Dragon Lair Update: November 9, 2005

[David Bowman]

Delta 92 is going to Blight today. It has many improvements to the data related to Lairs as well as associated client interface changes. It also includes all of the assets for T1-T6 Helian and Lunus Lairs. The Lairshaping Trainers are in place.

We will finalize depths and prices this week.

There are now Lairs in the following communities:

Sakon: 2
Jambi: 1
Toku: 2
Moyo: 1
Cameron: 1
Immons: 1
Clio: 1
Apia: 2
Papa: 2
Cire: 2
Tagan: 2
Moroto: 2
Grandli: 2
Tavu: 3
Carmo: 2
Baker: 5
Gerard: 5
Nana: 3
--------
Sub-Total: 39
Previous total: 331
Total: 370

Saritova has not yet received Lairs. Some Lairs will be added to Saritova, but not all communities on Saritova have space.

It was not possible to add Lairs to some of the existing guild communities due to space.

If, IF, if testing goes well on Blight, we will move Lairs to Live next week.

David Bowman

[Khoal]

[Y] and [B] are all i have to say. well, maybe a [:D] too.

[Rover]

Great news!

[LaughingOtter]

There are now Lairs in the following communities:

Toku: 2

Thank you very much, David![B][B][B][B][B]

Of course, now I have to decide who gets them.... [;)]

[dorrin]

*blinks*

ooooh........

wow.

thank you.

[Death-knell]

hehe....sounds great. Figures, I'm waiting on saritova and its last *G*

[Mirsathia]

LAIRGASM!

*digs gems furiously*


~Mirsathia

[Azure]

The new XP system is in on Blight now, and so far I like it allot. It feels like you are actually achieving something instead of plowing threw the levels without a thought. I went from level 1 to 6 making and applying about 30 Imbued Bars to my lair. A single unit applied at level 3 was worth 311xp to give you an idea. So far I am not disappointed in the least, good job!

Only down side today was that in this patch the crystal working machines didn't work, as they do notregister as valid machines when making anything that needs crystal working.

[edit] Another thing I wanted to add is that all dragonlair chambers take a lot less total units with this patch. So it will not take as long to build an entire lair. One stratagy to note which I would suggest is to build all of your tunnles first to go up in levels, as all tunnles will be T1 and wont take a lot of units, then work on some T2 chambers and so on.

[Vignar]

Great news!

You saved a bunch of money...nevermind.

[Pharcellus]

Next week?

I cannot see how there has possibly been enough testing for it to go live next week.

[imported_Denrath]

Next week?

I cannot see how there has possibly been enough testing for it to go live next week.

They were tested on Genesis for a while before being pushed to blight. If everything went through as extensive testing internally as these did, nothing would need month long stints on Blight.

Also, just because they will be on Live doesnt mean we will start bidding/building right away. There will still be a week before bidding, and a week for auctions. That comes down to an extra 2 weeks of testing if needed [:)]

[Pharcellus]

I don't know about you, but I have no idea how extensive the testing was on Genesis. In general, developers testing their own stuff tends to not catch a majority of the issues, bugs, and problems inherent in complex software systems. People are just going to do things developers never expected or anticipated, and some of those are going to be show-stoppers.

For quite a few people, this is their last chance to get it right. If they blow it, it's going to get very ugly.

Be SURE to do enough testing, David. Do NOT push this out to Live before it is ready.

I still would ask that you give us who want to help test some way to buy lairs on Blight and let us run through the paces for at least a week before you let it go to Live.

[Illi]

I would tend to agree that we need to have some way to help test on Blight. As it stands you still need 999s998c to even PURCHASE a lair on Blight. My Blight version of my Dragon has a whopping 107s, so I'd like to see the prices set low strictly because it's Blight, and we could test.

[Nisse]

This is so exciting!

[Antonath]

Saritova has not yet received Lairs. Some Lairs will be added to Saritova, but not all communities on Saritova have space.

I know there's space for lairs in Imago - loads of space as we back up against th mountain. Same with Madaba and several others.

I'll hold off on the lairgasm until I see what lairs Saritova gets...

Antonath

[imported_Denrath]

I don't know about you, but I have no idea how extensive the testing was on Genesis. In general, developers testing their own stuff tends to not catch a majority of the issues, bugs, and problems inherent in complex software systems. People are just going to do things developers never expected or anticipated, and some of those are going to be show-stoppers.

I can only go by what the devs said...and they claimed they were doing lots of testing. There was a span of months where David or some other dev said "I tested this part of lairs today" or "I tested the construction interface" which leads me to believe that they did a lot of testing (true to what they said they would do before releasing to Blight).

I completely agree though that people looking over their own work will miss things. That is why at work, when I can, I have someone dummy-check me. I may know what I was talking about or thinking, but the person on the other end may not. But to only have a small handfull of people on Blight test (due to how the 1 plot/lair thing is set up and prices) would not be a whole lot better. Show stopping bugs even slip through then.

[Goriax]

Presumably they havepeople doing QA in-house. I really hope they rely primarily on in-house people for QA. If Blight is their sole source of QA we are in trouble.

That said, this does seem suddenly rushed considering how slow and deliberate things have been up to this point. Maybe they really are hoping to have lairs live by GenCon. If so, I hope they remember the mess they had at launch when they tried to push things (and for a better reason too).

Last I checked, Drakul was pretty unfinished (I hope it was anyway -- I hope that isn't it's final state with no resources that I've seen and very few monster spawns). Otherwise it'll be very hard to evaluate how desireable a lair there will be. I'll most likely discount anything on that island if I have to make a choice with it still in it's current state.

I was expecting some sort of auction like the biped plot auction right after the merge. I'd hope it wouldlast at least aweek. If there isn't an auction then I better make sure I'm RIGHT THERE when the server comes back up next Tuesday. It'll be an Oklahoma land rush.

[imported_Lycaunoss]

If, IF, if testing goes well on Blight, we will move Lairs to Live next week.

David Bowman

Take notice that there arethree ifs in that last line. If David feels compelled to use three of them then I think that if there's something he's not happy with it won't go live.

IMHO no matter how much testing is done... in house, out house, whatever it won't be perfect. At some point they will have to release it to the general populace and at that point we will get to use it and find out the problems that still exist.

edit: Doh! Thanks PJ [;)]

[PJ]

Actually there were 3 if's [:P]

[Goriax]

[img]/Web/Themes/Generic/images/icon-quote.gif[/img]David Bowman wrote:
If, IF, if testing goes well on Blight, we will move Lairs to Live next week.

David Bowman


Take notice that there arethree ifs in that last line. If David feels compelled to use three of them then I think that if there's something he's not happy with it won't go live.

IMHO no matter how much testing is done... in house, out house, whatever it won't be perfect. At some point they will have to release it to the general populace and at that point we will get to use it and find out the problems that still exist.

edit: Doh! Thanks PJ [img]/Web//emoticons/emotion-5.gif[/img]

I think it has more to do with the fact that if he DIDN'T have them, and if anything at all happened to make them want to delay the release, people would be up in arms over "broken promises" again. People tend to take any casual utterance by a dev as a solumn promise written in blood. He needs -- and in fact everyone who wants the release to go smoothly needs -- them to have some wiggle room in case something unexpected and unpleasant happens.