Unacceptable

[Northwind]

I repeat... We are all still here.

Yeap, I'm still here too.

But that doesn't stop me to rant from time to time and to point fingers when things are out of the line as it happens now with the spawn bug.

Come on, more than 1 year for a Bug to be under investigation without any significant breakthrough? Hardly believable.
More likely it had a very low priority and no one was seriously looking into it at least till now.

And things have the potential to get worse if we recall that cenotaphs went on strike too. Maybe the things are related, maybe not.


@Raptress. The ticket to swap resources was merely a 1 minute thinking idea, far from perfect but still doable for several silos of resources.
Here is another 1 minute thinking idea: NPC merchant that is swapping "same tier" resource with the one that is currently missing, eh?
Radiant wisps doesn't spawn. Setup an NPC that is accepting travertine/adamantium/etc and will trade back the missing resource.
Not perfect at all, still could be acceptable by the desperate one

[Andrakhyn]

Come on, more than 1 year for a Bug to be under investigation without any significant breakthrough? Hardly believable.

I've expressed abject disbelief with some of the things they've told us in other threads about certain things being "impossible" to do which would in truth be extremely simple.

Can't copy information from one database table to another? Please....

And levelling another hatchling I've found and reported a lot of bugs over the past week. The responses to a few those bug reports have left me positively aghast.

I'm now reasonably sure the dev team aren't what I'd call.... highly experienced programmers.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I can't perform brain surgery. Hold a steady note. Paint. Dance. etc. etc. Everyone has different skill sets.

A lot of improvements have been added to the game over the last couple of years so it's not like they're idiots. But I can believe that they've been unable to find the cause of this for over 12 months.

And if they are out of their depth with this problem maybe they should apply themselves to creating a band-aid solution.

Create a mechanism for a GM to manually trigger a spawn and have that repeat the respawn in that location every 10 minutes until the next reboot.

Not perfect but it would let players get on with things.

[Radier]

For those who are in utter disbelief a technical issue can take 8 months or more to resolve...

I work for a massive (25,000+ employees) company which offers services based on an SQL platform. Heavy, heavy database use. The services we provide are constantly plagued by technical issues - be they coding, configuration, etc. This is not abnormal. Its part of the industry.

To handle these problems we have a developer team of over a thousand people. Roll that number inside your skull for a minute. A thousand, versus Istaria's handful. Guess what? Sometimes it takes my company nearly a year to fix issues, too. You need to accept certain things take priority, i.e. issues with absolutely no fix at all versus those fixed with weekly maintenance. You also need to accept intermittent problems, such as spawns randomly breaking, are very difficult to troubleshoot and fix since you never know precisely when the next event happens.

You also need to accept the developers are human, with needs to satisfy outside of the game, and they can't devote every waking moment to fixing your spawn.

I realize having a broken game is frustrating but is this really a reason to attack the staff? They do a fine job for the limited resources and time they have!

P.S.: Want to know what I tell our international customer base when we have an extensive and complex issue? "We have no ETA but we're working on it!"

[LOVWYRM]

I totally agree with all you`ve said Radier.

And this goes for many other industries. All over the world.
Be it private or public.

All who say something else, I consider a bit ivory -tower.

[Northwind]

P.S.: Want to know what I tell our international customer base when we have an extensive and complex issue? "We have no ETA but we're working on it!"

And you keep telling them that for one year or more - yeah, right

I also work in a software development company and if we have "gamebreaking" bugs that doesn't get fixed within the SLA or in a agreed reasonable timeframe that is acceptable to both parties, we do lose the customer or even worse we get sued.

[Radier]

And you keep telling them that for one year or more - yeah, right

Actually we do. For minor issues, i.e. those that have temporary fixes or patched work arounds. Clients accept there are far more important problems to resolve and they let us do our job.

Also, when pressed for time, sometimes by customer responses may sound curt when they really aren't. Unless the developer response, literally, was "We're not helping you, go do something else!" then everyone needs to take a breath and chillax.

[velveeta]

i usta work an IT call center myself. unfortunately, rad, peeps only understand these types of things when they work with them every day. most peeps only see the problem, not the fix if any exist.

i think you have to spend some time on both sides of the fence to see which side is greener.

[Andrakhyn]

For minor issues, i.e. those that have temporary fixes or patched work arounds. Clients accept there are far more important problems to resolve and they let us do our job.

That doesn't apply here.

"Please go do something else until the next reboot and keep your fingers crossed it doesn't carry over to the next one" does not qualify as a "temporary fix" or "patched work around".

I haven't had too much trouble with this one yet. Just a named boss who refused to respawn one reboot which halted my progress for a bunch of dragon skill quests.

But given how disruptive it can be I imagine this is a very important problem for players. Can anyone name a problem they think is more important than this one? I've reported several dozen bugs over the past month but I wouldn't rank any of them ahead of this.

[aharttsx]

Really does irk me a bit to see how certain individuals just outright attack the devs when they are the ones trying to keep istaria alive for us to enjoy. I may not have been around nearly as long as some of the players here and post very very rarely, but i at least try to consider both sides before choosing a side, if i even do choose. IMO it is better to let them take their time in fixing the problem and do it right, rather than try to rush it and potentially miss something, just so people can get what they want because they want it NOW.

Yes, I understand that this is something that we all have to pay for and that it would be nice that since we DO pay for it, that we could do as we pleased in the game (of course as within the rules). But let's face it, things will not always go as planned, things will not always go our way, and we cannot always have what we want when we want it. This is something that most people should know and accept, whether they like it or not. It really does disgust me when people get bent all out of shape, verbally attacking others over something that really isn't that big a deal. Unless you're right there working with the team, it's impossible to know exactly what they're dealing with in trying to fix the situation.

How Amon made his post, well.. I don't see anything wrong with it. I may not like it, but to me its pretty much common sense. "If something isn't spawning where it should be, check other spawn points. If its there's nothing in any of the known spawn points, then you'll have to busy yourself with some other task until it can be properly fixed. It is a known issue that is being worked on, sorry for the inconvenience" To me he is just being clear and to the point about the situation. Would you rather have him be honest as he has been or would you rather have him lie about the progress and its ETA just so you can hear what you wanna here? I'll take option A kthnxbai.

There are soooo many things that one can occupy oneself with in istaria if one thing in particular isn't working right, and like someone else mentioned having multiple chars with different classes to work on in case of some problem came up that impeded progress on one char so they could do just that: find something else to do until the problem is fixed. Personally I see it better to find something else that's constructive to do with your character rather than to sit in NT twiddling your thumbs, or worse yet get on someone else because you cant do what you wanna do.

Yes it is a bit frustrating when you get your mind set on something and then can't work on it anymore because of a lingering game bug, but for me in particular I'm patient n I just deal with it. I realize that the dev team is human, and that they have other things in their lives they have to contend with such as their families and probably other jobs as well. And being human, they're not always gonna get something right the first, or the second or third, or even the tenth time around. For those of you attacking the devs about the bug, have you ever stopped to think about what it's like in their shoes? Having people raging at you for every little mistake to fix something that you or anyone else on your team isn't quite sure how to replicate, let alone fix yet? I don't know about you but I find it a lot more difficult to want to help someone who is impatient, rude, and demanding about something than someone who is a little more polite and relaxed about it. The only thing attacking the devs is accomplishing is making the job more stressful and aggravating for them. So those who are attacking the devs, ease up on them. They know it's a problem, and for this particular thing, they don't need you to remind them. Just chill and be happy they're trying to fix it. Give them time; we'll know when enough time is enough when the problem is fixed.

[lonewolf_kai]

The very fact that it isn't easily reproducible creates a lot of issues in addition to some other more technical hurdles the team has to contend with.

^ That right there should speak volumes to those that keep nagging about this. If you've had any sort of programming experience at all, from simple loop commands to complex NPC AI commands to even spawn points, you'd understand that one singular sentence about the inability to reproduce an error speaks volumes.

[Northwind]

The only thing that should speak volumes is the AGE of the bug.

Now, since you speak of programming experience, then allow me to ask what do you do when you find a bug that isn't easily reproducible? Do you try to find ways to make it reproducible, do you? Then you actually try to reproduce it, right?

Getting back to Istaria, we do have a Test server. And we do know that the bug is happening at reboot.
Have you seen that server being rebooted daily while the team was trying to spot this elusive old bug?
No?
Neither did I.
That should also speak volumes.

But what do I know?
Maybe there IS an internal, non-public, test server that is rebooted at least daily while the bug is being searched for.

We can only hope there is such server and the spawn issues are in the process of being ironed out.

[Veruliyam]

Genesis allowed is not! Is planet forbidden!

[velveeta]

d*mn you strait to h*ll, ver!!!

[lonewolf_kai]

And we do know that the bug is happening at reboot.

Hmm, I don't see anywhere in this thread where a dev has said the error is happening at reboot. The only thing I've seen from them is that it's not reproducible. If there is an error that is not being reproduced, it'd be like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. That much I can tell you in my limited programming experience.

@Veruliyam, You lost me there. Inside joke?

[Sslarn]

Someone is not a Trekkie.

[Veruliyam]

I think Genesis is a server the devs like to pound bugs on. It's internal and their own playground.

My quote is from The Search for Spock, and I was amused at how appropriate a response (in my own little world) it was to Northwind's last line in their post.

The Green Queen of Cheese's response was also satisfyingly amusing.

Perhaps I need to stencil another keyboard kill...

[lonewolf_kai]

Oh yeah, I remember that movie. It's been awhile.

[Blue Hasia]

genesis is a name of one of there internal test severs....that is if it is still around. i know of other server names also but that was maybe 5 6 years ago i knew of those servers.