behind, physical and emotional, will wear down a person.I live in San Diego, and the Qualcomm Stadium, the main evac center, was lit up bright for nearly two weeks after SOE employees went back to work.Most of the dev team lives in North County, hardest hit by the fires. Some even blogged about being evacuated, have photos of the fires and the smoke and devastation.All this happened and you're going to begrudge them a week off from work. Blame them and claim "Liar!" because you do not have the empathy to even consider how wild fires could impact working.If you've not been through a county-wide wild fire, if you've not been through evacuation and the loss of your home, you don't know what it can do to you. The effects can last for weeks, even months afterwards.And yes, I've been there. The 2003 fires in San Diego. One was literally blocks away but was turned by the efforts of the fire fighters and the change in weather.</blockquote>Well said Pheep.

quamdar

11-15-2007, 10:05 PM

honestly IF they get it out in 2 months i will be happy. realistically i don't see them coming out that soon because i seriously doubt that the delay from the fires is the only reason they didn't make it into the expansion. i hope i'm wrong though.

Xelyen

11-15-2007, 10:41 PM

Those who are playing RoK just for the promise of the return of epic weapons quests are missing out on the rest of a fantastic expansion. There should be enough content and new instances/drops to hunt to keep even the hardcore gamers busy for at least a couple months.Thank you dev team for being up front and making realistic time hacks for a quality product instead of pushing something halfassed to appease the fanbois.

Steve11418

11-15-2007, 11:41 PM

For those not familiar with software developmentDepending on how many resources were working on epics… 1 week delay can easily blow out to a few months.A. As previously said the 1 week delay was on everything. So if 25% of the staff were working on epics, then dropping that content would still leave a shortfall of 50% to catch up on… which would mean the ‘epic staff’ would require 3 weeks to catch the rest of the development up.B. Let’s assume that SOE actually have work planed after the release and are not all going on holidays. (Skeletal revamp, Guild housing etc) So the resources are probably already allocated to other stuff.C. After any release you have to hold developers and QA staff back for warranty purposes. To fix all those problems that you find (that were missed).D. Implementing something as large as epics into the game probably requires QA to run substantial regression cycle which in itself could be weeks. (Instead of testing it with everything else during ROK regression)So a smart project manager would probably delay the Epics and roll it out with something else so as to piggy back it onto another testing regression cycle (perhaps for the skeletal revamp?). Thus saving time and money for more cool content for us.Just ask yourself… if you were the Test manager and were asked to make sure 24 quest lines (maybe 500 quests), 500 quest reward and 48 weapons (fabled and legendary) all worked as designed. And to make sure that none of the present content was affected (mobs used for updates, quest givers, clickable, collectables, carftables, specific zone instances, drops etc) that the quest lines touched.Easy to do if you were testing everything for ROK to start with plus Beta looking at them. Not so easy to do on its own and without Beta.

tom1301

11-16-2007, 09:23 AM

I (as a professional software developer) totally agree to Stevel11418.I (as a player) indeed appreciate the mere fact that SOE does focus on bug fixing and overall software quality and does not add more content which wouldn't have been thoroughly developed (remember back to 2004 having potions and poisons in the game with no description and no clue how they work?) while leaving hundreds of bugs in. That was, as far as i can judge about it, the only true decision.Thumbs up, SOE

Emo

11-16-2007, 10:15 AM

so they are using fire as an excuse to cover up their inability to keep their promise. as if 1 or 2 weeks of fire could explain why so many feature listed in the promo of RoK are not ingame yet.

denmom

11-16-2007, 10:59 AM

<cite>Emoec wrote:</cite><blockquote>so they are using fire as an excuse to cover up their inability to keep their promise. as if 1 or 2 weeks of fire could explain why so many feature listed in the promo of RoK are not ingame yet.</blockquote>Actually, yes, one or two weeks of fire could explain, especially if the devs and programmers who were working on those features were affected by the fires. Freeways and roads were closed down during that time, preventing anyone from coming down or going up to the north county. Don't believe me? Go look it up, Google it. The proof is there. Have you been in that situation, where you could lose your home, family, everything you have in the world that's precious to you? Where the physical, emotional, mental stress and pressure of that weighs so heavily on you that your ability to deal with work is impaired? Have you ever been in a situation where stress from outside the work place (friends, family, home, bills, Real Life issues) impacted your work performance, let alone your ability to deal with others?If you were in that position, would you not want understanding? Would you not want patience while you deal with what's been dropped into your life?I'm mostly a quiet lurker who'll now and then surface when I just have to say something, such as now. And I certainly do not believe that SOE is as pure as snow. There's tire tracks and footprints in said snowbank. Just that this time, I won't throw rocks because I know how the fires have affected people.Being abusive to SOE and their employees isn't going to help matters. All that the few moments of your meaness satisfied will do is lock threads and get nowhere fast.

KayvennDisrael

11-16-2007, 12:03 PM

<cite>Sarafan@The Bazaar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Spaceweed wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hmm, a week lost due the fires <best wishes to all> means a 2 month delay to the epics?Call me a cynic <yes, I'm a cynic>, but it seems they were never going to make it into the expansion from a long way previously. I'm all for adding 'finished' content at the first attempt, but don't try to blow fairy smoke up our fannies <I'm from the UK, so I love being able to use that word legally>, and expect us to swallow it.</blockquote>Yea I'm with you Spaceweed I'm finding that hard to swallow too. 1 week = 2 months? I am a fan of not putting things out til they are finished but this..... Since I'm not from the UK i'm not sure if I have a "fanny" but i'm sure that if I do it's blowing smoke rings after reading that.It's been rumored that the epic weapon quests are no longer going to be a part of the Rise of Kunark expansion, is this true?"With the fires we had here in San Diego we had our office shut down and we had a lot of folks displaced for a little while. When we came back we evaluated where we were with all the epics and where everything was sitting with the rest of the expansion. The decision we had to make was, what happens if we get this all out at the same time and do we have any alternatives? ""What we were faced with was a bug count in which nothing had been touched in a week. When we are in our bug fix mode, the team is capable of fixing anywhere between 13 to 17 hundred bugs in a week, so losing a week is a big thing. At the end of the day it came down to well, we obviously need to focus on the overall launch of our expansion first. Epic weapons are something that yes, we've got a number of them in the bag, but the choice we had to make was, do we launch a game with 1500 bugs and epics that are 75% awesome and 25% less than awesome, or do we launch a game that's going to be as clean as we can make it and then push the epics out on an update? " "So what it looks like right now is our updates are going to be launching just after the holiday season. We are very intentionally not wanting to rush them out the door at the expense of the quality of the both the epics and the expansion launch. "</blockquote>I am not saying that those in San Diego did not have a rough time with the fires. This is not even touching that specific part of this. Here it states they were working on "Bugs" With the initial content and said the epic's quest lines would take away from that. Well after playing the actual Live release and seeing how many bugs were actually in it. I can not see this being a valid excuse. WIth all the bugs i ahve seen i would say give them another 6 months to get it right. they had all of the same issues from KOS and EOF. After two expansions you would think they could get at least the repeated mistakes fixed and have a few new ones instead of the same ones over and over. In regards to the epic quest lines be happy if they come out in 6 months. Just my two cents.

Savanja

11-16-2007, 12:12 PM

My personal thought is that they were likely pressed for time to begin and the fires were the nail in the coffin.As it was already said, it isn't so much the fires in and of themselves, it was the timing. They had tons of people working on an extended schedule focused on the expansion. They practically live at the office during a push like this. They weren't just losing a handful of 8 hour a day manhours.I imagine that they could push the weapon quests out within the next couple of weeks, however, they might wanna give their poor burned out devs a bit of a rest and let them focus on the post release cleanup before cracking the whip again.

Emo

11-16-2007, 12:22 PM

Pheep, epic = key feature of the expansion, it s actually the MAJOR thing that makes this expansion. expansion took 6~8 month to devellop but 1~2 weeks of fire cause the delays of such and important feature. shouldnt this have been the first thing they should deal with once the zone creation was done? and i m not talking about all the stuff not in game yet that were advertised (guildhalls, AA respect feature etc etc) fires = lucky chain of event that gave SOE an excuse for their delay.

kal-l

11-16-2007, 12:45 PM

<cite>Emoec wrote:</cite><blockquote>Pheep,epic = key feature of the expansion, it s actually the MAJOR thing that makes this expansion.expansion took 6~8 month to devellop but 1~2 weeks of fire cause the delays of such and important feature. shouldnt this have been the first thing they should deal with once the zone creation was done? and i m not talking about all the stuff not in game yet that were advertised (guildhalls, AA respect feature etc etc)fires = lucky chain of event that gave SOE an excuse for their delay.</blockquote>I wanted epics weapons to go in at launch as much as everyone else. However, considering all the work that goes into the expansion and the fires causing a delay I'm not suprised they didn't make it. Also, guildhalls were never planned to go in with the expansion. They are in the works but were always intended for a later GU.

Calthine

11-16-2007, 12:53 PM

Fire or no fire, it comes down to that if they'd put them in they would not have been done to the high degree of polish that we (and SOE!) are holding them to. This thread would instead be filled with complaining on how they sucked and we'd rather they made stuff late than released garbage. You know it's true.Give 'em a break.(And guild halls were never promised for Kunark. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://eq2.allakhazam.com/db/guides.html?guide=1049" target="_blank">Into the Future Panel</a> "It was strongly emphasized that there is no eta; we were told the art alone might take a year."<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" />

denmom

11-16-2007, 08:00 PM

I'm stepping out of this.Too many haters.And I have to wonder yet again if SOE so fails them time and time again why do they give SOE their money if all they are is disappointed with each update and expansion. There are other MMOs out there to go play.Personally, I think they do the above just to have something to drive their drama llama herd through.

Lilj

11-17-2007, 03:00 PM

Thanks for the interview Savanja. Not so good news is still better than no news <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />I have a question though, when Gallenite says after the holiday season, does he then mean christmas? So we can hope for the epics somewhere in January or February?I have heard different holiday-days be called holiday season and not all have been christmas. Since I'm not american, I'm not completely sure what an american means when he/she says holiday season. It's meant as an honest question and by no means meant as a critique.Thanks <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Savanja

11-17-2007, 06:01 PM

Scott did not give us a firm date. "After the holiday season" generally means after Christmas and New Years here, but I can't put words in his mouth.Hopefully we will get a better idea of when we can expect them soon!

Lilj

11-17-2007, 06:45 PM

<cite>Savanja wrote:</cite><blockquote>Scott did not give us a firm date. "After the holiday season" generally means after Christmas and New Years here, but I can't put words in his mouth.Hopefully we will get a better idea of when we can expect them soon!</blockquote>That's completely understandable. Thanks anyways for giving me a clue about the holiday season <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />There is so much content at the moment, I know I personally will have lots to do. I prefer the team gets time enough to make some really good quests-lines for the epics, instead of being forced to rush it.Better late than never!

dawy

11-18-2007, 12:29 AM

ke'la

11-18-2007, 05:12 AM

<cite>Emoec wrote:</cite><blockquote>Pheep,epic = key feature of the expansion, it s actually the MAJOR thing that makes this expansion.Key Feature? Um I think the Key Feature was the HUGE zones, followed by the Sarnak, Followed by Vashan's Peak, then maybe Epics. The thing is MOST players are not going to be going for thier epics right away they are going to either a)explore and quest or b)Grind as fast as they can to 80 to start raiding, both of those require a ton of work and they where working on both of those right up until launch.expansion took 6~8 month to devellop but 1~2 weeks of fire cause the delays of such and important feature. shouldnt this have been the first thing they should deal with once the zone creation was done?Um they where not done compeltly with zone creation until about the time the fires started, Also I think there infact are a Ton of more importaint things to work on such as MoB balance, Spells/CAs, Iteamization, etc.) and i m not talking about all the stuff not in game yet that were advertised (guildhalls, AA respect feature etc etc)Um the ONLY thing that was said to be part of RoK that was not are the Epic Weopons. Guild Halls(was in EXTREEM EARLY consept at FF in Aug, and they have NO IDEA when that will be done(think sometime next summer at the earliest). AA save tool was also said to be a Post-RoK thing, heck even the Map Revamp(wich Map zoom is only a PART of) was Post-RoK.fires = lucky chain of event that gave SOE an excuse for their delay.</blockquote>It seems to me you have no understanding of the devlopment process. First off they where in "Crunch Mode" when the fires hit. That means that EVERYONE was working a Minimum of 16hr days(alot of the time 7days a week) many alot more then that. So 1 week of downtime = min 2 normal weeks of labor, add to that the fact that once something launchs Resouces get reallicated elsewhere, some to the Next Expaintion, others back to LUs, and others to Bug Squishing. So chances are where once they might of had 2 or 3 devs working on epics they now can only spare 1, so your looking at probly that one week of lost time about 200 man hours lost, just on epics assumeing they had 2 people working on them. Now the second they desided to delay them to post launch they stopped work on them and moved those people over to cetch people up elsewhere. So now on Nov 14th you have 200 Man hours min required just to finnish development of the Epic Weopons(assumeing that they would had been done deving them at the end of the week they where evaced(wich is probly not the case)) Thats 5 weeks of labor for 1 person doing a Normal 8hr day, That alone would make them miss the deadline for getting it in to the QA que for the Frostfell Update. Wich means that it wound not beable to come out until the following update.

Tokam

11-18-2007, 10:38 AM

<cite>ke'la wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Emoec wrote:</cite>It seems to me you have no understanding of the devlopment process. First off they where in "Crunch Mode" when the fires hit. That means that EVERYONE was working a Minimum of 16hr days(alot of the time 7days a week) many alot more then that. So 1 week of downtime = min 2 normal weeks of labor, add to that the fact that once something launchs Resouces get reallicated elsewhere, some to the Next Expaintion, others back to LUs, and others to Bug Squishing. So chances are where once they might of had 2 or 3 devs working on epics they now can only spare 1, so your looking at probly that one week of lost time about 200 man hours lost, just on epics assumeing they had 2 people working on them. Now the second they desided to delay them to post launch they stopped work on them and moved those people over to cetch people up elsewhere. So now on Nov 14th you have 200 Man hours min required just to finnish development of the Epic Weopons(assumeing that they would had been done deving them at the end of the week they where evaced(wich is probly not the case)) Thats 5 weeks of labor for 1 person doing a Normal 8hr day, That alone would make them miss the deadline for getting it in to the QA que for the Frostfell Update. Wich means that it wound not beable to come out until the following update.</blockquote>If you're having to work that hard that close to release to finish content then fires or not you are [Removed for Content].Fire your managers, hire ones that posses a calendar, and try again.

Killerbee3000

11-18-2007, 11:14 AM

Tokamak, at first glance what you say makes sense, that they should do as much work as possible as long ahead of the launch as possible to make sure they have enough time to iron out bugs in last days.... but, its for some reason normal in software development that the team works on things, gets distracted by things that seem little at the stat and turn into major time consumers and so on.... and its not only mmorpgs... just look at the other pc games... go count hpw many have a 100MB+ patch on release day allready because the dev team was so busy in the last days even after the dvd where produced. now, you might find a game where that isnt the case... why? they are the ones that are so heavily focused on consoles that the dev's dont care about patching the pc version. no, i'm not saying i agree with it.... but only saying it is that way....