The Weekly Development Activities

[WeaselKing]

First of all, good to hear that some marketing is beginning to happen.

Secondly, glad to hear you're secretly working full tilt on druids!

Yup and I heard that only warforged will get to be druids and they will add darkleaf (?) and unarmored body feats.


Oh and the chance to choose the Warforged Scout body type.

[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.

[Dark_Helmet]

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!

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.

Well, I know that providing "exclusives" will give you more marketing and reviews published, but the loss to existing customers will start a riot (people already were complaining that press releases were describing things that weren't acknowledged here). Completely new developments may be kept under wraps and tied to NDAs, but fixing existing issues should always be published.

I really think you need to have SOMETHING published weekly, so two suggestions:
1) List of Known Bugs updated each week just like the WDA. The existing thread is too hard to read, and we want a weekly summary of bugs acknowledged (e.g. Blade Barrier only doing damage once ever for a mob: not working as intended).
2) List of intended functions. Things reported as bugs that are not considered bugs (e.g. Firewall working as intended).

This will help on two fronts: The users will be happier to see acknowledgement of a problem and it would be worked on; Turbine will have less bug reports to sift through and threads that they have to monitor where users are fighting over how it should work.

More communication is better.

[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?

[MageLL]

I only have one question. Which in turn will answer a ton of other questions I have.

Does this in any way shape or form have to do with the recent news that Turbin is planning expansion of DDO to the Asian markets?

[Dimicron]

Personally, I'm not interested in reading about things third-hand. The only thing I rely on the media for is reviews to buy new games. With Turbine now only talking to the media... I have to ask: Is there a subtle hint there?

The WDA was a very important bit of communication that we had from the game devs... now you're taking that away too? We have little enough communication with them as it is!

Bad decision here. You guys are making it difficult to stay happy with this game, remember you guys are almost doing the equivalent of steering a big ship. Kindly dodge the icebergs please. (The following is best if read in Alan Rickman's voice from "Galaxy Quest")Believe it or not, the object is not to hit every last one

[Ghoste]

Yup and I heard that only warforged will get to be druids and they will add darkleaf (?) and unarmored body feats.


Oh and the chance to choose the Warforged Scout body type.

Darkleaf? You mean ironwood body?

Scout is a race, not a feat.

[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

[BurnerD]

I had a long post written, but decided it was a waste of bits and bytes.

This is a step backward with your CURRENT player base. I hope most of us are still around for the top secret stuff....

[Lorien_the_First_One]

Uh huh...looks like Turbine lack of communication is dropping to an all time low...

99% of the WDA is of use to players, but irrelivent to outside magazines. I mean do you really thing they care about a reduction in the AP cost for Uberfighterenhancement II? Nice excuse, but I don't buy it at all. This is simply a decision to reduce communications with the player community for your own reasons and nothing to do with outside advertising.

And if you really do think the WDA threatens outside advertising...you need a new advertising dept cause they don't have a clue...

[thatguy]

Personally, I'm not interested in reading about things third-hand. The only thing I rely on the media for is reviews to buy new games. With Turbine now only talking to the media... I have to ask: Is there a subtle hint there?

The WDA was a very important bit of communication that we had from the game devs... now you're taking that away too? We have little enough communication with them as it is!

Bad decision here. You guys are making it difficult to stay happy with this game, remember you guys are almost doing the equivalent of steering a big ship. Kindly dodge the icebergs please. Believe it or not, the object is not to hit every last one

Did you say Icebergs?

[thatguy]

Uh huh...looks like Turbine lack of communication is dropping to an all time low...

99% of the WDA is of use to players, but irrelivent to outside magazines. I mean do you really thing they care about a reduction in the AP cost for Uberfighterenhancement II? Nice excuse, but I don't buy it at all. This is simply a decision to reduce communications with the player community for your own reasons and nothing to do with outside advertising.

And if you really do think the WDA threatens outside advertising...you need a new advertising dept cause they don't have a clue...

I agree, BRING BACK THE WDA!

[Gennerik]

Excuse me, Patience, but is it at least possible to get a sticky post that has released information that gets updated/reviewed weekly (even though it may not have anything new each week) to at least help players keep track of information that has been released to the public without having to search the entire Internet in order to find it. So many things get said on the forums that even without the WDA, it would still be nice to see a single location that has all the information that has been released to the public.

[Riddikulus]

Uh huh...looks like Turbine lack of communication is dropping to an all time low...

99% of the WDA is of use to players, but irrelivent to outside magazines. I mean do you really thing they care about a reduction in the AP cost for Uberfighterenhancement II? Nice excuse, but I don't buy it at all. This is simply a decision to reduce communications with the player community for your own reasons and nothing to do with outside advertising.

And if you really do think the WDA threatens outside advertising...you need a new advertising dept cause they don't have a clue...

Translation of Patience's statement:

Quarion {was canned / reassigned | retired | quit } 3 weeks ago and I don't want to try to figure out how to keep track of all this nitty gritty stuff.

[Dimicron]

Did you say Icebergs?

Shiny!

Ok, they should dodge the big floaty icy thingies in the ocean. Not well crafted modules from history

[Zippo79]

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!

I did?

[Pellegro]

This is unfortunate, as increased Turbine to player feedback has constantly and consistently been cited as a concern of the playerbase.

Only time will tell whether or not the substitute avenues for information dissemination prove to be adequate to meet the playerbase's needs.

Here's to hoping that it will work out for the best ....

[Hokiewa]

lmao yet another reason my sub is not going to be renewed......We asked for MORE communication, not less. The actual truth is DDO is shutting down. No more mods, no more nothing til everyone leaves.

Again, what a ****ing joke!

[Yaga_Nub]

Did you say Icebergs?

Gamma World!

There should be a MMO based off of Gamma World.