Bug Reporting on Lamannia

[KookieKobold]

As part of the process for updates on Lamannia you are going to run into bugs. You might find something that doesn't look quite right, or come across a change doesn't work the way it is described in the release notes for the update. When you find something that you consider a bug, the best way to help make sure it comes to the attention of the development team is to submit that bug into the bug reporting system.

How to Submit a Bug on Lamannia
You can report bugs relating to Lamannia in two different ways:

From in-game, use standard 'Help' links, just as you would on the Live servers, to get to the 'Report a Bug' link (in the lower right-hand corner).
From any web browser you can submit a bug using the 'Submit a Bug' link underneath the forum masthead.


In either case, when recording your bug simply choose 'Lamannia' from the server list to make sure the report goes to the correct place.

What Happens to Bug Reports?
When you submit a bug report relating to the Lamannia server it does not go into a dark abyss. It goes into a queue which the Lamannia Coordinator reads through. When processing the bugs the Coordinator performs an initial 'triage'. During this triage the bugs are split into different groups: blocking and critical issues, duplicate reports and known issues, general issues, and lower priority issues.

Once a bug gets an initial triage status set, it then goes through a number of processes where QA staff try and replicate the bug, add any additional information they have, and then move it on to a queue (normally either to the development team, or to a closed status). From that point it goes into our normal bug handling process.

Well, I reported it on the forums
When browsing through the forums I'll often see a comment in a post that starts 'Bug -- ' followed by an actual bug (or even just a comment in a list of other items that says 'might be a bug'). I'll then look into the bug reports and find that it was never recorded internally as a bug. While the forums might seem to be the best place to report a bug because it's easier/that's the only place the devs will see it/etc. that just isn't true. I do go through forums scanning for unreported bugs, those bugs normally take longer to get into the QA/development process, and may not get noticed at all depending on the volume of posts on the forum or how they are written. The best way to ensure your bug is seen is by submitting it as an actual bug.

Bah. It doesn't matter. Bugs from Lamannia never get fixed
The development team is very responsive to bug reports that come in from Lamannia. For each new release to Lamannia a set of new release notes are generated listing those bugs that were fixed in the build. It is absolutely true that not every bug reported on Lamannia will get fixed before the release goes Live. But we make an effort to resolve as many high impact bug as possible. If the issue was never submitted by a player through the bug reporting tools, the chance it will get resolved before release goes down dramatically. In many cases bug reports that crawl in late in the process are still queued up for the next patch! Keep sending those bug reports, we want them!