The Weekly Development Activities

[Patience]

Hi everyone! We wanted to take a few moments to talk about the Weekly Dev Activities, and let you all know that we’ve made the decision to cease publishing them. We understand that this won’t be a popular decision with many of you, but after careful evaluation, this is a change that ultimately benefits DDO and you, our players. It’s a bit ironic that it’s good changes for DDO that led to this decision!

We know you’ll have questions about why the WDA is going away, so we’ve tried to put together a Q&A to try to answer them.

Q: Why is the WDA going away?
A: There are two critical factors that went into the decision, so let’s talk about them a little:

The first is that following the completion of Module 7, the DDO development team has been working full-tilt on several things that are still under tight wraps. This means we’re unable to include them in the WDA – making it next to useless.

More importantly, though, is that DDO will be getting more and more focus from Turbine’s marketing and PR teams over the coming months. This renewed focus has already begun, in fact, and you may have noticed an increase in the publicity for DDO. This is a good thing! The pickle is that as time goes on, we will be getting even more press coverage for the game; this means that we’ll need to offer exclusives to the media about things that are coming up next for DDO – things that as a result cannot be included in the WDA.

Q: What will I do without the WDA?
A: We’ll still be bringing you other activities in the coming weeks. The developers and community team will still be here on the forums answering questions, gathering feedback, and bringing updates about the game. More contests will be run, the Tell the Community Team thread will still be ongoing, the Bug Hunter lodge is still open for business, and we’ll be bringing even more information and articles to the Compendium! Keep your eyes on the News and Announcements, as well as the Dev Tracker, for updates and information! You can also visit DDO.com to keep abreast on the latest DDO happenings.

Q. Without the WDA, how will I know what’s coming next for DDO?
A: You’ll still find out what’s going on for DDO, but it won’t be quite as real-time as it was (and to be honest, there was lots the WDA left out too). Besides the aforementioned press coverage, which will include articles and interviews, we’ll be bringing you dev diaries and overviews of what’s coming up. The development and community teams will still be on the forums, answering questions when they can. The WDA might be going away, but the teams’ dedication to you is as strong as ever.

Q: What are these top secret things you mentioned?
A: They are top secret. In time we will bring you more information, but currently we’re not at liberty to discuss them. If we told you, we’d have to… well, you know.

Q: But I liked the WDA! Why won’t there be another WDA?
A: We know that this will be an unpopular change for some of you, and bringing information to you is very important to us. This is not the end of communication between our players and the team; this is the beginning of new ways of information dissemination that promotes the game and helps to grow it even further. This is a new and exciting time in DDO’s life, with lots more to come!

[Yaga_Nub]

Wow, I didn't see this coming.

EDIT: If I take my post down asking about this week's WDA can we get them back?

[Impaqt]

How bout a State of the Game address then?

This, Most Likely, Is a terrible decision. We've been promised better dev communication int he past and after a few days it seems to dry up. We get PR People on the Site that DO their best to dodge our questions.....

Codogs and Silthes Threads are so huge at this point many things get missed. PM's go unanswered.....

-sigh-

Sad day for DDO indeed.

(I hope I'm Proven wrong though)

[Missing_Minds]

I don't suppose that the weekly WDA is gone Turbine could fill in the gap with Monthly live events?

[Coldin]

I'm sad about this change. It was nice having a weekly source of news about what was coming next in terms of bug fixes and additions. I only hope that this means production of DDO is ramping up, instead of winding down.

[Arcanoid]

Long time user, first time whiner....

One of my highlights of each monday is reading these and seeing where the game is going.

Heading back to secret and obscure releases of information is hardly an exciting step forward.

Keep your secret stuff secret, ignore those who say "why aren't you doing more, theres nothing good coming" but keep us up to date on the little stuff. Its still good to read about the small bug fixes and ability changes etc...

respectfully, this sucks and bad decision.

Arcanoid

[Freeman]

How about a weekly update on the status of bug fixes that will be coming up? I don't think you're going to be giving any media exclusives on those. Without something like that(And the "Known Issues" are rarely updated and don't cover many of the bugs), we're going to end up with bug posts scattered all around and no idea if they are being addressed.

[Tolero]

How about a weekly update on the status of bug fixes that will be coming up? I don't think you're going to be giving any media exclusives on those. Without something like that(And the "Known Issues" are rarely updated and don't cover many of the bugs), we're going to end up with bug posts scattered all around and no idea if they are being addressed.

Silthe and the rest of us are still prowling around. The hubs of bugdome will be the Bug Hunter Lodge and the Known Issues lists (Don't worry, we're moving all the Mod 7 knowns over to the current sticky, and will continue to update the list as usual). Silthe is still actively reading/investigating things brought to the Bug Hunger Lodge.

[Angelus_dead]

The hubs of bugdome will be the Bug Hunter Lodge and the Known Issues lists (Don't worry, we're moving all the Mod 7 knowns over to the current sticky, and will continue to update the list as usual).

That's unfortunate, because the "usual" updates of the bug list are not close to adequate.

I mean, the Known Issues still says Module 6 is the current release... not only was it not updated for mod7, it wasn't even updated for update 6.1. And of course I could probably think of unlisted bugs at the rate of 1/minute and keep it up for an hour.

PS. It's also a great help to have a "Non-Bug List": features that frequently surprise players into thinking something is wrong, but are actually as intended. That list combined with updated known bugs can improve the quality of your incoming bug reports.

[Elsiah]

typically i try to be a positive poster, but this is cause for a bit of complaining. I mean, i understand that some things need to be under wraps for you PR, that i get. But not posting the state of fixes, state of bug repairs, etc. is silly. sure, keep the big shiny new things secret. give us the mundane items that mean nothing to anyone outside the game. I thrive on the WDA, i like knowing what is and isn't going into the next mod, even if it's just minutae. Please come up with some new weekly or bi-weekly post letting us know the state of the non-secret stuff.

[WeaselKing]

Silthe and the rest of us are still prowling around. The hubs of bugdome will be the Bug Hunter Lodge and the Known Issues lists (Don't worry, we're moving all the Mod 7 knowns over to the current sticky, and will continue to update the list as usual). Silthe is still actively reading/investigating things brought to the Bug Hunger Lodge.

But not Q, eh? Well we will miss you Quarion, I hope you have moved on to bigger and better things, though what could be bigger and better than DDO, I don't know. ;D

Oh yeah, and Monday mornings at work just got more depressing. :'(

[Coldin]

Oh yeah, and Monday mornings at work just got more depressing. :'(

QFT

[thatguy]

Turbine clearly did not appear to have the community in mind when this was decision was made. They never even asked us.

[bobbryan2]

Silthe and the rest of us are still prowling around. The hubs of bugdome will be the Bug Hunter Lodge and the Known Issues lists (Don't worry, we're moving all the Mod 7 knowns over to the current sticky, and will continue to update the list as usual). Silthe is still actively reading/investigating things brought to the Bug Hunger Lodge.

Are devs planning on posting more often without leaving 2-3 months in between posts?

You are eventually gonna have dinosaurs... on this dinosaur tour?

[ArkoHighStar]

If we can't have new features etc, at least let us have the bugs that have made it through QA, so that we know they are being addressed, or are you trying to market bug fixes as well

[tihocan]

Silthe and the rest of us are still prowling around. The hubs of bugdome will be the Bug Hunter Lodge and the Known Issues lists (Don't worry, we're moving all the Mod 7 knowns over to the current sticky, and will continue to update the list as usual). Silthe is still actively reading/investigating things brought to the Bug Hunger Lodge.

I really hope some effort is done to improve these areas then, because unfortunately, the Bug Hunter Lodge and the Known Issues list are not updated regularly enough to be reliable sources of information. Interaction with devs is rather scarce, and the WDAs provided a great way to learn what was being worked on. Since you read the forums you probably know that there are many questions asked by people for which the answer was a simply "just look into the WDAs". Now it's going to suck to tell people "hmm I think I heard PC Gamer had an exclusive sneak-peek into this feature you are asking about, go buy it in stores".

Overall I'm rather disappointed to see the WDAs go away, but I'm hoping this will be balanced by an increase in dev communication on forums. If not, then bleh

[szalkerous]

...

One of my highlights of each monday is reading these and seeing where the game is going.

...

Arcanoid

I have to quote this and agree fully. My Mondays were always spent like a kid on Christmas. You've effectively told me there's no Santa Claus. I'm heartbroken.

BUT

What's good for the goose is good for the gander, and I expect this change as a fundamental indicator that our beloved game will be getting advertised and pushed harder by Turbine, resulting in more players, and an increase in development quantity as well as quality. My dreams run wild with the "secret" possibilities... please don't disappoint.

-Sz

[GreyRogue]

Hmm. I don't like this very much, but I guess I see your point about the exclusives and so on. I'll probably be ok as long as there is still some communication about what sorts of things are coming up. For example, letting devs leak something like "quivers are coming in Mod 7." I don't think Ten Ton Hammer cares about that as an exclusive, but it is something that a lot of players were able to look forward to.

[Patience]

Hmm. I don't like this very much, but I guess I see your point about the exclusives and so on. I'll probably be ok as long as there is still some communication about what sorts of things are coming up. For example, letting devs leak something like "quivers are coming in Mod 7." I don't think Ten Ton Hammer cares about that as an exclusive, but it is something that a lot of players were able to look forward to.

Yup, things like that will still show up here and there. Things we can answer, we will. This is NOT a wall of silence coming down - we just have to change the way and rate at which information is released!

-Meghan

[creithne]

Will we be seeing a state of the game address any time soon? This was supposed to have been delivered a while ago, if memory serves me correctly...so in light of the demise of WDAs, will we get thrown a bone of the State of the Game Address we were supposed to be getting?