MajorMal, Rowan, who's in charge now?

[HAL]

Farewell is said by the living, in life, every day. It is said with love and friendship, with the affirmation that the memories are lasting if the flesh is not.-Drizzt

It was fun over the past 3+ years, I'm still reading so BEHAVE!

See you in the Realms! - Maj.

DDO is the red-headed stepchild - LotRO gets all the good things

Bye Mal - good luck.

[Captain_Wizbang]

Farewell is said by the living, in life, every day. It is said with love and friendship, with the affirmation that the memories are lasting if the flesh is not.-Drizzt

It was fun over the past 3+ years, I'm still reading so BEHAVE!

See you in the Realms! - Maj.

The only realms you'll see me in is Forgotten Realms.



And if you must quote Drizzt, " Because for change to be lasting among reasoning creatures, that change must be for the better.

Lets hope the highlighted is the case. ( I don't have as much faith in turbine right now, sorry.)

[HungarianRhapsody]

For anyone who didn't get to read his producer letter from the "other side":
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...troduce-myself

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of (no) wealth and (very little )taste
I've been around Turbine for a long, long year
Worked with many a man's kobold's and capes.
And I was 'round when Moria shipped
Working with Russia and Spain (ok France, but that doesn't rhyme)
Moved on to DDO
played with Lloth as she laid waste.
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
I stuck around through Shadowfell
When I saw it was a time for a change
Left QA for Producer land
and Rowan made the change....

My dear Bagginses and Boffins, Tooks and Brandybucks, Grubbs, Chubbs, Hornblowers, Bolgers, Bracegirdles and Proudfoots. To the race of men, elves under the sky and dwarves in their halls of stone.
My name is Produktion Malphunktion. I've been around Turbine for about 6 years. I used to run localization for all the franchises back in the Codemasters days.
I moved on to Dungeons and Dragons Online and ran QA through a couple of expansions. I recently made the jump to producer, and Rowan then moved me from Faerun to Middle Earth.
I'll be the new live producer going forward, and you will here from me every now and again.
I do read forums often, I may not always speak, but I love to see what players think, and what ideas they have for the game, and with my QA background what is driving you crazy.



Here is a little novella about his career so far….

“It all started in the summer of 1979. I played an elf, with 4 hit points and was killed by a poison spider. The life long obsession with games began. Thank you Gary Gygax and mom my first Dungeon Master.

But I had another love, film and television. I was a Star Trek fan practically from birth,and Star Wars made me an obsessive movie nut.

Both of these loves formed my strange path to my new job.

I went to Clark university for psychology and philosophy but spent more time taking film appreciation classes. I transferred to a small community college known for television production. After 2 very intense years I started my career in TV as a cameraman/editor. I specialized in long form stories with no narration..ie no reporter to screw it up. After a few months I became the station director. Yep, 24 years old, directing a newscast, setting the on air look, rigging the studio, doing live events and NCAA sports and well, running the whole thing. Won a few awards, nominated for a few others, but it paid poorly.
I moved on to WB 56, yes this my second time on the WB train as just an editor. The OJ happened. I became disillusioned where news was going. I was still kicking but, I was nominated for two Emmy awards in editing but my heart was no longer in it. Around this time I discovered Doom. The First game that made me fall out of my chair. I was obsessed. You know how people complain about 14.99 monthly to play an MMO? I was paying over 200 a month to deathmatch. Yes calling in long distance to play a game. I saw in Doom and later in Quake the future. Passive entertainment was about to become a dinosaur. I wanted a piece of this.
I quit TV to be "freelance" but really I was spending most of my time building Quake levels, maps for Warcraft...and dreaming. A fortuitous meeting with a developer in McDonald's got me a job at Looking Glass Studios. I worked in QA for Thief-the real one, Thief gold, Thief II and System Shock 2. I was QA lead on Flight Unlimited III, and did a bunch of guerrilla design to finish the game after the producers and lead designer quit. No patch on that game thank you very much.
I became a designer on Jane's flight combat, I needed to design a full campaign for D-Day and the invasion of France. 10 missions in 6 weeks. Needless to say I didn't sleep much. Sadly LGS went out of business and I was starting a family so...
My journey took me back to QA. I worked on a 'digital non linear editor for television broadcast' (like Final Cut Pro ) and a streaming video system that allowed people to work with HD video in real time. My product was running CNN, NBC News, The BBC world news a ton of local stations..sadly that integrated system did a fair job of destroying newsrooms across the world. Sorry about that.

It was miserable. They hated me. I didn't like them very much either. I became a Kung fu artist during this time so I could hit things.

5 years ago I got a call from Turbine to lead the international QA team. It was interesting to say the least. I moved to lead of DDO QA, then promoted to manager. In that time I've shipped 8 major updates and 2 expansion packs. I jsut spent a few months as producer on DDO, and now for the next challenge!

[HungarianRhapsody]

Also, DOOOOooooOOOOM!

[Grimlock]

And so it begins.

[Ovrad]

Already?!?!

Geez, how bad of a state is DDO in that everyone instantly bails? ...

[Mercureal]

Farewell is said by the living, in life, every day. It is said with love and friendship, with the affirmation that the memories are lasting if the flesh is not.-Drizzt

It was fun over the past 3+ years, I'm still reading so BEHAVE!

See you in the Realms! - Maj.

Well-played, I doubt any saw this coming. And I'm sure that there will be a bit of weeping and tooth-gnashing in following days, here and in the "other" forum.

(You know the one I mean)

[jalont]

Already?!?!

Geez, how bad of a state is DDO in that everyone instantly bails? ...

That would be one awesome job. I would love to tell my boss, no, I don't think I'll be doing this job anymore. I'm going to be doing that one instead.

Of course, that's probably not what happened here either.

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

Already?!?!

Geez, how bad of a state is DDO in that everyone instantly bails? ...

Instantly? I was on the game for almost 4 years.

[Cleanincubus]

Seriously, who's in charger now? Is this person actually going to stick around as lead Producer (under Vyvyanne) for more than an update? No public announcement made over here about who the "new" Producer is? Especially after this horribly buggy release that was shoved out before it was ready (not even a public apology, might I add).

[Ovrad]

Instantly? I was on the game for almost 4 years.

As QA yes.

I'm not mad at you MajMal, but I'm very pessimistic about the future of DDO.

[BOgre]

Instantly? I was on the game for almost 4 years.

You're defending yourself? Don't bother. Nothing you do will make you come off anything but bad. It will feel like an abandonment no matter what you say. Especially so soon after a bug ridden update and a cash grabby Airship fiasco.

Just make a clean break and get on with your new job.

[jalont]

Seriously, who's in charger now? Is this person actually going to stick around as lead Producer (under Vyvyanne) for more than an update? No public announcement made over here about who the "new" Producer is? Especially after this horribly buggy release that was shoved out before it was ready (not even a public apology, might I add).

Every update this game has ever had has been "shoved out" while it was horribly buggy. This is true of all complex games from DDO to AAA multi-million dollar IPs like Elder Scrolls.

[jalont]

You're defending yourself? Don't bother. Nothing you do will make you come off anything but bad. It will feel like an abandonment no matter what you say. Especially so soon after a bug ridden update and a cash grabby Airship fiasco.

Just make a clean break and get on with your new job.

You... you do know employees do what their employers tell them, correct? Are you old enough to have had a job?

[Psiandron]

You... you do know employees do what their employers tell them, correct? Are you old enough to have had a job?

Well, I'd say that one of us failed his sarcasm check.


Maj,
Best of luck in your move across the office, or whatever. And, ofc, thanks for all the fish.

[BOgre]

You... you do know employees do what their employers tell them, correct? Are you old enough to have had a job?

I don't see how this comment has anything to do with what I'm telling him.

Also, from earlier in the thread:

Well, I'm sure he had little choice. Told to move: moved. But yeah, a word or two about what's going on would have been nice. Oh, well. If he's going to be that disloyal and fickle, fine.

Who's on deck? Batter UP!

So.... yeah, all I'm saying is there's no point in his trying to defend himself to us right now. It's not going to change the perception, and he's better off just moving on.

[Cleanincubus]

Every update this game has ever had has been "shoved out" while it was horribly buggy. This is true of all complex games from DDO to AAA multi-million dollar IPs like Elder Scrolls.

True, but not all have had this many problem right at release...just roughly a 3rd of them. But honestly I expected a little better when the head of QA was named Producer. Clearly my expectations, verse knowing the reality of things, was far too high. Live and learn I suppose.

[Thumbed_Servant]

He was only 2 or 3 months ago made Live Producer for DDO!?!

Sigh, so much goes on behind the scenes that we never see, but this to me is an example of what makes us unhappy. Lack-of-Continuity.

I don't mean they can't or shouldn't change staff and/or move people around when needed...I mean there is an almost visible annual shift in direction with things in DDO...random loot, focus on elevating different classes, etc, and to me this comes from moving people around/changing people too often. Two to three months in the position and they move him? Why?

And Produktion_Malphunktion...you had time to compose a poem and a long introduction forum letter in LoTRO, but couldn't take a moment to post notice here that you left? Truly sir were you afraid of the reaction so much? One of the few but constant criticisms of DDO staff is LACK of communication and you seemed to champion more communication...except this time?

BAH, poorly done this is

[dunklezhan]

Sad panda, for many reasons, not least of which is just that I have faith in Mal's general decision making and reasoning, and now that ability won't be on DDO, it'll be on LOTRO.

LOTRO is everything I want from an MMO in terms of lore and depth... and everything I don't want in terms of grindy mechanics and especially gameplay. I've tried it, I really really tried it, I desperately wanted it to be my new MMO. But although I was still very interested in digging out lore and chasing down storylines, I was bored of playing by L25... and came back to DDO, where even now I'm not bored of the combat, because combat can go so many different ways here, even if everything is essentially just a question of DPS, and the lore is fairly impenetrable (and certainly not impression-making in general).

But I think it's going to be hard to recruit talent to that job from outside Turbine at present, given the rumourmill of DDO's future, and it's age in general. Someone would have to be promoted up or transferred in, and in the former that's someone else not working on doing things who would have to be replaced and that replacement trained and brought up to speed on the game engine's little foibles (oh look, something's broken a storage-related-mechanic again....), and in the latter case... would they even be invested in the game at all? Mal has been here for years, whether we saw him on the public forums or not to start with, his QA role gave the community some assurance about attention to detail when he took over (meaning we knew things would still be buggy, but I at least had some faith that no-one would want to disappoint the producer who used to run QA, so new bugs might actually get fixed at least...).

Don't begrudge Mal his new job at all, but no, all is not fine.

[Vellrad]

Lotro is even in worse shape than DDO, I know its hard to bellive, but its true.

Lotro level cap raid/dungeons are about standing on walls of helms deep, using catapults, setting traps and healing NPCs while they kill trash.