Mabar Festival Is Back!

[Gnoshious]

I know over the years that we have seen problems with the different festivals.

But what seems to be needed is a better way of testing before the main event goes live. But when the event gets moved to the live system things seem to go wrong.

Someone earlier on the thread mentioned making the event available to VIP's (I'm not a VIP), but I like that kind of thinking. Why not give a test day to a group of players or VIP's a week or so before the main event is meant to begin.
This way the dev's get to see if things are working the way they should be and have time to fix it before the main launch date.
The dev's will be under less stress and players will not get upset. Players must expect issues during the test day, where feedback on things that seem to be problems should be welcomed.

[The_Human_Cypher]

I know over the years that we have seen problems with the different festivals.

But what seems to be needed is a better way of testing before the main event goes live. But when the event gets moved to the live system things seem to go wrong.

Someone earlier on the thread mentioned making the event available to VIP's (I'm not a VIP), but I like that kind of thinking. Why not give a test day to a group of players or VIP's a week or so before the main event is meant to begin.
This way the dev's get to see if things are working the way they should be and have time to fix it before the main launch date.
The dev's will be under less stress and players will not get upset. Players must expect issues during the test day, where feedback on things that seem to be problems should be welcomed.

I was thinking something very similar along these lines even before I viewed this thread. If releases can't be properly tested on the Lamannia server before being released on the live servers, then testing should take place on the live servers. VIPs or other select players could have access to events for several days a week or two weeks in advance and then many of these kinds of bugs could be worked out more effectively. Please, Turbine, read this thread and take our advice.

[coban]

has anyone seen an eta on mabar. I heard today but that is about it.

[Puoinaq]

Because nothing says "I know how things work here" like a week's worth of observation. . .

Way to prove my point, Mr. has disabled reputation. There are community approved trolls here, plenty of them.

Just try posting statistics or game data collection to prove a point and see what happens. The trolls win, every time.

[LrdSlvrhnd]

I would just really appreciate if the event could be prolonged for the duration of this downtime.

They've already said they would, earlier in the thread.

I can see how it could be difficult making it available only for VIPs (since anyone can access Delera's Graveyard). The best they could do is make the Graveyard a part of the pack, which they open for Mabar, and have an event for VIP/people who purchased Delera's (Oh, wait, that's pretty much EVERYONE, isn't it...)

Cove would be easy, just make the transport guy VIP-flagged. But unless they moved Mabar to its own area, that wouldn't work so well here. (I'm sure the people who're actually trying to do the quests wouldn't mind that...) (I actually wouldn't mind that, either. Have a new "older" part of Delera's that's getting all the swarms of undead...)

[Calleia]

For God's sake, Turbine, don't touch the launcher. Generally, try not to touch anything that is not broken.

agree!

[Nitesco]

What I loved about Crystal Cove is that once I learned it inside out, I could grab a couple of gimps and get a completion. With Mabar, if the lag doesn't freeze the instance completely for me, I get grouped with a bunch of clueless idiots who can't or won't follow simple instructions. It's a matter of luck whether I get a favorable outcome in Mabar, I can literally spend hours there and still be no closer to my goal than when I started.

[Pantronic]

They've already said they would, earlier in the thread.

I can see how it could be difficult making it available only for VIPs (since anyone can access Delera's Graveyard). The best they could do is make the Graveyard a part of the pack, which they open for Mabar, and have an event for VIP/people who purchased Delera's (Oh, wait, that's pretty much EVERYONE, isn't it...)

Cove would be easy, just make the transport guy VIP-flagged. But unless they moved Mabar to its own area, that wouldn't work so well here. (I'm sure the people who're actually trying to do the quests wouldn't mind that...) (I actually wouldn't mind that, either. Have a new "older" part of Delera's that's getting all the swarms of undead...)

Restricting a Mabar "test day" to VIPs would just be silly and a waste of time. Last year, I believe, there was a "sneak preview" about a week before the official event and it was open to everybody. (Unless I hallucinated it.) :D They should have done it this year for sure.

[TrenchcoatJesus]

Funny thing is I remember a post by a long-time player (I want to say Memnir but I'm not 100% certain) about how there was no mabar preview this year and how, historically, that'd be a huge mistake as it gives the devs no time to work out any kinks before the big event goes live for real.

It's amazing how much insight can be gleaned from an active community and yet how reluctant turbine is to do so.

I'm finding fewer reasons to keep logging in at all, and things like this happening aren't just (for me) an inconvenience, they're a steady trend of developer follies which could have easily been avoided by (gasp) listening to the people that pay them money to play their game.

And I'm not even talking about crazy stuff like balance issues or tricky mechanics, in this case I'm talking about the outrageous idea of previewing an event before it goes live so you don't have to shut the whole thing down. It's just plain disappointing.

-TcJ

[Jedthered]

The devs are techs. They are not upper managment. Any Tech know that any major problems are caused mostly by upper managment with pharses like, "thats not in the budget", or "That's not on our action item list". So lets put any blame where it prolly belongs - squarly on the hands and heads of any managment that does not listen to the wize words of thier techs.
Dev, programers, and net techs: Keep you chins up and please take every opertunity yuo can get to say to them, "I told you this was a concern"

[Billoferous]

VIPs or other select players could have access to events for several days a week or two weeks in advance and then many of these kinds of bugs could be worked out more effectively.

If Turbine can selectively choose people to test events and Updates before they officially go live, why not have the Turbine folk themselves be the guinea pigs?

[bagpiper]

I know over the years that we have seen problems with the different festivals.

But what seems to be needed is a better way of testing before the main event goes live. But when the event gets moved to the live system things seem to go wrong.

Someone earlier on the thread mentioned making the event available to VIP's (I'm not a VIP), but I like that kind of thinking. Why not give a test day to a group of players or VIP's a week or so before the main event is meant to begin.
This way the dev's get to see if things are working the way they should be and have time to fix it before the main launch date.
The dev's will be under less stress and players will not get upset. Players must expect issues during the test day, where feedback on things that seem to be problems should be welcomed.

As someone who's worked on finding programing bugs I can tell you that finding the amount of bugs Turbine has to deal with is going to take a hell of a lot longer. At this point they need to assign bugs/exploits to groups of people and tell them to go forth and reproduce/exploit taking 'detailed' (key word here) notes and have a way of looking at all the lines of code that had anything to do with those people at the time they were doing their thing. The other thing they need to do is to completely stop making new content altogether until they can get a significant amount of the problems fixed, every time the add new content they compound the problem and this is why we have a game that has had bugs left unfixed for years.
I know I know time to get your pix-elated rotten tomatoes and throw them at me, how dare I tell turbine to stop catering to the people who spend 8+ hours a day every day playing the game by making new content to keep their interest. Then again maybe parents could start doing something crazy like oh say sending their kids outside to play again, and adults who play the game excessively could maybe fix their marriages? Video games were never meant to replace real life anyway, you still need real face to face interaction in your leisure time as well as physical activity.

Anyway to the person I quoted, I'm not disagreeing with you I'm just saying it will take longer than a week (probably months of hard core testing and retesting) but other than that I agree they should let a large mass of gamers go to work finding and exploiting bugs but then they have to actually fix the problem.

[wildbynature]

The devs are techs. They are not upper managment. Any Tech know that any major problems are caused mostly by upper managment with pharses like, "thats not in the budget", or "That's not on our action item list". So lets put any blame where it prolly belongs - squarly on the hands and heads of any managment that does not listen to the wize words of thier techs.
Dev, programers, and net techs: Keep you chins up and please take every opertunity yuo can get to say to them, "I told you this was a concern"

^^^this

Devs, please say "I told you so" as often as possible

[Deadlock]

My suspicions were first aroused when I went to login ....

http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/1055/mabarfinal.png

[AmiSouthpaw]

The devs are techs. They are not upper managment. Any Tech know that any major problems are caused mostly by upper managment with pharses like, "thats not in the budget", or "That's not on our action item list". So lets put any blame where it prolly belongs - squarly on the hands and heads of any managment that does not listen to the wize words of thier techs.
Dev, programers, and net techs: Keep you chins up and please take every opertunity yuo can get to say to them, "I told you this was a concern"

I ALWAYS blame the 'bigwigs' as the techs always get the **** storm it seems and you have to admit it is the techs that are working harder and longer figuring it all out while the higher ups are sitting back in comfy chairs making decisions telling the underlings what to do...omg just had a thought of a in game version it would be like a Hireling being in charge of the players..... -.-

The point is that they have their hands full stressing to get us the festival back so I am not to worried about it all i know is that it is funny that its harder to get a group together to do anything during down time and the first thing said is not hi howdy or the like but.....do you know anything about Mabar like when it will be back up? So i said yes I am a honorary member of the Kobold Union and we are on strike and are not cooperating till we get a representative in the event :D

[gravisrs]

It should be endless night for devs..

[painkiller3]

As someone who's worked on finding programing bugs I can tell you that finding the amount of bugs Turbine has to deal with is going to take a hell of a lot longer.....

as someone who works on finding programming bugs everyday, *could* take a hell of a lot longer but not necessarily. if the problem is isolated to mabar (and replicitable on their test server) that's a lot of stuff they don't have to wade through

good luck devs, although if they were smart they wouldn't read this negative-energy message board...if you do peace and love

[karl_k0ch]

My suspicions were first aroused when I went to login ....

+1!

/thread.


It should be endless night for devs..

lol. :)

[Bzzzt]

It should be endless night for devs..

Nawh, rather then pulling an all nighter to clean up this issue, they probably went home and slept on it.

[Fixitosis]

How about a nice Loot Boost while we wait? :D

[Twin-Sabres]

Time to grind Favor.

[MrkGrismer]

While I was saddened by the postponement, and disheartened by no ETA on when it will be fixed it did lead to an interesting (for me) observation.

I hit my airship and got off at House J and BAM! The lagmonster hit me immediately. At first I thought, "Oh, they must have got Mabar going." but no. Apparently the only reason for the immense amount of lag was the raw number of people standing around in the instance.

That's right, they weren't actually doing anything, no firewalls, no ice storms, no nothing of the kind. Just a crapload of characters standing around just outside the entrance to Delera's and apparently that can cause exceptional lag.

While I admit that a one-person test-case is all that is and maybe the observation is off base I would suspect that if turbine reduced the number of people in House J (and the Delera's instances) needed before spawning another instance it might go a long way toward reducing the amount of lag. Maybe, just maybe.

[Phaeton_Seraph]

We are still working on a resolution for the issues that caused Mabar to be postponed, and the event will not be opening tonight. We'll have more information as soon as possible.

You started the thread just after 7am, this post was around 5 pm, but neither post really contained any information, other than "it's down, it's still down, and not tonight."


Can we get more information please?

What did happen?
I heard something about Kobolds, that weren't undead. A description of what you're facing can posibly make for a more sympathetic consumer.


What's being done?
If you guys are working around the clock,that would console us a bit. Any indication that makes users believe that they're being looked after will make them less disgruntled.


Has any progress been made at all?
10 hours with no update, and finally the update is "not tonight dear" is disheartening. Progress is being made, we're banging our heads against a wall, we have high/low confidence at this moment... All things that we may or may not like to hear, but will help manage the expectations of the crowd loitering about in House J.


How about something to soothe the masses?
The current sales page looks funny. Usually the coupon of the week has a different formatting. Perhaps they could fix that so it's its normal visible self, and give a better coupon, a more powerful draught of midnight, or a bigger pack (e.g. if it's a single, make it an x5). And put the Night trader in if he's not borked, some of us still have collectables from last year, and the Draughts should provide more....
http://www.ddo.com/ddostoresale

[ImanCarrot]

Should have called it the FUBAR festival.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_slang_terms

[JOTMON]

While I was saddened by the postponement, and disheartened by no ETA on when it will be fixed it did lead to an interesting (for me) observation.

I hit my airship and got off at House J and BAM! The lagmonster hit me immediately. At first I thought, "Oh, they must have got Mabar going." but no. Apparently the only reason for the immense amount of lag was the raw number of people standing around in the instance.

That's right, they weren't actually doing anything, no firewalls, no ice storms, no nothing of the kind. Just a crapload of characters standing around just outside the entrance to Delera's and apparently that can cause exceptional lag.

While I admit that a one-person test-case is all that is and maybe the observation is off base I would suspect that if turbine reduced the number of people in House J (and the Delera's instances) needed before spawning another instance it might go a long way toward reducing the amount of lag. Maybe, just maybe.

I found this surprising as well significant lag in House J as people were standing around trying to get to the Mabar event that most didn't even realize was down and out.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

One thing I have found about the forums for almost any game, is that they are filled with the critics. The people that like the game and don't feel like complaining about it just don't bother to post. By nature the posts that you see in these forums are far more negative than the feelings of the overall game population. Heck, you can probably pinpoint most of the criticism to a dozen or so very active and vocal critics.

It is called the "vocal minority" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VocalMinority

[Manualshift]

I've read and observed this rule in sales staffs. 20% of your sales staff will always do 80% of your sales. But as I've gotten older, I've realized this rule applies to great many more things in this world. From dealing with companies, Apple in particular, i see it applies to management of companies as well. Apple figured out if you made a product that does NOT have your customer constantly asking what moron designed the product you bought, people would pay more for it and be happy to do so. Apple's iPod didn't do anything other mp3 player's didn't do, it just did it better. When you used an iPod, you said, "now that's how an mp3 player should work". They were probably selling 80% of the mp3 players out there and charging more for them.

Turbine's management on the other hand, currently seems to be operating in the 80% of that sales staff generating only 20% of the sales. The business model is borked and will continue to be until this game can generate enough revenue to turn a nice profit on a day to day basis that it doesn't need updates to be profitable. When i look at the DDO store, there is very little in it that i cant get free in the game. Now im not saying those things should stop being able to earned in game, what im saying is the store needs better offerings. I've already bought all the packs and races and classes, some inventory slots.......as a premium player after buying all that, i still have 11k plus points in the store that DDO cant figure out how to get me to spend. I'd love to have armor kits, appearance kits and anything else DDO needs to think of to sell me i don't yet even know i want. Armor kits work so stupidly in this game, i don't buy them. Even though I would be happy to spend money on them if they worked under a better model. There are many things besides updates i would buy if Turbine offered them. But here is where Turbine has failed epically. While i was spending money on the cosmetic items(not pets, those are just stupid) and anything else they can think of, they could concentrate on bugs.

Since they just hired a designer from the morrowwind game, i want a house. maybe it would work like the airship(no buffs) and i could show off all my armor, maybe trophies i've earned in game. for 1000 turbine points i could have a pool table and my guildies and i could play pool. come on turbine, you need to find more ways for me to spend money and get things ill actually use and want.

Bottomline, if your business model requires you to release updates(and the bugs that always follow) to meet your numbers, then you are failing. period.

[DarkForte]

as someone who works on finding programming bugs everyday, *could* take a hell of a lot longer but not necessarily. if the problem is isolated to mabar (and replicitable on their test server) that's a lot of stuff they don't have to wade through
If it were reproducible on their test server, it wouldn't have gone live. I'd venture the problem is exactly that it's live-specific.

Also, I think a loot boost/XP boost is in order to give the people who booked offtime for the event something special in-game.

[Siftrant]

If it were reproducible on their test server, it wouldn't have gone live. I'd venture the problem is exactly that it's live-specific.

Also, I think a loot boost/XP boost is in order to give the people who booked offtime for the event something special in-game.

If Turbine's development group has any kind of mature process there shouldn't be any significant difference between their test server and their live server.

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

We are looking at a potential fix right now.

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

If Turbine's development group has any kind of mature process there shouldn't be any significant difference between their test server and their live server.

Except load. Even automation does not replicate real load, and settings that can happen because of load.

Trust me this infuriates me more than any of you.

[GLand_Clickyclack]

Except load. Even automation does not replicate real load, and settings that can happen because of load.

Trust me this infuriates me more than any of you.

Yay a +1 to MajMal for this ^^^^^

[9Crows]

Except load. Even automation does not replicate real load, and settings that can happen because of load.

Trust me this infuriates me more than any of you.

i completly believe you.... thats your job .. to us its just a game we play :)

[kauetomaz]

Except load. Even automation does not replicate real load, and settings that can happen because of load.

Trust me this infuriates me more than any of you.

now im normally the first to raise the pitchforks and torches but for the first time i actually see some real passion, now let us turn the anger around and turn it into motivation for both me and you lot so u can fix some bugs and i can get some work done while u do urs ^^

[HatsuharuZ]

Except load. Even automation does not replicate real load, and settings that can happen because of load.

Trust me this infuriates me more than any of you.

GO MAJ!

*Mr. Demon kitty (MajMal) is glomped by a squad of succubus cheerleaders*

[gphysalis]

Can't you just retype kobolds as undead and call it WAI?

[MysticElaine]

Keep up the good work. As much as I am disappointed that it hasn't started yet, I am also kind of glad as I am able to get last minute things done that I was going to have to not do Mabar to get done. Besides, we will still get the same amount of time when it goes live :)

I would rather all bugs be taken care of now then in the middle of the event...that annoys me more ;) Thanks for the update and keep your coffee boy busy today :p

[Siftrant]

Except load. Even automation does not replicate real load, and settings that can happen because of load.

Trust me this infuriates me more than any of you.

I like you Mal I do. I just have to point out that Turbine has been around long-enough and should know by now that the load on their live servers means that their test servers aren't sufficient for actual quality control/assurance. A mature process would have focused on solving this apparently known and consistent problem which prevents the company from looking like it has any idea what it is doing as far as releasing software.

[wayreth602]

We are looking at a potential fix right now.

Thanks for the update Maj.

[I_Bob]

Yay a +1 to MajMal for this ^^^^^

/signed

[jjflanigan]

I like you Mal I do. I just have to point out that Turbine has been around long-enough and should know by now that the load on their live servers means that their test servers aren't sufficient for actual quality control/assurance. A mature process would have focused on solving this apparently known and consistent problem which prevents the company from looking like it has any idea what it is doing as far as releasing software.

It is completely impossible to fully represent the load of a production server using any type of automation or testing tool, it just cannot be done.

Unless you feel that they should hire thousands of people for a day or two each update cycle to load test, there's nothing that development maturity would do to resolve the issue.

It's a problem every single software development team has issues with, and will continue to have issues with for the foreseeable future. It stinks, it makes developers want to pull their hair out, but it's a fact of life that has to be dealt with as best as possible.

-JJ

[crazycaren]

We are looking at a potential fix right now.

Good news. See you after work.

Perhaps there could be a thread no one else can reply too so these updates are a little easier to find. :)

[Andoris]

If Turbine's development group has any kind of mature process there shouldn't be any significant difference between their test server and their live server.

This statement (no offence to Siftrant) is a prime example of the difference between peoples expectations around software development and the reality. Reality is that when you are working with a highly complex code base (which DDO classifies as) and large diverse infrastructure (multiple servers, switches, storage, etc.) it is nearly impossible to ensure that there is not a significant difference between test and live environments. Remember guys, they are not coding a small flash game or an app for your phone. The size and complexity of the application (ddo) is best compared with enterprise level ERP and CRM applications.

I have managed multiple global ERP and CRM implementations for Fortune 50 companies. These companies spend millions on ensuring that changes are tested, environments are as close to identical as possible. They do that because if a change brings down a system the cost is calculated in minutes. Even with they level of focus, surprises make it into production, because it is impossible to fully recreate a production environment without being in production. Even if you assume that every configuration is the same (which is very difficult to the point of being cost prohibitive and nearly impossible even with unlimited resources) the ecosystem is going to be different (Higher and different type of load, different infrastructure design to support, integrations/middleware, data base tuning and configuration, etc) all of which can cause weird results when dealing with code of this complexity.

Please keep in mind that it is highly unlikely that Turbine has the resources to support the testing level of a multi-billion dollar company (and even with those there woulds still be issues), and that over the years the application (ddo) has increased exponentially in complexity (remember this application is over 6 years old, and has constantly been modified and changed by many different developers, many of which are no longer part of the team). Errors and issues like this will arise, likely in greater frequency due to the age and complexity of the code base.

Please give the Turbine team a break. They are busting their butts to get this fixed. These issues are not due to incompetence, laziness, or inattention -- these issues are byproduct of the richness, complexity, and size of DDO.

Thank you, Team Turbine, for your hard work in trying to get this issue resolved.

-Andoris

[Jerren]

Except load. Even automation does not replicate real load, and settings that can happen because of load.

Trust me this infuriates me more than any of you.

Are you seriously trying to say that this is a load issue? Hmph...may as well blame it on the memory leak, hahahahah.

[sheintao]

Perhaps there could be a thread no one else can reply too so these updates are a little easier to find. :)

This.

[MysticElaine]

Good news. See you after work.

Perhaps there could be a thread no one else can reply too so these updates are a little easier to find. :)

It is called the Dev Tracker...takes you straight to their posts :D

[FuzzyDuck81]

Can't you just retype kobolds as undead and call it WAI?

Even after they've died, kobolds still hate you! :)

[twindaddy53]

just hope that the ca post an eta is all i want to know with countless other people. I know they are doing there best to fix the issue personally didt see and issue i was inside killig giant skellies when it went off line

[MrkGrismer]

Even after they've died, kobolds still hate you! :)

... and like many mobs in the game, frequently say so (even after their bodies have been completely consumed by the microscopic organisms that seem much more rampant in videogames than in real life).

[bagpiper]

as someone who works on finding programming bugs everyday, *could* take a hell of a lot longer but not necessarily. if the problem is isolated to mabar (and replicitable on their test server) that's a lot of stuff they don't have to wade through

good luck devs, although if they were smart they wouldn't read this negative-energy message board...if you do peace and love

I wasn't referring to just the problems with mabar, I was also referring to the endless list of other problems some of which have been there since the beta and still haven't been fixed. However in the case of mabar and other festivities it shouldn't be to much of a problem once they have it working to keep it working, if the festivity stays the same and they just change the rewards or something then the game play portion should remain unchanged from year to year.

[Zeklijan]

I've read and observed this rule in sales staffs. 20% of your sales staff will always do 80% of your sales. But as I've gotten older, I've realized this rule applies to great many more things in this world. From dealing with companies, Apple in particular, i see it applies to management of companies as well. Apple figured out if you made a product that does NOT have your customer constantly asking what moron designed the product you bought, people would pay more for it and be happy to do so. Apple's iPod didn't do anything other mp3 player's didn't do, it just did it better. When you used an iPod, you said, "now that's how an mp3 player should work". They were probably selling 80% of the mp3 players out there and charging more for them.

Turbine's management on the other hand, currently seems to be operating in the 80% of that sales staff generating only 20% of the sales. The business model is borked and will continue to be until this game can generate enough revenue to turn a nice profit on a day to day basis that it doesn't need updates to be profitable. When i look at the DDO store, there is very little in it that i cant get free in the game. Now im not saying those things should stop being able to earned in game, what im saying is the store needs better offerings. I've already bought all the packs and races and classes, some inventory slots.......as a premium player after buying all that, i still have 11k plus points in the store that DDO cant figure out how to get me to spend. I'd love to have armor kits, appearance kits and anything else DDO needs to think of to sell me i don't yet even know i want. Armor kits work so stupidly in this game, i don't buy them. Even though I would be happy to spend money on them if they worked under a better model. There are many things besides updates i would buy if Turbine offered them. But here is where Turbine has failed epically. While i was spending money on the cosmetic items(not pets, those are just stupid) and anything else they can think of, they could concentrate on bugs.

Since they just hired a designer from the morrowwind game, i want a house. maybe it would work like the airship(no buffs) and i could show off all my armor, maybe trophies i've earned in game. for 1000 turbine points i could have a pool table and my guildies and i could play pool. come on turbine, you need to find more ways for me to spend money and get things ill actually use and want.

Bottomline, if your business model requires you to release updates(and the bugs that always follow) to meet your numbers, then you are failing. period.

This illustrates very well what I think as well, ofc I couldn't go as far as you did with the rules and all.

Let's imagine something like all players can reach level 12 but cannot increase further unless they are VIP. That way forcing in VIP would create a stable income into the game and would reduce the stress to develop new content, that new time can now be spent elsewhere, such as bug fixing. Which would be very satisfying for players (let's admit the master things broken list is huge and doesnt hold every bug still) AND it would increase the game quality. If players felt the game they play is awesome and be able to say 'This is how a MMO should be' they'd be willing to pay more for it.

Instead right now we got a game with so many broken things it puts you off from playing, and makes you look elsewhere for other games. People are talking, neverwinter nights online, elder scrolls online, several other games.. people wouldn't look elsewhere if they were satisfied with DDO to begin with.

[notte.oscura]

It is completely impossible to fully represent the load of a production server using any type of automation or testing tool, it just cannot be done.
That's what a 1-day sneek-peek is for: spot bugs related to load (mostly, every other condition should be replicable).

I don't have statistics to decide if the sneek-peek should be only for vips or for everyone, but still... better to tell it's a "1-day preview", then fix the few bugs (if they are more than few there's a problem with testing done before), and happily release the event for real.

[My2Cents]

Thanks for keeping this post updated, Maj!

That's part of the nature of complex systems. Personally, I think most peoples expectations of perfection are way too high - if they understood all that's going on under the hood and the human realities of supporting such complexity, their head would probably explode.


Except load. Even automation does not replicate real load, and settings that can happen because of load.

Trust me this infuriates me more than any of you.

[TrenchcoatJesus]

This statement (no offence to Siftrant) is a prime example of the difference between peoples expectations around software development and the reality. Reality is that when you are working with a highly complex code base (which DDO classifies as) and large diverse infrastructure (multiple servers, switches, storage, etc.) it is nearly impossible to ensure that there is not a significant difference between test and live environments. Remember guys, they are not coding a small flash game or an app for your phone. The size and complexity of the application (ddo) is best compared with enterprise level ERP and CRM applications.

I have managed multiple global ERP and CRM implementations for Fortune 50 companies. These companies spend millions on ensuring that changes are tested, environments are as close to identical as possible. They do that because if a change brings down a system the cost is calculated in minutes. Even with they level of focus, surprises make it into production, because it is impossible to fully recreate a production environment without being in production. Even if you assume that every configuration is the same (which is very difficult to the point of being cost prohibitive and nearly impossible even with unlimited resources) the ecosystem is going to be different (Higher and different type of load, different infrastructure design to support, integrations/middleware, data base tuning and configuration, etc) all of which can cause weird results when dealing with code of this complexity.

Please keep in mind that it is highly unlikely that Turbine has the resources to support the testing level of a multi-billion dollar company (and even with those there woulds still be issues), and that over the years the application (ddo) has increased exponentially in complexity (remember this application is over 6 years old, and has constantly been modified and changed by many different developers, many of which are no longer part of the team). Errors and issues like this will arise, likely in greater frequency due to the age and complexity of the code base.

Please give the Turbine team a break. They are busting their butts to get this fixed. These issues are not due to incompetence, laziness, or inattention -- these issues are byproduct of the richness, complexity, and size of DDO.

Thank you, Team Turbine, for your hard work in trying to get this issue resolved.

-Andoris

While I agree with everything you had said, it doesn't change the fact that a preview would have been an incredibly good idea. Since you can't fully test something unless it goes on the live server... then test it on the live server. A week or more early. Catch things earlier than the last minute and minimize the impact of game-crippling bugs.

It's not as if it's never been done before, it just wasn't done this year.

The why, and whoever is responsible for that why, shakes my faith in Turbine. Well, shakes isn't accurate, it's been on the rocks since the decreased quality since MotU, but it certainly isn't helping.

You have to understand my criticism isn't from a standpoint of saying "you should do better" because logically, everyone on all sides wants that. My criticism comes from the standpoint of "why aren't you giving yourselves every opportunity to test things and preview them before patching them live?" which extends not only to this event, but virtually any new content.

Not only do I hear about how pointless Lamannia feels at times because reported bugs there still make it to live, but I feel in general that navigating the bugs and inconsistencies of the game is as much part of the mechanics as skills and feats. When it's that second nature, something in the development process is flawed.

-TcJ

[MysticElaine]

I wasn't referring to just the problems with mabar, I was also referring to the endless list of other problems some of which have been there since the beta and still haven't been fixed. However in the case of mabar and other festivities it shouldn't be to much of a problem once they have it working to keep it working, if the festivity stays the same and they just change the rewards or something then the game play portion should remain unchanged from year to year.

Except this year they completely changed how they are doing Mabar...different instances based on level, more creatures, and updated epic rewards

[Ice-Cold]

Come on people this is getting ridicules. Please stop the whining and crying over the delay. Let the team do their job and get it fixed. I come on here to check for updates by the team and have to scroll through pages of posts to find any real information. No one ****ed in your Wheaties so suck it up and wait. Criticizing everything does not help the process of getting the event up and running.

[wisbang]

Except load. Even automation does not replicate real load, and settings that can happen because of load.

Trust me this infuriates me more than any of you.

I totally understand where you are coming from. I have been in the IT industry for 20 years and don't know how many times I have see a program work on one computer/server and trash on the next, while following the same instructions.

[notte.oscura]

Please give the Turbine team a break. They are busting their butts to get this fixed. These issues are not due to incompetence, laziness, or inattention -- these issues are byproduct of the richness, complexity, and size of DDO.

I agree with everything but not on this one.

If you work on a complex reality like DDO and you are responsible for something, you are not the just-graduated John Doe, so it's expected from you to find reliable solutions. Results (should??) count.

Example (as I already said, but I'm sure many others did before me): a short (1-day?) preview on live.

[wisbang]

Come on people this is getting ridicules. Please stop the whining and crying over the delay. Let the team do their job and get it fixed. I come on here to check for updates by the team and have to scroll through pages of posts to find any real information. No one ****ed in your Wheaties so suck it up and wait. Criticizing everything does not help the process of getting the event up and running.

I agree. Sometimes I wish there where read only posts.

[Ague]

We are looking at a potential fix right now.

Any ball park figure on an ETA? Provided the potential fix turns out to be a solid fix:cool:...

[Ague]

I come on here to check for updates by the team and have to scroll through pages of posts to find any real information.

Just use the Dev Tracker link up top. That's normally how I keep up on the solid info. I only really troll if the servers are down or on my phone...

[llyrnionfor]

Except load. Even automation does not replicate real load, and settings that can happen because of load.


Ergo, when under heavy load, DDO's engine turns undead into CR0 kobolds.

Any volunteers to organize "Abbot's Happy Hour"? The event whereupon DDO players attempt a massive simultaneous creation of Abbot raid instances.

Who knows, it might be funny...

[Zeklijan]

Come on people this is getting ridicules. Please stop the whining and crying over the delay. Let the team do their job and get it fixed. I come on here to check for updates by the team and have to scroll through pages of posts to find any real information. No one ****ed in your Wheaties so suck it up and wait. Criticizing everything does not help the process of getting the event up and running.

We all understand that Turbine is working on it, thanks.

I am turbine's customer and I believe I have the right as being one to give my opinion and open it for discussion. If it weren't meant to be replied to it would be placed in a different forum category.

[Zenako]

I just blame it on all those CR:0 pets everyone is running around with these days. Probably completely borked the detector for character level when popping mobs in based on characters in the zone. The detector just noted all those Wolf Pups and Magma bats and said, well what do you know, we got us a bunch of level 0's running around in here, time to fire up the level 0 encounter table....:eek:

[Ague]

I just blame it on all those CR:0 pets everyone is running around with these days. Probably completely borked the detector for character level when popping mobs in based on characters in the zone. The detector just noted all those Wolf Pups and Magma bats and said, well what do you know, we got us a bunch of level 0's running around in here, time to fire up the level 0 encounter table....:eek:

It was stated earlier in this thread that the issue was with Epic level spawns. And if i recall, Cove uses the same/similar mechanic for enemy spawns and I don't remember there being issues like this.

But at the same time, I don't remember if they had epic level spawns in the last Cove, either... :confused:

[Andoris]

I agree with everything but not on this one.

If you work on a complex reality like DDO and you are responsible for something, you are not the just-graduated John Doe, so it's expected from you to find reliable solutions. Results (should??) count.

Example (as I already said, but I'm sure many others did before me): a short (1-day?) preview on live.

Results do count -- however, I disagree with your premise that their development staff are "just-graduated John Doe". While I don't know their qualifications or experience, what I do know is that defect and issues with complex software happens even when you have world class development teams (I am talking about the guys that get paid $150-200 an hour).

As for your suggestion of a preview, I think it is a great one in theory. It doesn't reduce the risk of having an issue (and it might require multiple previews to get it right), likely the forum community will be up in arms because they are being used as testers -- it does; however, solve the issue of folks taking a day off of work for an event and then not having it work.

Suggestions like that are good, and I hope that Turbine looks how they can improve their process (this is a management issue, not a development or QA issue btw).

[Jerren]

This illustrates very well what I think as well, ofc I couldn't go as far as you did with the rules and all.

Let's imagine something like all players can reach level 12 but cannot increase further unless they are VIP. That way forcing in VIP would create a stable income into the game and would reduce the stress to develop new content, that new time can now be spent elsewhere, such as bug fixing. Which would be very satisfying for players (let's admit the master things broken list is huge and doesnt hold every bug still) AND it would increase the game quality. If players felt the game they play is awesome and be able to say 'This is how a MMO should be' they'd be willing to pay more for it.

Instead right now we got a game with so many broken things it puts you off from playing, and makes you look elsewhere for other games. People are talking, neverwinter nights online, elder scrolls online, several other games.. people wouldn't look elsewhere if they were satisfied with DDO to begin with.

I'm sorry to bring you back to reality but for the first 3 years, you could not play unless you were a subscriber or VIP as it is now called.

[lokitupgood]

Make sure you take into consideration our major loss of guild renown when drinking your coffee thinking about how to fix Mabar!! Lifetimesupply of Major Guild Renown pots? ;P

[Twin-Sabres]

If all of the dead Kobolds in the game sat up at once in the Graveyard, the entire system would crash. ;)

[Jerren]

It was stated earlier in this thread that the issue was with Epic level spawns. And if i recall, Cove uses the same/similar mechanic for enemy spawns and I don't remember there being issues like this.

But at the same time, I don't remember if they had epic level spawns in the last Cove, either... :confused:

Oh and this years cove was cancelled due to problematic game logic!

[MrkGrismer]

It was stated earlier in this thread that the issue was with Epic level spawns. And if i recall, Cove uses the same/similar mechanic for enemy spawns and I don't remember there being issues like this.

But at the same time, I don't remember if they had epic level spawns in the last Cove, either... :confused:

There has been no cove since MOTU dropped. No Epic Cove. Supposedly it is 'finished' and ready now, but it may have the same issue as Mabar. It has not yet been on the live servers.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

It was stated earlier in this thread that the issue was with Epic level spawns.

Can you point me towards the exact quote ?

[MrkGrismer]

Can you point me towards the exact quote ?

Pointing:


Mabar has been postponed while we look into issues involving epic level spawns. We'll provide more information as it becomes available. Thanks!

[Nestroy]

Has the Mabar event finally now postponed indefinitively?

Any news anybody on what the status is?

[Loromir]

I wonder if an announcement is immenent?

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Thank you !

[Ague]

Mabar has been postponed while we look into issues involving epic level spawns. We'll provide more information as it becomes available. Thanks!

See above. ^^^^^^^

EDIT: Dang, ninja'd by MrkGrimser...


Can you point me towards the exact quote ?



There has been no cove since MOTU dropped. No Epic Cove. Supposedly it is 'finished' and ready now, but it may have the same issue as Mabar. It has not yet been on the live servers.

And now that you mention it, you're right... there hasn't been a cove since. They were probably having the same/similar issues as they're having with Mabar now. I sure hope they don't end up cancelling Mabar due to this. That would not be very cool.

[Twin-Sabres]

I wonder if an announcement is immenent?

An announcement is indeed imminent... sometime in the future.

[Ague]

I wonder if an announcement is immenent?

He's probably filtering through the hundreds of PM's from ppl asking for details on what's happening with Mabar... There's many times that I don't envy his job, and this is one of them. :eek:

[Jerren]

Come on people this is getting ridicules. Please stop the whining and crying over the delay. Let the team do their job and get it fixed. I come on here to check for updates by the team and have to scroll through pages of posts to find any real information. No one ****ed in your Wheaties so suck it up and wait. Criticizing everything does not help the process of getting the event up and running.

1. Our whining and crying is in no way affecting the dev team, much less stopping them from doing their job.
2. Try using dev tracker for developer information.
3 My Wheaties did actually taste different today after waking up and finding mabar was still not up.

[phroggiepuddles]

Results do count -- however, I disagree with your premise that their development staff are "just-graduated John Doe". While I don't know their qualifications or experience, what I do know is that defect and issues with complex software happens even when you have world class development teams (I am talking about the guys that get paid $150-200 an hour).

As for your suggestion of a preview, I think it is a great one in theory. It doesn't reduce the risk of having an issue (and it might require multiple previews to get it right), likely the forum community will be up in arms because they are being used as testers -- it does; however, solve the issue of folks taking a day off of work for an event and then not having it work.

Suggestions like that are good, and I hope that Turbine looks how they can improve their process (this is a management issue, not a development or QA issue btw).

+1 on Andoris comments. I've project managed corporate infrastructure projects, and the complexity is huge - let alone the amount of hardware and complexity of supporting so many simultaneous and identical servers that a game like DDO does.

I do agree that management and planning of these things should be better, you can never prevent against a lot of things... and no matter how good and rigorous your testing, going live is always scary. I'm fairly new to DDO but from a lot of peoples comments this type of thing is pretty typical, in cases like that it makes it easier for management to plan around these things (be it more test levels and different approaches, longer design/development/testing time). But it's also likely the company, or this particular department doesn't have the budget to do these things, and in such a case it could very well be that the gamers are lucky to get any new content gratis at all. In business there's always a lot of realities that means you can never develop in ideal situations - and that very often means bug fixing well after release.

[djl]

Except load. Even automation does not replicate real load, and settings that can happen because of load.

Trust me this infuriates me more than any of you.

Which is why you need the VIP preview to test the event with a real load.

[Twin-Sabres]

I'd just like to add in that this current team of Dev's have inherited code that has been tacked-on, tweaked, manipulated, and corrupted several times over. I'm confident in their ability to keep the game running, even when major mishaps occur.

Whining doesn't make them work harder... but it does make me laugh when I read it!

Cheers!

[Ague]

I'd just like to add in that this current team of Dev's have inherited code that has been tacked-on, tweaked, manipulated, and corrupted several times over. I'm confident in their ability to keep the game running, even when major mishaps occur.

Whining doesn't make them work harder... but it does make me laugh when I read it!

Cheers!

I would hope that they have a team, regardless of how big of a team, working to get the coding manageable and easier to patch and update for the future.

I know some of the stuff I've coded in the past looked like spaghetti a few months to a year later, so I had to try and figure out what I did... :eek:

[NyteByrd1017]

I'm hopeful Mabar will start soon and I'm positive I'll enjoy it just as much as I have in previous years.

I'm also positive the dev team is doing everything they possibly can. Sending good thoughts their way.

[Mryal]

Mabar is alredy on.
Its only been restricted to a room in Prision of Planes.



Sarcasm aside.Oh well, people just gotta be patient, will come soon.
And you'll all get bored of it after the first two days :P

[sheintao]

I understand that you can't give us an ETA, but can you tell us if the fix is going to require server down-time?

Thanks,
-Scott

[junta74]

If you are going to load on Lam land to test, do you need guinea pigs?

[sheintao]

Mabar is alredy on.
Its only been restricted to a room in Prision of Planes.



Sarcasm aside.Oh well, people just gotta be patient, will come soon.
And you'll all get bored of it after the first two days :P

The event itself is insanely boring from the start, imo. However, the items are so good that we are forced into the tediousness of the design. I've been waiting all year for the items... i can wait a couple more days :)

[Jessterman615]

day 2 with no festival. bummer. hope they get this fixed soon.

[Jerren]

I just blame it on all those CR:0 pets everyone is running around with these days. Probably completely borked the detector for character level when popping mobs in based on characters in the zone. The detector just noted all those Wolf Pups and Magma bats and said, well what do you know, we got us a bunch of level 0's running around in here, time to fire up the level 0 encounter table....:eek:

^^^
I agree. How many people have store purchased companions on the test server? I would imagine that giving every single character the ability to have a companion is probably the root cause of a lot of issues with DDO today.

[Bloodhaven]

although if they were smart they wouldn't read this negative-energy message board...if you do peace and love


I agree 100%
The boards are very negative and if someone reads to much of that kind of stuff it tends to warp their perspective.

I see a strong reason for the Dev team to NOT read these boards as a part of their job. The Turbine Community Team members like Cordovan should keep an eye on the boards and bring pertinent threads to the Dev teams attention.

This way the Dev team will not have to wade through all the negative threads to get to the pertinent ones.

[Bloodhaven]

Except load. Even automation does not replicate real load, and settings that can happen because of load.

Trust me this infuriates me more than any of you.

http://laughingsquid.com/wp-content/uploads/rage-attack-20100904-112942.jpg

[Ilran]

I agree 100%
The boards are very negative and if someone reads to much of that kind of stuff it tends to warp their perspective.

I see a strong reason for the Dev team to NOT read these boards as a part of their job. The Turbine Community Team members like Cordovan should keep an eye on the boards and bring pertinent threads to the Dev teams attention.

This way the Dev team will not have to wade through all the negative threads to get to the pertinent ones.

I agree to a point with you. However, I think if there was one person that would keep people informed on an hourly basis it might relax some people. I know they are working the problem and can't provide an ETA. But basic news of progress would be great. I do not know if you are working around the clock or working at specific times, number of people working on it, if it is being tested? I am sure that there is a ton of people that would be willing to test knowing that it is only for testing.

[Loromir]

If it were reproducible on their test server, it wouldn't have gone live. I'd venture the problem is exactly that it's live-specific.

Also, I think a loot boost/XP boost is in order to give the people who booked offtime for the event something special in-game.

I vote for adding Renown and XP drops in Mabar.

[Ague]

I vote for adding Renown and XP drops in Mabar.

/signed

would love this... :cool:

[Ilran]

I vote for adding Renown and XP drops in Mabar.

You want to add new code on top of code that is already not loading well?

[RavenAmazing]

...And those screaming the loudest are the "Vets", "Founders" and those with 4 and 5 digit post counts. One would think those would be the posters to set an example.

This is what happens when a game becomes your world.

[Zenako]

^^^
I agree. How many people have store purchased companions on the test server? I would imagine that giving every single character the ability to have a companion is probably the root cause of a lot of issues with DDO today.

I know I never have. (and the ones I got from the MoTU pack remain in the kennel!) My wife however....sigh really likes them.

[Hokiewa]

...And those screaming the loudest are the "Vets", "Founders" and those with 4 and 5 digit post counts. One would think those would be the posters to set an example.

This is what happens when a game becomes your world.

Quite an assumption

[Puoinaq]

So the issue is one that only involves level 20+ characters (epic spawns)?

Here's a thought: leave it out for now and debug the epic spawns on a test server, then add it in when/if it's ready.

I'm sure everyone has a less than level 20 character to play it with. The crowd of people outside the graveyard when it crashed yesterday were mostly less than level 20 anyway.

Just a thought.

[Tolero]

The Mabar festival is temporarily unavailable while we investigate a kobold infestation. We are targeting a patch next week to fix the festival and plan to extend the festival end date due to the delay. Please note that there is a planned Turbine maintenance scheduled for Monday, but this maintenance is not part of the Mabar fix. We’ll bring more information as soon as it is available regarding the actual mabar patch.

[Soul_Power]

After reading this update, I'm no longer upset. I'm not mad that I have to wait for Mabar, I'm mad I didn't find out until now that the delay would span entire days rather than just a few hours.

It's fine that it's gonna take a week to fix, but tell us sooner next time!!!

[dedloriel]

The Mabar festival is temporarily unavailable while we investigate a kobold infestation. We are targeting a patch next week to fix the festival and plan to extend the festival end date due to the delay. Please note that there is a planned Turbine maintenance scheduled for Monday, but this maintenance is not part of the Mabar fix. We’ll bring more information as soon as it is available regarding the actual mabar patch.

Thank you for the update and an actual timetable. And pre-thanks for the extension. I have cookies if it will help speed up the kobold evacuation.

[Enoach]

I am sad as I was looking forward to Mabar on the weekend before my b-day.

Now I need to go watch a bunch of B Horror films to feel better. Hmmm, been awhile since I watched all of the "Howling" series... Maybe throw in a few Vincent Price films.

[Jatner]

A whole week?

Oh noes... what am I going to do now?

[Tolero]

After reading this update, I'm no longer upset. I'm not mad that I have to wait for Mabar, I'm mad I didn't find out until now that the delay would span entire days rather than just a few hours.

It's fine that it's gonna take a week to fix, but tell us sooner next time!!!

We were trying to get it rolling for today, but it didn't work out :(

[MnaSidhe]

The Mabar festival is temporarily unavailable while we investigate a kobold infestation. We are targeting a patch next week to fix the festival and plan to extend the festival end date due to the delay. Please note that there is a planned Turbine maintenance scheduled for Monday, but this maintenance is not part of the Mabar fix. We’ll bring more information as soon as it is available regarding the actual mabar patch.

Just please let us know ASAP about the extended end date... that way those of us that avoid MABAR-time like the plague can arrange our real lives around it!
Thank you.

[Ague]

The Mabar festival is temporarily unavailable while we investigate a kobold infestation. We are targeting a patch next week to fix the festival and plan to extend the festival end date due to the delay. Please note that there is a planned Turbine maintenance scheduled for Monday, but this maintenance is not part of the Mabar fix. We’ll bring more information as soon as it is available regarding the actual mabar patch.

/sniffle

[Maxo]

Nice I will have to check this out when it comes back online. Something to do during the LAN this weekend.

[Mephisto-Helix]

That truly sucks, I'm moving next week Wednesday and won't have internet for a week or 2, so going by this postponement, I am gonna miss Mabar. Thank you very very much Turbine, love being shafted.

[Jessterman615]

not much of a festival after halloween is it?

[darkrune]

That truly sucks, I'm moving next week Wednesday and won't have internet for a week or 2, so going by this postponement, I am gonna miss Mabar. Thank you very very much Turbine, love being shafted.

Yep the bugged out kobolds are a direct result of the Devs trying to screw YOU over. No one else is effected by this. Just you.

Have a nice day. Don't worry it will be there next year as well.

[Mephisto-Helix]

Yep the bugged out kobolds are a direct result of the Devs trying to screw YOU over. No one else is effected by this. Just you.

Have a nice day. Don't worry it will be there next year as well.

Moegoe, did I say anywhere it was just me affected? No, I stated how I would be affected, big difference. Learn to comprehend, chop

[My2Cents]

There could well be millions of people without power next week depending on the path of Hurricane Sandy....

[Gara]

The Mabar festival is temporarily unavailable while we investigate a kobold infestation. We are targeting a patch next week to fix the festival and plan to extend the festival end date due to the delay. Please note that there is a planned Turbine maintenance scheduled for Monday, but this maintenance is not part of the Mabar fix. We’ll bring more information as soon as it is available regarding the actual mabar patch.

Aaah kobold infestation.... I really wish updates like these were a bit more serious and explained what's going on. I think I would prefer no comment on the inner workings rather than being told the devs are consulting with the kobold union.

Hopefully during the next event they will have a preview day a few weeks before the actual event to test this stuff. We could have had a 1 day preview at the start of the month, saw it was broken, and had a working one by the time Halloween came along. Before anyone says that's what the test server is for, take a moment to think about that.

[Wook]

Ya Sandy will have a big impact hopefully the gameservers will be up after it visits.
I'm just hoping to have power at that point.

[rest]

I for one would be happy if we just went ahead and skipped Mabar this year. And every year afterwards.

But thanks for the update, at least I know I can log in this weekend and get some questing done :cool:

[cidchronic]

We are targeting a patch next week to fix the festival

a week? A WEEK! Am I reading this right? I got 1 question then. How do I become a tester, apparently the help is needed. So, I am to wait until after halloween to get my undead kill spree on. Then it is time to either start farming again or find out how to become a tester to help with the bugs that plague us all. oh second question, Is the campsite in House J coming down now?

[Spartywinz]

We were trying to get it rolling for today, but it didn't work out :(

What about tomorrow?

[Gara]

What about tomorrow?

Whoa there buddy. That's the weekend. The annual Turbine picnic could be tomorrow.

[Mephisto-Helix]

There could well be millions of people without power next week depending on the path of Hurricane Sandy....

Wow, that's hectic :/

[MrkGrismer]

not much of a festival after halloween is it?

They might still make Holloween...

[Mephisto-Helix]

What about tomorrow?

Fixing something on a weekend? Psssssh, as if that would happen.

[Jatner]

Maybe they're going to spend the weekend testing it....ah wait

[Jessterman615]

Just bummed out, was looking forward to the festival is all. Now we have to wait just like with the cove(which they didn't extend). Do you reckon they will give us 1:1 ratio on days or just 1 or 2 days after the 4th?

[Loromir]

Moegoe, did I say anywhere it was just me affected? No, I stated how I would be affected, big difference. Learn to comprehend, chop



I disagree...you didn't say you were "Affected" by the bug, you said you were "Shafted" by the bug. Big Difference, chop.

[Rhomnibus]

I've been running the numbers, and if the Mabar snafu makes it to Wednesday midday EST next week without resolution, then it officially overtakes "forgetting to renew the domain name ddo.com" as #1 screw up of all time.

[Mephisto-Helix]

I disagree...you didn't say you were "Affected" by the bug, you said you were "Shafted" by the bug. Big Difference, chop.

Aww cute, do you fight all the moegoes battles then?

[LucasMacKinnon]

Let us hope it is a lesson learned. Lets hope that they have learned from this lesson that things will be tested live for a few hours, or a day several weeks before an event to ensure things run smoothly. I know people would much rather see a preview get shut down because of bugs and know that it will be fixed by the time an event is supposed to happen then something like this. Dev's remember this saying. "Those that do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them." Just some food for thought. Think Crystal Cove.

[Loromir]

Aww cute, do you fight all the moegoes battles then?


Aww how sweet, you think I'm cute.....blush.

[jb111]

Please just send me my epic Cloak of Night and epic Wraps of Endless Light, then I will forgive you Turbine

[MysticElaine]

That truly sucks, I'm moving next week Wednesday and won't have internet for a week or 2, so going by this postponement, I am gonna miss Mabar. Thank you very very much Turbine, love being shafted.

You could try to find a public library and use their inet...ive done that b4.

[Mephisto-Helix]

You could try to find a public library and use their inet...ive done that b4.

Unfortunately not so in Africa ....... I think the last time I went to a library, they had Pentium 2 computers with dial up, lol :D

[youdonut]

[QUOTE=Cordovan;4741524]Last Updated 10-26-2012 1:32 PM Eastern (-4 GMT): The Mabar festival is temporarily unavailable while we investigate a kobold infestation. We are targeting a patch next week to fix the festival and plan to extend the festival end date due to the delay. Please note that there is a planned Turbine maintenance scheduled for Monday, but this maintenance is not part of the Mabar fix. We’ll bring more information as soon as it is available regarding the actual mabar patch.

SEE?? SEE??? That what you get for canceling crystal cove, kobold revenge they never forget.

[MysticElaine]

The Mabar festival is temporarily unavailable while we investigate a kobold infestation. We are targeting a patch next week to fix the festival and plan to extend the festival end date due to the delay. Please note that there is a planned Turbine maintenance scheduled for Monday, but this maintenance is not part of the Mabar fix. We’ll bring more information as soon as it is available regarding the actual mabar patch.

I'm actually feeling a bit lucky of sorts...next week is my last week b4 a vaca, so I will get more Mabar time than I would have :D I just hope the hurricane doesn't screw us up:(

[Zindro]

The Mabar festival is temporarily unavailable while we investigate a kobold infestation. We are targeting a patch next week to fix the festival and plan to extend the festival end date due to the delay. Please note that there is a planned Turbine maintenance scheduled for Monday, but this maintenance is not part of the Mabar fix. We’ll bring more information as soon as it is available regarding the actual mabar patch.

I wouldn't work over the weekend to fix it either.

[danotmano1998]

We were trying to get it rolling for today, but it didn't work out :(

Ah well, thanks for the try, and for the updated info. :)

[Zindro]

Let us hope it is a lesson learned. Lets hope that they have learned from this lesson that things will be tested live for a few hours, or a day several weeks before an event to ensure things run smoothly. I know people would much rather see a preview get shut down because of bugs and know that it will be fixed by the time an event is supposed to happen then something like this. Dev's remember this saying. "Those that do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them." Just some food for thought. Think Crystal Cove.


They were working on it ... Wasnt ready. Or they probably would have

[Rustomight]

maybe someone should adjust login screen to show no mabar this weekend?

[Tillann]

Since this event isn't going to run until November, I hereby decree that all 'Mabar' monsters are re-designed to Native Americans, Pilgrims, Scarecrows, and Turkeys.

...or barring all else, kobolds. **gobble** **gobble**

[nateusmaximus]

Since I'm sure the old version of Mabar is sitting on a virtual shelf somewhere, why not give us the old version until you get the patch working, then update to the new version and extend the end date. Just a suggestion to keep the players from agroing on the devs.

[Entelech]

They've changed the basic game engine since last year. The old code probably wouldn't run at all.

Crystal Cove = epic fail
Mabar = fail...proceeding toward epicness

If there was a simple and obvious solution to the problem don't you think...oh, wait, nevermind, paying your domain registration bill on time is a simple and obvious solution. Maybe they could try what you suggest.

Personally, I'm waiting to see what happens in December, when we start seeing internet outages and player (not character) deaths caused by festival coins. You know it will happen.

[NecroKovy]

Being a fan of NHL hockey and Mabar being my favorite DDO event is really sticking in my craw right now.

[Entelech]

To be brutally honest, I'd almost rather they scrap Mabar completely this year, and fix all the bugged Wilderness encounters in the King's Forest instead.

King's forest is such a beautiful area, then you run into unresponsive NPC's who won't start any of the scripted encounters. It looks amateurish and makes me sad. I can live without Pumpkin Griefing for another year if they fix that.

[peebles]

I was really looking forward to playing this after having no Crystal Cove this year.. but I'm going away on vacation at the end of next weekend and I'll probably miss this!

[__J___]

So was the updated festival coding outsourced?

[Persiflage]

Selfishly, I'm sort of keeping my fingers crossed that if Mabar's delayed, it's really delayed. I live in the UK but wouldn't you know it I'm in freakin' Chicago 2nd-6th November and no play-time before that during the week.

This weekend was gonna be my one shot.

Le sigh.

Guess I won't get an upgraded cloak this year after all unless the fail gets TRULY epic :(

[Lifeblood]

Trust me this infuriates me more than any of you. know

corrected that for ya I am sure you did not intend any insult or slight

i suggest you focus your fury into a laser tight beam and cut the cancer from this game before it eats it away

As you can tell by my join date.I have been with this game through thick and thin

It is my first MMO and probably my last.

The amount of enjoyment derived from playing this game with my friends is hard to put into words..

However the complete fubar that has been the expansion and all of the bugs since have driven me away.....good luck...

[Akristorn]

Year 1. Mabar
Year 2. Maban
Year 3. Mabar
Year 4. Kobar.
Year 5. profit.

warning rant to follow:

i sir say tubah sha****ie.. now tr buff the bacon and roll around in peanut butter.. bc that will give you 9000 dr factor and make more sense than the last few content releases and 6 year old bugs

Rant ended:

sincerely yours

raisty the uber-halfgimp

[verad]

Though it wasn't up that long i did partake in a little 2012 Mabar. One problem
I noticed was in the 20-25 instance there was many times that we killed CR 20
skeletons that gave nothing other than a message that said that said enemy
was too low level for us to kill....seems like an error. Also the second problem
I another others encountered that within 5-10 min we broke our weapons trying
to kill skeletons. I am not sure Why some mobs break weapons faster than others
rustys/slimes exempt of course......but why were the skeletons wearing out our
weapons at such a rapid rate. I was using trip postive greensteel others min2.
V

[fullpozzy]

Now after 2 days, I'll take a few minutes to post.

Kolbold infestation has been a problem since up date 14 live launch. Now I will repeat myself again. Since Lama didnt get wiped I'll keep all the nifty little secrets to myself

[Dj_Fisty]

Can we get another 1 week added to marbar? Monday sandy will be hitting and no power for at least a min of 1 week....

*Edit* Very heavily wooded area.......

[Vellrad]

Last Updated 10-26-2012 1:32 PM Eastern (-4 GMT): The Mabar festival is temporarily unavailable while we investigate a kobold infestation. We are targeting a patch next week to fix the festival and plan to extend the festival end date due to the delay. Please note that there is a planned Turbine maintenance scheduled for Monday, but this maintenance is not part of the Mabar fix. We’ll bring more information as soon as it is available regarding the actual mabar patch.

The Mabar Festival of Endless Night is now available! Click here (http://www.ddo.com/mabar) for details about this event. Also, click here (http://compendium.ddo.com/wiki/Mabar_Endless_Night_Festival_Guide) for our guide to the event in the DDO Compendium!

In first part of post you say that its not avaible, and in second that it's avaible.
So which part is truth?

[Barazon]

Except load. Even automation does not replicate real load, and settings that can happen because of load.

Trust me this infuriates me more than any of you.

So you're saying the entire event is messed up because of load, and nothing else at all? That if more than a few people zone into a map instance, the server suddenly starts spawning monsters of the wrong level, and then forgets entirely what monster objects to create and starts creating kobolds instead?

[Saaluta]

In first part of post you say that its not avaible, and in second that it's avaible.
So which part is truth?

They just changed the first part of the post from the original Mabar is here to Mabar is postponed. So, to answer, the 2nd part is not correct as Mabar is down.

Saal :)

[vernaza]

i wish that some one would just doo the right thing for once and try to see that people actually look up to these events and enjoy them throughlly so i know that someone knows what they must do... GET IT DONE PEOPLE....

[Pewf]

This is truly sad.

Two of my friends who are leaving the game, we all said we would do one last get together partying over Mabar. One already left, he isn't much for TRing and endgame atm is so boring for him. The other is moving back to the Phillipines, and will hardly still play unless she goes into town. Me, I'm still addicted just a little less each day.

We had planned to get together and slaughter undead like the good ole' days, we all played together for 2 years. It sure has been an adventure.

But, no Mabar... So sad. Guess we'll go do something else. :(

[chiefbob1]

Ok, maybe because I am older than most who are playing, I am confused by all the hate mail that is directed towards the devs. Seriously, do 1000 plus people come to your job when something goes wrong and blame everything that is wrong with their life on the fact that there was an error made. I read some of these post and it's like, man and I thought that I didn't have a life. Now before everyone blasts me for saying that, I don't have life, I am a disabled vet (that's military, not animal doctor. Just to clarify for those who are confused) who spends most of his day playing video games, so I am speaking from experience. We get it, they made a mistake. Hell, they made several mistakes, but seriously, if you don't like and your life is as ruined as you say it is - quit and go someplace else. No one is holding a gun to your head and making you play this game. I have been playing this game for a couple of years now, and yes, there are times that I have been upsed by what has happened, but not enough to log on and blame the sorrows of the world on DDO. All that matters to me is that they acknowledge that they made a mistake or that there is a problem and that they are working on it. The enjoyment that I get from this game far out weighs the problems that occur.

One last thing, before any one decides to jump on my about how you have the right to say what you want, where you want, to who you want. Remember that you only have that right because of me and my fellow service men and women have fought for you to have it and just because you have the right to say something doesn't mean that you should say it.

That's all....so blast away.

Semper Fi

[Ducaster]

Except load. Even automation does not replicate real load, and settings that can happen because of load.

Trust me this infuriates me more than any of you.

Well OK Maj so what your saying is you need a way to make folks invest in playing on Lama land. Surely thats simple allow Turbine points EARNED from favor (not granted by Lord P.) count in some part to the parent account of the Alt that earns them.

Favor TP is hardly a huge amount but its something and if playing out a new or revised Dungeon on Lama garnered me even a little bit of Live server advantage I personally would go to Lama more often.

Another alternative that is even more attractive but asking a lot of coding I suspect, is to allow folks to swap alts from their Live server to Lama and back. What I mean is if I have a char on Sarlona where I usually play, I can "exile" them, as is, to Lama they play their and can't come back to Sarlona until the content previewing on Lama has gone Live on Sar.

This will keep our Alts on Lama more up to date and not grant them any advantage before content release on the main server.

-----
Pre Apology: This is a long thread and I aint read all of it before posting this. If somebody mentioned something like this already, I apologies for rediscovering the wheel.
-----

[deesto]

Ok, maybe because I am older than most who are playing, I am confused by all the hate mail that is directed towards the devs. Seriously, do 1000 plus people come to your job when something goes wrong and blame everything that is wrong with their life on the fact that there was an error made. I read some of these post and it's like, man and I thought that I didn't have a life. Now before everyone blasts me for saying that, I don't have life, I am a disabled vet (that's military, not animal doctor. Just to clarify for those who are confused) who spends most of his day playing video games, so I am speaking from experience. We get it, they made a mistake. Hell, they made several mistakes, but seriously, if you don't like and your life is as ruined as you say it is - quit and go someplace else. No one is holding a gun to your head and making you play this game. I have been playing this game for a couple of years now, and yes, there are times that I have been upsed by what has happened, but not enough to log on and blame the sorrows of the world on DDO. All that matters to me is that they acknowledge that they made a mistake or that there is a problem and that they are working on it. The enjoyment that I get from this game far out weighs the problems that occur.

One last thing, before any one decides to jump on my about how you have the right to say what you want, where you want, to who you want. Remember that you only have that right because of me and my fellow service men and women have fought for you to have it and just because you have the right to say something doesn't mean that you should say it.

That's all....so blast away.

Semper Fi

I agree with you for the most part. And, of course, I thank you for your service. The only other point I have is that in your example scenario, your customers (who pay money, in many cases) should be the ones coming to you and blasting you when something goes wrong. Of course, that's still inappropriate: it's still not the devs' fault entirely, and there are (or at least, there should be) layers between them and the paying customer that are much more responsible for the customers' dissatisfaction than they are. In my opinion, it's great that the game has these events at all, and the devs can't possibly load test the changes they're introducing anywhere near the level to which they're being introduced.

One last suggestion: it would be nice if the mabar problem could be announced a bit more prominently -- in launcher news, and/or at least on the DDO news page -- since its start was promoted more so, and the absence of prominent information is causing quite a bit of confusion.

[AmiSouthpaw]

Ok, maybe because I am older than most who are playing, I am confused by all the hate mail that is directed towards the devs. Seriously, do 1000 plus people come to your job when something goes wrong and blame everything that is wrong with their life on the fact that there was an error made. I read some of these post and it's like, man and I thought that I didn't have a life. Now before everyone blasts me for saying that, I don't have life, I am a disabled vet (that's military, not animal doctor. Just to clarify for those who are confused) who spends most of his day playing video games, so I am speaking from experience. We get it, they made a mistake. Hell, they made several mistakes, but seriously, if you don't like and your life is as ruined as you say it is - quit and go someplace else. No one is holding a gun to your head and making you play this game. I have been playing this game for a couple of years now, and yes, there are times that I have been upsed by what has happened, but not enough to log on and blame the sorrows of the world on DDO. All that matters to me is that they acknowledge that they made a mistake or that there is a problem and that they are working on it. The enjoyment that I get from this game far out weighs the problems that occur.

One last thing, before any one decides to jump on my about how you have the right to say what you want, where you want, to who you want. Remember that you only have that right because of me and my fellow service men and women have fought for you to have it and just because you have the right to say something doesn't mean that you should say it.

That's all....so blast away.

Semper Fi

First off Chiefbob thank you for your service...I to am disabled but my disability came from Emergency Services stateside. I was a Firefighter/EMT and was injured on the job but that is beside the point here. I too spend time playing online and console games and despite time off from DDO due to RL issues I had been looking forward to Mabar this year and anxious to get back in there I got to play it for about an hour, give or take, when it crashed and i was kicked to House J only to go in and wail on a few CR 0 kobolds. I came to the forum after a few minutes and yup it was down and it was not just me. Devs have the hard time making sure things go smooth and yes it is not always perfect. Just keep in mind they have patched code to deal with and what may seem unconnected to us may in some part in the code be connected, yes i know taking a blind stab and making an excuse to some. I may also seem to be riding a sympathy line but stating that i am in-game a lot and see things that tick people off and I too have to think to myself sheesh quit whining about it and go with it so your fun was ruined for a moment or it did not go as planned cut the devs some slack and start with the positive stuff already at least you have a place that you can come to online play for free and they ARE trying to make up for it in their ways i mean really no one has noticed the 31% hero xp? the posts that said they ARE going to extend and a possible fix soon? I know that i have trolled a few times in the forums but come on people stop beating a dead kobold here

:D

[Gara]

Well at least we'll get some xp weekends out of the deal.

[error55o]

personally, I've waited all year for this and don't mind waiting a bit longer for it to be working as intended so thanks for the update about it being delayed for a few days :D it's good for me as this weekend is the busy one I have at this time of the year and makes it so I can Mabar for longer :D

:P

[Azalin]

Seriously, do 1000 plus people come to your job when something goes wrong and blame everything that is wrong with their life on the fact that there was an error made.

No, people leave my job (casino industry) and never come back due to a poor entertainment experience.

I get what you are saying, but errors like this only hurt the subscription numbers, which will eventually tank the game if not addressed.

[smatt]

First off.... No the postponment of Mabar hasn't ruined my life, in fact I really don't care about it, I don't play all that much any more in any case....... I'm pretty happy that it's NOT going to be honest since they seem to be 100% unable to solve the huge impact the over-crowded Mabar instances drag down overall game performance across the entire world server, not just the individual virtual server instances. I'm also happy that it seems the only other thing it seems they broke while turnign on and the back off Mabar, is the change to guild renown decay calcs..... I liked that change.... But whatever...

The idea that the only thing broken about Mabar is server load is well a load....

It's kind of funny, that everytime they try and do a "Special Event" even ones that have been run many times before, they F it up.... After just short of 6 years of more or less steady DDO play, I understand that it's an old game with lots of problems within the code..... BUT.... :rolleyes:

At this point I'm suprised they can actually put in a 31% XP bonus without breaking something else... :eek:

Same old, same old.....

They could use about 3 or 4 more bug patches before U-16 breaks 500 more things....

Screw Mabar.... It's a waste of time and effort..... Halloween 2012 will be history by the time they get Mabar working.... :o

[BelDragon]

I am sorry but I could not help my self when you said epic hard is HARD you are kidding right? I can solo epic hard with all my toons that are lv 20 lol... Now epic elite I can do but have to move very slow, but even it can be done solo... I think that is the problem things are to ez or am just over powered one... Hmmmm Devs Scratch that I am a gimp don't feel like getting nerfed now that I have put my foot in my mouth...:D:p:p:o:o:rolleyes::rolleyes::eek::eek:



Here's a cookie for you, and two for your ego. Enjoy!

[Fundamental]

We don't want xp bonus, we don't want store discounts, we just want things to work when it's promised.

Defending the developers, why? It's their job for crying out loud. They get paid for this.
They could have easily prevented this; by having a preview day 2 weeks before this; they choose not too, unlike last year. Their mistake. Period. Testing on lamannia means nothing. Since it's not a live server.

The damage has already been done anyways, for a lot of players this is, again another sad sad day.
Can't fix typing errors in the premium destiny pack but need to upload more useless pets to the store to sell.
Developers here making jokes about the issue, blaming in on kobolt infestation.
That means there are really serious in fixing this.

You guys would know, as developers that changing a festival, new items, new spawns; requires testing on the original, populated servers.
I'm not a developer and I can think of this; with simple logic.
The reason you give a festival like this; is because of the timing, the gathering of players.
You can't just say; it's postponed.
There should be an apology, saying you guys have failed 100 procent on this.

Since that won't happen, I created this post.

[Lordazure]

come on i come back and log in for.. this? you messed up up my bday gift on the 25th you need to start doing some QA and testing before using a hat to pull bits of coding out and randomly assembling them in hopes it works.

[YUGWEN]

"Ok, maybe because I am older than most who are playing, I am confused by all the hate mail that is directed towards the devs. Seriously, do 1000 plus people come to your job when something goes wrong and blame everything that is wrong with their life on the fact that there was an error made."

Ah, where to begin... If you have ever worked in retail, fast food, or any other position dealing directly with consumers you could not possibly have asked that question with a straight face. My day job has been managing an IT company for over 14 yrs, so not buying most of the Dev/DDO excuses. This seems like the same lazy/unorganized mentality as the forgetting to renew the domain registration. It's the Apple mindset "we have a bunch of cult like fan boys and girls and they'll put up with whatever we do. Just a bunch of addicts." I love D&D and played pnp when it was born. I love ddo, but less and less each time this stuff happens. These events are great, once they get them working, and they do make an effort to "make it" right by giving in game bonuses after they screw up. Isn't it easier to say, "here it is all have fun" than to say "here's some bonus goodies sorry for the issues?" Nothing is perfect but a whole lot of things are entirely preventable with hard work and common sense.

I am a VIP and I have spent a LOT of $$ on this game. I have multiple cosmetic kits and multiple +2 and +3 sup tomes banked that will likely never be used now because I am on the verge of leaving the game. As a customer I sincerely feel like Turbine and the devs do not care about provding a quality gaming experience. This is why I have stopped spending money on the game. There is no reason they can't set up a virtual envornment and pre-test these launches. They have the EXPERIENCE to know exactly what they are going to run into. It is more cost effective to purchase everything and not be a monthly subscriber, but I chose to be a VIP and purchase the silly cosmetic pets to help fund the game I enjoy playing. However DDO is not really a "game", it is an online business. It is up to them to make sure they attract and/or keep more customers than they lose. In my opinion they have made multiple poor business decisions that have hurt the game and their bottom line. As a business manager that bothers me and encourages me to take my business elsewhere even though the gamer in me loves D&D. (Examples: blocking teleport items in bogwater during ice games = loss of $$$ revenue from people buying otherwise neraly useless gear to do what? Slow down the rate people got purple coins that are otherwise nearly impossible to farm?; routinely launching failed events; completely overhauling the game mechanics and leaving numerous newly created issues active to this day, going on a nerf fest instead of adapting to customer play style, failing to complete presitege paths for YEARS) On a plus note, they finally addressed the deepwood sniper path that has been broken forever (went from 1-20 as one). Unfortunately it is still so pointless that it isn't even worth taking for RP value but a least they addressed it so they get bonus points for that.

Lastly it IS up to the customers to voice their opinions and provide feedback. Level and tone should certainly remain respectful. No one will listen if it isn't so that kind of defeats the purpose to get overly dramatic and rant. Everything online tends to be more extreme than in RL though and Turbine and the Devs are well aware of this. The only rant and complaints that really matter are when PAYING customers leave or stop spending money. Some people look forward to these events enough to schedule time off from work. When DDO puts out an untested event and has to delay it these players don't get those days off back and they can't just show up to work and say they want a different day off when the event is live. That really bothers me as a customer when I see other customers impacted by avoidable errors. I want to believe that this "game" is taken seriously by the business behind it and that they understand and appreciate their customer base. I think that is a pretty fair request and DDO and Turbine certainly have the ability and power to do this. I would have left a long time ago if I did not believe that.

(Thank you for your service, Semper Fi)


PS I don't recall ever having a bad experience with Turbine customer support via phone (always stellar) AND in game support has always been VERY responsive and fast so just want to see the rest of the Playable game catch up to that greatness!

[Xezrak]

snip

I would +1 this but I have given out too much rep already today :(

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

So you're saying the entire event is messed up because of load, and nothing else at all? That if more than a few people zone into a map instance, the server suddenly starts spawning monsters of the wrong level, and then forgets entirely what monster objects to create and starts creating kobolds instead?

No I'm saying that there is some things that change only when 1000's of people roam about an MMO landscape that are pretty close to impossible to replicate in house--unless they want to give me 1000 testers of course. They do not get replicated on Lama, mournlands or inhouse and sadly only rear their ugly head on live.We saw it immediately on turning the event on, and it is not on every server. We know what the problem is, but the techies have not come up with a good way for QA to create this condition on internal servers...we can only get into this state by what seems like pure luck. If we had a repro-able case, this wouldn't happen. This is yet another symptom of a bug that has bitten us no less than 5 times in the past 2 years. It shows up differently every time. Why? Good question, but I'll make an assumption it is because it is a nasty edge case and when developers attempt to stretch a little more out of this engine it unfortunately rears it's koboldy head again.


Seriously, do 1000 plus people come to your job when something goes wrong and blame everything that is wrong with their life on the fact that there was an error made.

Yes they do.

[Kalari]

No I'm saying that there is some things that change only when 1000's of people roam about an MMO landscape that are pretty close to impossible to replicate in house--unless they want to give me 1000 testers of course. They do not get replicated on Lama, mournlands or inhouse and sadly only rear their ugly head on live.We saw it immediately on turning the event on, and it is not on every server. We know what the problem is, but the techies have not come up with a good way for QA to create this condition on internal servers...we can only get into this state by what seems like pure luck. If we had a repro-able case, this wouldn't happen. This is yet another symptom of a bug that has bitten us no less than 5 times in the past 2 years. It shows up differently every time. Why? Good question, but I'll make an assumption it is because it is a nasty edge case and when developers attempt to stretch a little more out of this engine it unfortunately rears it's koboldy head again.



Yes they do.

Maj your are one of the Turbine employees I really have respect for thanks for coming into this thread several times and answering things. At least you guys are trying to fix it and sorry for your frustration. I can't wait till things are up and running and will make sure to spread the word once it is.

[Munkenmo]

Yes they do.

Maj, just want to say thank you for letting me vent, then blame you for the All Blacks poor performance against Australia.

Now I can move on with my life.

:D

[oradafu]

No I'm saying that there is some things that change only when 1000's of people roam about an MMO landscape that are pretty close to impossible to replicate in house--unless they want to give me 1000 testers of course.

That reminds me... There was a preview of Mabar several days before the event in previous years. Why wasn't this done again this year? This would have replicated the load that you are seeking. In fact, if I remember correctly, the preview pointed out a few bugs that needed fixed each time it happened. For example, wasn't the altars turning into kobolds when activated in one of the previews?

[Scraap]

No I'm saying that there is some things that change only when 1000's of people roam about an MMO landscape that are pretty close to impossible to replicate in house--unless they want to give me 1000 testers of course. They do not get replicated on Lama, mournlands or inhouse and sadly only rear their ugly head on live.We saw it immediately on turning the event on, and it is not on every server. We know what the problem is, but the techies have not come up with a good way for QA to create this condition on internal servers...we can only get into this state by what seems like pure luck. If we had a repro-able case, this wouldn't happen. This is yet another symptom of a bug that has bitten us no less than 5 times in the past 2 years. It shows up differently every time. Why? Good question, but I'll make an assumption it is because it is a nasty edge case and when developers attempt to stretch a little more out of this engine it unfortunately rears it's koboldy head again.



Yes they do.

Understandable. Particularly given how much of an overhaul it would seem it'd take to cook up something like windowless client arrays. (Easy to say, try cooking one up some time in an engine not set up for it from the get go. /eyes burbon)

edit:
Seriously, do 1000 plus people come to your job when something goes wrong and blame everything that is wrong with their life on the fact that there was an error made.

I get a pack of angry lawyers instead. Wanna trade?

[Missing_Minds]

Maj, just want to say thank you for letting me vent, then blame you for the All Blacks poor performance against Australia.

Now I can move on with my life.

:D
Just so people in the U.S. realize, that was not a racist statement. "All Blacks" is a rugby team.

[Missing_Minds]

No I'm saying that there is some things that change only when 1000's of people roam about an MMO landscape that are pretty close to impossible to replicate in house--unless they want to give me 1000 testers of course. They do not get replicated on Lama, mournlands or inhouse and sadly only rear their ugly head on live.We saw it immediately on turning the event on, and it is not on every server. We know what the problem is, but the techies have not come up with a good way for QA to create this condition on internal servers...we can only get into this state by what seems like pure luck. If we had a repro-able case, this wouldn't happen. This is yet another symptom of a bug that has bitten us no less than 5 times in the past 2 years. It shows up differently every time. Why? Good question, but I'll make an assumption it is because it is a nasty edge case and when developers attempt to stretch a little more out of this engine it unfortunately rears it's koboldy head again.

Really? This was an edge load case? I would have thought it was a table alignment CM issue due to the fact that live and lama have different number of creatures.

[Scraap]

Really? This was an edge load case? I would have thought it was a table alignment CM issue due to the fact that live and lama have different number of creatures.

The bit about it not being on every server would discount that one as an explicit cause, though a subtle enough memleak pressing on DB faults wouldn't be something to rule out. Say, an overflow due to mobs-per-instance?

[ScarletIncubus]

Seriously, do 1000 plus people come to your job when something goes wrong and blame everything that is wrong with their life on the fact that there was an error made.

Maybe not 1000 plus people, but I work in customer service for a government project, so yes. Yes they do. Of course, you don't see me carrying on here because I know what it's like, at least.

[Artos_Fabril]

Maybe not 1000 plus people, but I work in customer service for a government project, so yes. Yes they do. Of course, you don't see me carrying on here because I know what it's like, at least.
If you're with PSI-CoE, you have my sympathy. That **** is even more jacked than the DDO codebase, and it's brand new.

Also, there are 1000+ people calling in, but with 15+ minute wait times, they hang up rather than bothering to try to get issues addressed.

[EllisDee37]

Weather guy says I should expect to lose power Monday for 7-10 days. If so, I guess no Mabar for me. It's unfortnuate that the first 5 days of the event were a no-go, since those may end up being the only 5 days I will have been able to participate.

Hopefully the storm isn't too bad and I get back on within a day or two -- or don't lose power at all! -- but any chance you guys can take the impending storm into consideration when you extend the event?

[vms4ever]

The bit about it not being on every server would discount that one as an explicit cause, though a subtle enough memleak pressing on DB faults wouldn't be something to rule out. Say, an overflow due to mobs-per-instance?

That's just SOOOOO typical. Just blame the database. Its always blame the database. Everytime anything goes wrong they just bla... Oh excuse me. Back in a minute. Some nice guys in white coats want to talk to me about a database.

(DBA in real life)

[Scraap]

That's just SOOOOO typical. Just blame the database. Its always blame the database. Everytime anything goes wrong they just bla... Oh excuse me. Back in a minute. Some nice guys in white coats want to talk to me about a database.

(DBA in real life)

Hey, I like DBs too. Maybe not some of the torture some 'clever coders' like to put theirs through (Seriously. there needs to be a Geneva Convention on Code Crimes).

[Daemoneyes]

No I'm saying that there is some things that change only when 1000's of people roam about an MMO landscape that are pretty close to impossible to replicate in house--unless they want to give me 1000 testers of course. They do not get replicated on Lama, mournlands or inhouse and sadly only rear their ugly head on live.We saw it immediately on turning the event on, and it is not on every server. We know what the problem is, but the techies have not come up with a good way for QA to create this condition on internal servers...we can only get into this state by what seems like pure luck. If we had a repro-able case, this wouldn't happen. This is yet another symptom of a bug that has bitten us no less than 5 times in the past 2 years. It shows up differently every time. Why? Good question, but I'll make an assumption it is because it is a nasty edge case and when developers attempt to stretch a little more out of this engine it unfortunately rears it's koboldy head again.
.


You cant just take the server down and hit the festival switch while no one is on it? 0o
Okay i really have only basic knowledge of programming but when server performance while applying would be the Issue it would be that easy to solve.
This whole thing sounds more like you (devs) have no ****ing clue at all what happened.

And that after over 2 Months of "fixing" and preparing the Event..

[Missing_Minds]

The bit about it not being on every server would discount that one as an explicit cause, though a subtle enough memleak pressing on DB faults wouldn't be something to rule out. Say, an overflow due to mobs-per-instance?
Till Maj posted, I had no idea it wasn't a constant across servers also.

[GoRinNoSho]

Additionally, I'd expect more of a "drive it like it's a rental" behavior on live than on lammania.

So not sure how many people were spam switching instances, chugging around the area generating monsters to only make them zone out, etc.

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

Just so people in the U.S. realize, that was not a racist statement. "All Blacks" is a rugby team.

I know. turbine likes Rugby.

Nate Ebner of the NE Patriots for the win!

[Scraap]

Till Maj posted, I had no idea it wasn't a constant across servers also.

Yeah, definitely a significant datapoint to take under consideration there... *Was* there correlation between server-load and kobolds picketing, by chance?

[dotHackSign]

No I'm saying that there is some things that change only when 1000's of people roam about an MMO landscape that are pretty close to impossible to replicate in house--unless they want to give me 1000 testers of course. They do not get replicated on Lama, mournlands or inhouse and sadly only rear their ugly head on live.We saw it immediately on turning the event on, and it is not on every server. We know what the problem is, but the techies have not come up with a good way for QA to create this condition on internal servers...we can only get into this state by what seems like pure luck. If we had a repro-able case, this wouldn't happen. This is yet another symptom of a bug that has bitten us no less than 5 times in the past 2 years. It shows up differently every time. Why? Good question, but I'll make an assumption it is because it is a nasty edge case and when developers attempt to stretch a little more out of this engine it unfortunately rears it's koboldy head again.



Yes they do.


The real problem is those kobolds were stingy and didn't drop any motes ;)

[Nickademus42]

Not sure if it's a coincidence or directly related, but as if Thursday (the day Mabar was supposed to launch), Turbine lost some devs:

http://www.original-gamer.com/article/4430-Lord-of-the-Rings-Online-developer-hit-with-layoffs

Perhaps WB has noticed some of the points you guys have been making...

[dotHackSign]

Yeah, definitely a significant datapoint to take under consideration there... *Was* there correlation between server-load and kobolds picketing, by chance?

I did notice on Cannith that from what I could tell the only grave yard instance with giants was the first shared one. Maybe the giants were boycotting the other instances and the kobolds were hired to cross the picket lines.

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

You cant just take the server down and hit the festival switch while no one is on it? 0o
Okay i really have only basic knowledge of programming but when server performance while applying would be the Issue it would be that easy to solve.
This whole thing sounds more like you (devs) have no ****ing clue at all what happened.

And that after over 2 Months of "fixing" and preparing the Event..

It is not performance, it is load. There are certain things that change in the world when multiple (many multiples) touch them. It is not a static binary environment.
I said it before, sometimes the mushrooms in the red fens break doors. There are deltas in the game that are just hard to predict. You have to look at care taking an MMO more like biology than computer science. For example in biology, you can have a bat with a disease living in harmony for 1000 years with everything around it, but add some horses, and those horses become an amplifier for the disease and suddenly people are dying.
There are times this is what testing older MMO's is like. Why are the Giants kobolds, but not on every world? Oh it is not the giants, it's the landblock really, making a call that shouldn't matter and it always has--since the beginning of DDO, a variable that can change by players, but now it is being temperamental. How do you predict that. The poor designer or programmer saw no issues directly with what they did. They just added a new variable to the potpurri of Forgotten EbberRealms. And boom.

[newroticslob]

We saw it immediately on turning the event on, and it is not on every server. We know what the problem is, but the techies have not come up with a good way for QA to create this condition on internal servers...we can only get into this state by what seems like pure luck.





So, it's not on every server? I assume there is someone who has the duty of watching the server as it runs to ensure proper functioning. Was there a new guy on the schedule? Did he not realize or was he not properly informed that the kobolds are devious 'lil bastards? I mean, C'MON!! Spill it! The kobolds "slipped" past him and got into the liquor cabinet, didn't they? I suppose they found some hallucinogenic broccoli "laying around", as well, and began rampaging around the building. Meanwhile, the person who was given the duty of watching the kobolds "noticed" they were missing and went to find them without telling his supervisor. In the process of coming back to their area, because we all know how dedicated kobolds are to their duties, they found an empty keyboard where the "kobold-sitter" was and decided they knew how to fix Mabar and Crystal Cove and any other bug that has been plaguing DDO. After punching a few keys, they noticed a strange smell coming from the attached server. They ran for cover and we have to pay for it. Right?! That is a much more believable story than some spin about "live" vs lama or bugs that have been plaguing DDO for 2 yrs. What do you think we are? A bunch of kobolds?

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

So, it's not on every server? I assume there is someone who has the duty of watching the server as it runs to ensure proper functioning. Was there a new guy on the schedule? Did he not realize or was he not properly informed that the kobolds are devious 'lil bastards? I mean, C'MON!! Spill it! The kobolds "slipped" past him and got into the liquor cabinet, didn't they? I suppose they found some hallucinogenic broccoli "laying around", as well, and began rampaging around the building. Meanwhile, the person who was given the duty of watching the kobolds "noticed" they were missing and went to find them without telling his supervisor. In the process of coming back to their area, because we all know how dedicated kobolds are to their duties, they found an empty keyboard where the "kobold-sitter" was and decided they knew how to fix Mabar and Crystal Cove and any other bug that has been plaguing DDO. After punching a few keys, they noticed a strange smell coming from the attached server. They ran for cover and we have to pay for it. Right?! That is a much more believable story than some spin about "live" vs lama or bugs that have been plaguing DDO for 2 yrs. What do you think we are? A bunch of kobolds?

If the kobolds dropped loot, I admit, I would have fought to leave it on and said the Giants were just wearing costumes :)

[Silverleafeon]

Nods sagely
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/disguise.htm

[DaSawks]

unless they want to give me 1000 testers


I will volunteer. Only 999 to go.

[Rainami]

If the kobolds dropped loot, I admit, I would have fought to leave it on and said the Giants were just wearing costumes :)

I have to admit that sounds pretty awesome actually. Maybe giant kobolds in crystal cove's future? lol

[deesto]

So, it's not on every server? I assume there is someone who has the duty of watching the server as it runs to ensure proper functioning. Was there a new guy on the schedule? Did he not realize or was he not properly informed that the kobolds are devious 'lil bastards? I mean, C'MON!! Spill it! The kobolds "slipped" past him and got into the liquor cabinet, didn't they? I suppose they found some hallucinogenic broccoli "laying around", as well, and began rampaging around the building. Meanwhile, the person who was given the duty of watching the kobolds "noticed" they were missing and went to find them without telling his supervisor. In the process of coming back to their area, because we all know how dedicated kobolds are to their duties, they found an empty keyboard where the "kobold-sitter" was and decided they knew how to fix Mabar and Crystal Cove and any other bug that has been plaguing DDO. After punching a few keys, they noticed a strange smell coming from the attached server. They ran for cover and we have to pay for it. Right?! That is a much more believable story than some spin about "live" vs lama or bugs that have been plaguing DDO for 2 yrs. What do you think we are? A bunch of kobolds?

Maybe the best message I've seen on here, made me laugh if nothing else, for which I thank you!

[Nickademus42]

I will volunteer. Only 999 to go.

I will volunteer. Only 998 to go.

[Tap4black]

I do enough beta testing for you folks already on live so no, I will not volunteer.

You're still at 998.

[Daemoneyes]

It is not performance, it is load. There are certain things that change in the world when multiple (many multiples) touch them. It is not a static binary environment.
I said it before, sometimes the mushrooms in the red fens break doors. There are deltas in the game that are just hard to predict. You have to look at care taking an MMO more like biology than computer science. For example in biology, you can have a bat with a disease living in harmony for 1000 years with everything around it, but add some horses, and those horses become an amplifier for the disease and suddenly people are dying.
There are times this is what testing older MMO's is like. Why are the Giants kobolds, but not on every world? Oh it is not the giants, it's the landblock really, making a call that shouldn't matter and it always has--since the beginning of DDO, a variable that can change by players, but now it is being temperamental. How do you predict that. The poor designer or programmer saw no issues directly with what they did. They just added a new variable to the potpurri of Forgotten EbberRealms. And boom.

I dont buy that, cause it makes no sense at all.
A switch is a switch is a switch, no matter how many people use it.
It doesnt magically become a door.
yeah it could break but that can be bypassed with limiting access.

So either you used the worst metaphor ive ever seen or you try to **** with me.
Honestly neither one of us does care which is the case.
You got your job to do and i got some monster to kill.

All i can finally say to that is there are some really bad metaphors here in the forum like the "would you trust turbine to program life support on mars" bad try at the real question.
Do i really want to continue to play Turbine games?

And each update/patch/event brings me one step closer to:
no i do not want to play their games.

Which is sad cause i really like D&D and i see so much potential here.
*pokes "dead" knowledge skills with stick*

btw
on Argo i only saw Kobolds in Instance 3, lvl range 20-25, so you might want to look at the spawn-table of that instance.

[teh_meh]

I dont buy that, cause it makes no sense at all.
A switch is a switch is a switch, no matter how many people use it.
It doesnt magically become a door.
yeah it could break but that can be bypassed with limiting access.

So either you used the worst metaphor ive ever seen or you try to **** with me.
Honestly neither one of us does care which is the case.
You got your job to do and i got some monster to kill.

All i can finally say to that is there are some really bad metaphors here in the forum like the "would you trust turbine to program life support on mars" bad try at the real question.
Do i really want to continue to play Turbine games?

And each update/patch/event brings me one step closer to:
no i do not want to play their games.

Which is sad cause i really like D&D and i see so much potential here.
*pokes "dead" knowledge skills with stick*

I don't buy this response. He gave you an answer. Saying you don't believe the answer doesn't make it magically a lie. That thread about asking whether you would want Turbine to code your life support machine was eye-rollingly dumb. It was like hey! "Would you want General Motors producing your bread-makers and yoga mats?"

I want to see some resumes from users who want to argue with the techie who just took 10 minutes out of his day to try and give you an explanation. It makes no sense for a dev to come on here (when he/she is not obligated to) to feed us lies and risk their jobs when everyone knows layoffs are underway in this biz.

[Megamart]

I dont buy that, cause it makes no sense at all.
A switch is a switch is a switch, no matter how many people use it.
It doesnt magically become a door.
yeah it could break but that can be bypassed with limiting access.

So either you used the worst metaphor ive ever seen or you try to **** with me.
Honestly neither one of us does care which is the case.
You got your job to do and i got some monster to kill.

All i can finally say to that is there are some really bad metaphors here in the forum like the "would you trust turbine to program life support on mars" bad try at the real question.
Do i really want to continue to play Turbine games?

And each update/patch/event brings me one step closer to:
no i do not want to play their games.

Which is sad cause i really like D&D and i see so much potential here.
*pokes "dead" knowledge skills with stick*

btw
on Argo i only saw Kobolds in Instance 3, lvl range 20-25, so you might want to look at the spawn-table of that instance.

Logic:
http://www.geekosystem.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/bread-toast.jpeg

[Pantronic]

Not sure if it's a coincidence or directly related, but as if Thursday (the day Mabar was supposed to launch), Turbine lost some devs:

http://www.original-gamer.com/article/4430-Lord-of-the-Rings-Online-developer-hit-with-layoffs

Perhaps WB has noticed some of the points you guys have been making...

I'm sure they've been planning the layoffs for weeks. But I do wonder if rumours of layoffs might have affected peoples' work. It is hard to keep focus and be motivated when you think you might be made redundant any day now.

[grayham]

I don't buy this response. He gave you an answer. Saying you don't believe the answer doesn't make it magically a lie. That thread about asking whether you would want Turbine to code your life support machine was eye-rollingly dumb. It was like hey! "Would you want General Motors producing your bread-makers and yoga mats?"

I want to see some resumes from users who want to argue with the techie who just took 10 minutes out of his day to try and give you an explanation. It makes no sense for a dev to come on here (when he/she is not obligated to) to feed us lies and risk their jobs when everyone knows layoffs are underway in this biz.

Once again you echo my thoughts tehmeh, though rep will not be forthcoming until I've scattered it around further.

[blkcat1028]

Maj, just want to say thank you for letting me vent, then blame you for the All Blacks poor performance against Australia.

Now I can move on with my life.

:D

It was Maj's fault!? I bet he gave Higginbottom a free Life time VIP to knee Richy in the head!!

Seriously though... Maj thanks for putting up with all the nonsense in the forums. Your communication with us is invaluable.

As for the All Blacks, we still got the cup! :D

[Dragavon]

They just added a new variable to the potpurri of Forgotten EbberRealms. And boom.

In short, you have lost control over the DDO code :p

[Vyder]

If you need load to properly test things, I suggest incentive. when testing is needed wipe characters. we transfer over and test for you and then are able to transfer our character back with any progression made. I understand exploits can/will be found, but lets face it what you have now doesn't work.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

We saw it immediately on turning the event on, and it is not on every server.

Is it true that is was rather a "load problem" ? Did Wayfinder have it, too ? I ask because everyone knows that Wayfinder is the least populated server.

Edit : And would new servers with less people make this problem to become smaller ?

[MrElusiveness]

No I'm saying that there is some things that change only when 1000's of people roam about an MMO landscape that are pretty close to impossible to replicate in house--unless they want to give me 1000 testers of course. They do not get replicated on Lama, mournlands or inhouse and sadly only rear their ugly head on live.We saw it immediately on turning the event on, and it is not on every server. We know what the problem is, but the techies have not come up with a good way for QA to create this condition on internal servers...we can only get into this state by what seems like pure luck. If we had a repro-able case, this wouldn't happen. This is yet another symptom of a bug that has bitten us no less than 5 times in the past 2 years. It shows up differently every time. Why? Good question, but I'll make an assumption it is because it is a nasty edge case and when developers attempt to stretch a little more out of this engine it unfortunately rears it's koboldy head again.



Yes they do.

You should go home, download the game, play it and see how crapy it runs. And start a new toon from lvl 4 or 7 (No cheating) Then you would know what needs to be fixed. I mean my god man you are getting paid, we are not. and I direct this to all other dev's as well.

[OrodelaSol]

it breaks, they fix it, thats life...quit crying! unless u r one of the 10 yr olds that everyone seems to not want to party with...this is an online game about wizards and dragons right? when did u first gain interest in that? sorry, tangent...lol adios!

[Pomdude]

All of this has left me very lost :

1. Why can't they jsut turn it on and let us kill the kobolds - they will still be dead - they can reanimate and bingo undead kobolds.

2. Why not start Mabar in Easter - call it the Easter Festival - Kidnap the bunny and have undead pop up all over the marketplace - emerging from ghostly eggs?

I am not surprised they got it wrong - it must have taken them by complete surprise. Halloween ? When's that ? Oh blow me never guessed it would be that soon thought it was at Christmas time ....

I don't know anything about coding etc. but I know a little bit about marketing and delivering products on time.
I love this game but I can only see things like this further damaging Turbine / DDO'd rep. Having seen it die on Europe from poor support I'd really not like to see the same thing happen again.

Difficult I know as you need to promise things for new people / others to keep joining but if you cannot deliver - at what cost ?

Sort it quick please, shoot the hamsters and give me a full set of +4 tomes so I can finally ungimp my toons :)

[Towrn]

You guys should fix this for November 8th, when I get home from my very long working vacation....

Also, My computer was down for most of the summer, so I really haven't been able to play for about 4-5 months, so when I get back you should have a +100% exp month for heroic and epic levels, as a "Welcome back Towrn" party.

Just saying...

:D

[melodysangel]

Enough is enough, guys.

I normally lurk around to see whats going on but will usually not reply...but now I feel compelled to put in my 2 cents worth.

Did you honestly think that everything would go smoothly from the get go? Do you know how it is to sit there, wading through code (or whatever the case may be but im going through personal experience here) tearing your hair out becasue 1) something happened, 2) theres a deadline, and 3) you have pressure from everything else on your tail? So you learn from your past mistakes, fine. But you cant always be ready for everything, whether it was tested or not. Its enough that the enevadable did happen.

Now, I know Sandy is on its way--im in the effected area too. But theyve already said that its going to be extended the number of days its taken down to fix. Is that not adequitte enough? Its late. Sure theres some upset--as is natural--but things happen.

Enjoy the xp bandaid and sit on the sidelines. Let them do their job without the added pressure or stress that they probably already have.

[Heikenmoore]

Alright, enough of the excuses that load caused Mabar to perform incorrectly.

We all know that computer programs are only as good as the people who write them. And guess what, people make mistakes.

But I use to work in the world of programming and we tested our new updates on a clean copy of the program we were updating, and not something like Lammania which has mulitple new updates being tested on it simmultaneously.

We would much prefer you tell the truth and just admit you messed up and that you are working on fixing it.

Lying about it just doesn't cut it with us players who have seen the multiple errors of the years.

[Rainami]

You should go home, download the game, play it and see how crapy it runs. And start a new toon from lvl 4 or 7 (No cheating) Then you would know what needs to be fixed. I mean my god man you are getting paid, we are not. and I direct this to all other dev's as well.

Why don't you try to make a MMO? Seriously, go home download some flavor of programing language and write something(no cheating by copying code!) and you will know what needs to be fixed. (ROTFLMAO, yeah right)
I mean my god man you are NOT getting paid, and greifing for literally no reason.

I direct this at all greifers on this thread!

I work in IT and personally know how things can go sideways for no apparent reason when the are live on a server.

So untill you understand programming and testing you seriously need to keep your mouth shut.
Issues like this cannot be for seen and they are working hard to get things running again.
Therefore your comment is invalid.

By the way dev's Thank you! you're all working so hard to get this up and make it fun for all of us. Keep up the good work and I'm sure Mabar will be great this year.

[EvilGhandi]

I like pie.

That is all.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

I direct this at all greifers on this thread!

Actually, the German verb "greifen" means "to grab" or "to take" (not a polite "taking", though).
And the "Greif" is the German word for the Griffon.

[Kymdriel]

First, thank you for your service. As a wife of a vet I understand some of the feelings associated with short-sighted people. Secondly, although I too am frustrated by not being able to upgrade my cloak, life will go on and I and my husband will continue to play.

Take care and enjoy the game.

Kymdriel



Ok, maybe because I am older than most who are playing, I am confused by all the hate mail that is directed towards the devs. Seriously, do 1000 plus people come to your job when something goes wrong and blame everything that is wrong with their life on the fact that there was an error made. I read some of these post and it's like, man and I thought that I didn't have a life. Now before everyone blasts me for saying that, I don't have life, I am a disabled vet (that's military, not animal doctor. Just to clarify for those who are confused) who spends most of his day playing video games, so I am speaking from experience. We get it, they made a mistake. Hell, they made several mistakes, but seriously, if you don't like and your life is as ruined as you say it is - quit and go someplace else. No one is holding a gun to your head and making you play this game. I have been playing this game for a couple of years now, and yes, there are times that I have been upsed by what has happened, but not enough to log on and blame the sorrows of the world on DDO. All that matters to me is that they acknowledge that they made a mistake or that there is a problem and that they are working on it. The enjoyment that I get from this game far out weighs the problems that occur.

One last thing, before any one decides to jump on my about how you have the right to say what you want, where you want, to who you want. Remember that you only have that right because of me and my fellow service men and women have fought for you to have it and just because you have the right to say something doesn't mean that you should say it.

That's all....so blast away.

Semper Fi[/QUOTE]

[Galeria]

Despite the spewing of hatred that always comes from the DDO community when something goes wrong, I just wanted to let you know that I at least, appreciate the explanation.

It doesn't fix anything, but a little insight to the complexity of the problem does actually make me feel more understanding.

I know you try to communicate with the players and you get dung-slapped by the haters but we don't all feel that way. When you at least make the effort to let us know what's going on, it makes a huge difference in my attitude towards the game.

Thanks, Maj.

[Missing_Minds]

I dont buy that, cause it makes no sense at all.
A switch is a switch is a switch, no matter how many people use it.
It doesnt magically become a door.
Only because you deal with physical switches. Software is described a lot like magic because the truth is when things go wonky, switches can become a door.

Software deals with metaphorical switches not physical switches.

[heart_healer]

hey keep working on mabar, can't wait to see it come up!
i'm really excited to see the new version of the items and all that. looks really good.
you guys have my full support and i just want to let you know that i'm sure you are doing what you can to get this going again. i don't know code, and i chose not to learn it. ;) so i can't imagin what it's like.
keep working hard dev's and good luck!

[Missing_Minds]

Actually, the German verb "greifen" means "to grab" or "to take" (not a polite "taking", though).
And the "Greif" is the German word for the Griffon.
What of pronunciation? Is it pronounced the same as in English?

[michaelw777]

Why don't you try to make a MMO? Seriously, go home download some flavor of programing language and write something(no cheating by copying code!) and you will know what needs to be fixed. (ROTFLMAO, yeah right)
I mean my god man you are NOT getting paid, and greifing for literally no reason.

I direct this at all greifers on this thread!

I work in IT and personally know how things can go sideways for no apparent reason when the are live on a server.

So untill you understand programming and testing you seriously need to keep your mouth shut.
Issues like this cannot be for seen and they are working hard to get things running again.
Therefore your comment is invalid.

By the way dev's Thank you! you're all working so hard to get this up and make it fun for all of us. Keep up the good work and I'm sure Mabar will be great this year.

I fully agree with you and Andoris. Most of the whiners here have no clue as to the complexity of this game. I also agree with Andoris this is largely a management issue and not a Dev issue. This is now made worse by the fact Turbine had to lay off some devs due to restructuring from the parent company. This means the already overflowing plates the devs had to work from just got even more work generously heaped on their plates. Unfortunately for us as players, this likely means problems are going to be addressed even more slowly than before. I've been watching this now for a couple of years on this game. These are my observations:

1) They really do seem intent on creating new content over addressing current bugs. But devs aren't deciding this, management is.
2) Having worked in both Tech Support and Configuration Management, I know that bugs are assigned a priority value. And obviously, they're going to fix higher priority bugs first. Unfortunately, because the focus is so heavily on new content, newer, higher-priority bugs will take precedence over even positively ancient lower-priority bugs. Which means that those complaining about bugs from years ago not getting fixed are right - but to lay that at the feet of the Devs is incorrect. Management needs to understand that a persistent low-level bug is increasingly irritating to the long-term faithful players that continue to encounter them. I would suggest management incorporate a method to automatically increase the priority of a bug based on the time it fails to get fixed.
3) The comment made by another poster that the engine used for this game is now some 6-7 years old I think has merit. More people playing, ever more ambitious quests, new races and classes, all of which must be kept balanced in the game with all the other variables. I'm talking about what the engine can handle, not the programming per se. I don't know, but it certainly seems possible they're flirting with the limits of this particular engine. That's very bad news if true.
4) Related to the new content focus problem is what looks to be sheer ambition as to what Turbine thinks they can accomplish with the bodies they have. I get the feeling the Devs are working in a sweatshop. I'll pass, thanks.
5) I've found Turbine/DDO to be fairly generous in giving out rewards for when mistakes happen. They're also pretty good about owning up to their mistakes. And mistakes always happen; pick a field - any field of human endeavor - and show me the case where mistakes have not happened. Welcome to the human race, folks. I know plenty of companies where you get bupkis for their mistakes, or some canned apology nobody seriously believes anyway. And Maj has shown passionately that he cares deeply about the failures. Give him and the rest of the Devs a break. I play this game a lot, and have spent a fair amount of real money on it - but for crying out loud, it's still only a game. Stop venting here and go do something useful. Why, you could even continue to play your character(s) just like you always did, and check back from time to time on Mabar. There's a concept.

[Dark_Knight_Silver]

I don't buy this response. He gave you an answer. Saying you don't believe the answer doesn't make it magically a lie. That thread about asking whether you would want Turbine to code your life support machine was eye-rollingly dumb. It was like hey! "Would you want General Motors producing your bread-makers and yoga mats?"

I want to see some resumes from users who want to argue with the techie who just took 10 minutes out of his day to try and give you an explanation. It makes no sense for a dev to come on here (when he/she is not obligated to) to feed us lies and risk their jobs when everyone knows layoffs are underway in this biz.

QFT


Alright, enough of the excuses that load caused Mabar to perform incorrectly....blah blah blah...
Lying about it just doesn't cut it with us players who have seen the multiple errors of the years.

Why would they lie? He could easily have just ignored us like Turbine usually does. His response is a perfect example why devs don't tell us anything because somebody, somewhere, somehow will claim they are lying.

Every monster spawns randomly within certain boundaries. There is certainly an amount of randomness & AI in anything the game engine does. Why is it so hard for people to believe that there is a lot of random things that occur in any given action in an MMO on any given server?

(LOL On Any Given Server)

Maybe if we viewed things like a football game...any team can beat any team on any given sunday vs. any given event can happen on any given server.:eek:

[Miow]

I like pie.

That is all.

mmmm pie.

[Missing_Minds]

You should go home, download the game, play it and see how crapy it runs. And start a new toon from lvl 4 or 7 (No cheating) Then you would know what needs to be fixed. I mean my god man you are getting paid, we are not. and I direct this to all other dev's as well.

And as yet, for all your whining, you still don't realize, it isn't the developers that get to choose what gets fixed but managers.

[Braegan]

So we're still going to get Mabar, the time will be extended to cover it not launching on time. We get a 31% xp bonus. And Maj took the time to give a bit of insight as to what's going/went wrong, which I appreciate.

Am I in the minority that is ok with this? Don't get me wrong I want to get my Mabar on too, but it almost feels like we're making out on the deal.

[michaelw777]

And as yet, for all your whining, you still don't realize, it isn't the developers that get to choose what gets fixed but managers.

Exactly. As I just posted a bit ago myself. Great minds think alike.

And keep that sharp,tiny little knife away from me, shorty.

[DarkForte]

Ok, so, let me get this straight: mabar has problems. We ask: what the hell is going on? Then, a guy from QA explains what the issue is, and why it wasn't caught on lama, and the forumites' answer is to attack the dev and treat him like an idiot for giving us info that WE had asked him? Seriously.


So we're still going to get Mabar, the time will be extended to cover it not launching on time. We get a 31% xp bonus. And Maj took the time to give a bit of insight as to what's going/went wrong, which I appreciate.

Am I in the minority that is ok with this? Don't get me wrong I want to get my Mabar on too, but it almost feels like we're making out on the deal.

Maybe, but you're not alone in that.

[michaelw777]

First, thank you for your service. As a wife of a vet I understand some of the feelings associated with short-sighted people. Secondly, although I too am frustrated by not being able to upgrade my cloak, life will go on and I and my husband will continue to play.

Take care and enjoy the game.

Kymdriel



Ok, maybe because I am older than most who are playing, I am confused by all the hate mail that is directed towards the devs. Seriously, do 1000 plus people come to your job when something goes wrong and blame everything that is wrong with their life on the fact that there was an error made. I read some of these post and it's like, man and I thought that I didn't have a life. Now before everyone blasts me for saying that, I don't have life, I am a disabled vet (that's military, not animal doctor. Just to clarify for those who are confused) who spends most of his day playing video games, so I am speaking from experience. We get it, they made a mistake. Hell, they made several mistakes, but seriously, if you don't like and your life is as ruined as you say it is - quit and go someplace else. No one is holding a gun to your head and making you play this game. I have been playing this game for a couple of years now, and yes, there are times that I have been upsed by what has happened, but not enough to log on and blame the sorrows of the world on DDO. All that matters to me is that they acknowledge that they made a mistake or that there is a problem and that they are working on it. The enjoyment that I get from this game far out weighs the problems that occur.

One last thing, before any one decides to jump on my about how you have the right to say what you want, where you want, to who you want. Remember that you only have that right because of me and my fellow service men and women have fought for you to have it and just because you have the right to say something doesn't mean that you should say it.

That's all....so blast away.

Semper Fi[/QUOTE]

Nope, no blasting away here. I agree with you. If blame is to be laid somewhere, it should be with management, not the Devs.

For what it's worth, I was a corpsman attached to the Marines a couple of times, although I was fortunate to miss actual combat. Semper Fi, Marine.

[michaelw777]

Ok, so, let me get this straight: mabar has problems. We ask: what the hell is going on? Then, a guy from QA explains what the issue is, and why it wasn't caught on lama, and the forumites' answer is to attack the dev and treat him like an idiot for giving us info that WE had asked him? Seriously.



Maybe, but you're not alone in that.

Agreed.

[Soul_Power]

They messed up like they always do with Mabar, but their biggest folly was letting people sit around the graveyard for literally hours (even up to a day) waiting for it without giving us a heads up to stop chilling in the graveyard. That's crying over spilled milk though. I'm not gonna quit the game because of this, but I'm certainly not going to rage on for 25+ pages of forums because of this either and neither should any of you. Just chill and wait for Mabar, it's not like you're the one who has to work on it.

[MrElusiveness]

And as yet, for all your whining, you still don't realize, it isn't the developers that get to choose what gets fixed but managers.

all my whining? from one post? looks like other's are whining about my post. LOL and it isnt that I dont realize who gets to choose what, Its just that I dont care who gets too. Iam a paying end user. So no more talk about how they need more testers was my point. And If i had a project I was working on to fix all the bugs, I defently would be loading the game up and playing it at home as home-work or something. But they get paid to work on a game that we all play. So, no more excuses. :P

Ohh and on another note: as far as poor little dev's quality of work being hempered by the big mean boss story, You must like the taste of that bs you are trying to shovel to me. But Iam not buying it. Infact ill bet that the dev's are doing all they can in the time they put in each day. :attempt to fix something over here and opps broke a few others things but dam didnt fix the main problem oops back to the drawing board. lmao.

[countfitz]

I dont buy that, cause it makes no sense at all.
A switch is a switch is a switch, no matter how many people use it.
It doesnt magically become a door.
yeah it could break but that can be bypassed with limiting access.

So either you used the worst metaphor ive ever seen or you try to **** with me.

Wow. The level of ignorance in this post is astounding. ****, the guy didn't even use a metaphor. That example actually happened.

God, to think this is what people think goes on in computers, that a "switch" is a switch or a "door" is a door, like Tron or something.

P.S. Tron was a movie, that isn't how computers work.

[MrElusiveness]

wow. The level of ignorance in this post is astounding. ****, the guy didn't even use a metaphor. That example actually happened.

God, to think this is what people think goes on in computers, that a "switch" is a switch or a "door" is a door, like tron or something.

P.s. Tron was a movie, that isn't how computers work.

lol

[countfitz]

You should go home, download the game, play it and see how crapy it runs. And start a new toon from lvl 4 or 7 (No cheating) Then you would know what needs to be fixed. I mean my god man you are getting paid, we are not. and I direct this to all other dev's as well.

What the **** do you do for a living that you think someone wants to then do it when they get home? Unless you're a pornstar, in which case...

[Paladinsmight]

After reading 25 pages, of mostly ****, complaining, and a few good points, and not finding the answer to my question I will finally post.

I would honestly like to know if you have an idea as to which day next week we could be looking at for the return of maybar. Wednessday? Tuesday? Monday? or do you still not know?

I've been looking forward to this festival for a long while and would like to know about what day I could expect to see it's return, I'm not asking what time of day or anything like that, just what day of the week.

If you could please answer my question I would be whole heartedly greatful.

[jhypsyshah]

Maybe next year, we could make some of those motivational, crunch-time posters with a Maybar Fest' Theme and post them up everywhere. XD

[psi0nix]

The Mabar Festival of Endless Night is now available!

Got a little confused about seeing this . . .

It's not available, or is it ? or isn't it.......

I don't mind waiting, it's not major thing to wait, but it helps when the information is clear.

Don't have one section saying it's delayed, then directly underneath something that says "it's available".

It looks like the post was updated and it's available. But it's not, lol.

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

Wow. The level of ignorance in this post is astounding. ****, the guy didn't even use a metaphor. That example actually happened.

God, to think this is what people think goes on in computers, that a "switch" is a switch or a "door" is a door, like Tron or something.

P.S. Tron was a movie, that isn't how computers work.

yeah the door having the properties of a mushroom was a real bug. It was on Crystal Cove if I remember right. That was no metaphor.

[Lucarr]

I'm going to be that ass... You can't give anything your 110%. You just can't. Even 101% means you are making an effort beyond your actual capacity. It's mathmatically impossible. If you give more than what you thought you could give, everything you've got, that's 100%. If your effort output has increased, you need to recalibrate, so what you before called 100% effort, should now be seen as 91% effort.



Ok really. I just have to say it. What exactly was the purpose of this other than just making a pointless comment about a saying thats been around for god knows how long, and attempting to make yourself sound smart by breaking it down mathematically to prove why it cant be done. All that was accomplished was taking up space with words and numbers pulled out ya backside.

On topic now. This is actually a relief to me. I've not be able to access the game since the last maintenance due to some sort of bug caused by it. Hopefully by the time mabar is fixed my bug will be too seeing as the devs have completely ignored my ticket and forum post about it asking for help.

[GeneralDiomedes]

yeah the door having the properties of a mushroom was a real bug. It was on Crystal Cove if I remember right. That was no metaphor.

There has to be a joke with doors and rooms in there somewhere.

[oradafu]

In my home, mushrooms and doors can both be found ajar.

[Osharan_Tregarth]

Is it true that is was rather a "load problem" ? Did Wayfinder have it, too ? I ask because everyone knows that Wayfinder is the least populated server.



Ya, but the server couldn't handle all ten of you in the graveyard at once! :p

[Osharan_Tregarth]

Am I in the minority that is ok with this? Don't get me wrong I want to get my Mabar on too, but it almost feels like we're making out on the deal.

I'm good.

I wasn't planning on running mabar anyway, and NOW I get bonus xp in the bargain, without having to put up with the mabar induced server lagging. It's a win-win situation!!

I'm kinda hoping they mess up the cove in the same way, I've still got five more lives to go on my project!

[tekn0mage]

shameless plug for a post about Crystal Cove!!!

[donfilibuster]

They do not get replicated on Lama, mournlands or inhouse and sadly only rear their ugly head on live.We saw it immediately on turning the event on, and it is not on every server. We know what the problem is, but the techies have not come up with a good way for QA to create this condition on internal servers...we can only get into this state by what seems like pure luck. If we had a repro-able case, this wouldn't happen.
How about previewing on live?

If it's about the load on live then just turn it on and call it a preview.
After all, the event would be turned on at the given date anyways.

I faintly recall one of the events having an early preview on its first time, can't remember if it was mabar or cove.
It'd give enough room to schedule a fix if problems arise.

Perhaps turning it on but with the doors closed to the public?
That'd allow a quick check, or maybe do both, load it closed for checking then do the preview to the public.
The instance might get less load than the real first day but seeing all the campers would say otherwise.

Players would know that it was the early period and not the real event.
It'd save a lot of confusion and players can schedule accordingly.

And if it becomes an habit, people would know and expect the previews without much problem.
The benefit of having the real event not close due to unexpected problems would be huge.

[Pantronic]

2) Having worked in both Tech Support and Configuration Management, I know that bugs are assigned a priority value. And obviously, they're going to fix higher priority bugs first. Unfortunately, because the focus is so heavily on new content, newer, higher-priority bugs will take precedence over even positively ancient lower-priority bugs. Which means that those complaining about bugs from years ago not getting fixed are right - but to lay that at the feet of the Devs is incorrect. Management needs to understand that a persistent low-level bug is increasingly irritating to the long-term faithful players that continue to encounter them. I would suggest management incorporate a method to automatically increase the priority of a bug based on the time it fails to get fixed.


In my company, we also have to prioritise new bugs over technical debt, however, we do gradually deal with old bugs by trying to fix at least one old bug in every release. And that is more or less a successful strategy, sometimes we fix 5 or 6 at once, and sometimes we don't fix any because there is something else so critical that everyone has to focus on that. But it's very important to have a policy of clearing technical debt, and you are absolutely right, devs have little control over policy.