If there’s one thing that MMO gamers all agree on, it’s the short list of things we almost universally hate: cheaters, gold (or equivalent currency) farmers searching for your credit card, and bugs. Oh, the dreaded bugs. They do so much damage to your gameplay experience, why doesn’t the company just fix them? The inimitable Scott Jennings tackles this question in his latest column on game design, explaining that the main reason bugs don’t get fixed faster is because doing so is much harder than it seems.
As he points out, the architecture of an MMO is a tricky thing at the best of times, frequently only held together with the coded equivalent of a wing and a prayer. Some bugs are so massively detrimental to the game that they get to jump to the head of the class, but others are annoying and bad but not at the highest priority. Or — as sometimes happens despite everyone’s best efforts — fixing the bug would require doing so much damage to the rest of the game that it’s better to work around it. If you’re wondering why your favorite company hasn’t fixed a much-hated bug, this article should prove an interesting read.
Filed under: Bugs, Culture, Game mechanics, MMO industry, Opinion
Scott Jennings discusses fixing bugs in live games originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted on November 12th, 2009 at 1:00pm by Eliot Lefebvre
Filed Under: bug-fixes, bugs, culture, game-mechanics, lum-the-mad, mmo-industry, opinion, scott-jennings
Mythic developers just fixed a major bug that has been in Warhammer Online since launch and it’s having a big impact on players. Action points (AP) are the one-size-fits-all resource used to cast spells, perform damage attacks, and tank. Suffice to say, a change to the way AP works affects every class in the game. This bug fix makes it take a little longer for AP to regenerate as originally intended.
Many players claim that the time-to-kill in beta was much higher than it turned out at release, and while a dozen or more variables play a part in this (e.g., better gear, higher crit rates, newer strategies, etc.), AP regen can be counted among them. You see, after the game released game update 1.3.1 came out, players had a nearly limitless AP pool. In fact, AP regen potions were useless aside from getting a quick boost after sprinting. This led to many players getting in the habit of button-mashing their abilities without fearing a complete AP drain.
Now that the issue has been corrected, there’s been a bit of an outcry from players who have become accustomed to playing WAR not as intended for over a year. Mythic stresses that this change is for the better but will continue to monitor the situation and adjust accordingly. Check out Nate Levy’s developer diary for all the details.
Update: This bug was discovered in 1.3.1 but we are unsure of when it originally made its way into the game. We apologize for jumping to conclusions based on our own experiences.
Filed under: Fantasy, Patches, Warhammer Online, News items
Nate Levy explains WAR’s action point fix originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted on October 27th, 2009 at 7:00pm by Brooke Pilley
Filed Under: Bug, action-points, bug-fixes, dev-diary, mythic-entertainment, nate-levy, war, warhammer-online
