Downtime Notice: 3:30 PM - 6:00 PM Eastern (-5 GMT) Thursday, December 8th

[Cordovan]

UPDATE: The game worlds have reopened.

The DDO game worlds will be unavailable from 3:30 PM - 6:00 PM Eastern (-5 GMT) TODAY (Thursday, December 8th) for a hotfix. Thank you for your patience, and we will see you back in the game soon!

[Cordovan]

We do not have release notes for today's hotfix. The work done today will correct an exploitable game bug.

[Eltronin]

Oh thank god the servers are down, I didn't miss enough game play yesterday. Lets hope the servers can come down for another couple days, I mean why not test product before release when you can just fix it after release and keep players from playing.

[dogbreath68]

This whole game is exploitable so why worry about it now? This game is on a serious decline. Been here since the beginning, and its the last 5 years that have really just gone in the crapper.

[Kerria]

Ok I understand things going wrong, but every patch, update and new release? It is really time to get some working quality control and stop pushing out changes that end up causing these unplanned server drops.

[dogbreath68]

Ok I understand things going wrong, but every patch, update and new release? It is really time to get some working quality control and stop pushing out changes that end up causing these unplanned server drops.

Its not enough to speak up, because they know you and everyone else will be back. Stop the vip memberships, stop the store buys. That's how you get a corporation to listen, you take away their income. Words obviously mean very little to nothing to this company. I am not wrong here.

[Arkat]

[Volarr]

We do not have release notes for today's hotfix. The work done today will correct an exploitable game bug.

Hot to fix this one since we could exploit it huh. Just plain sad how you treat those who love and support you.

[Maxummmatt]

True that voting with your dollars (not paying for VIP or store purchases anymore) is typically a great way to get your point across. In this case, if SSG stops making money on DDO, it is less likely to incent them to invest in the game, which seems to already be seeing deep declines in participation, but more likely they will simply sunset the game. The best way to get them to invest in the game is to make it look like a growth source of income for them. So keep playing, recruit friends, BE KIND to new players, and spend within your entertainment budget if you like the game. You do not have to stand for mistreatment of course. I hardly think 2 hours of downtime is mistreatment, though it is frustrating so definitely politely let them know when they have made mistakes, you see bugs, or you have ideas to improve the game. Or, if you just can't stand it anymore, then vote with your feet, but that will not encourage SSG to invest in DDO.

[Sqrlmonger]

What was the exploit this time?

If I had to guess I would go with the same thing as last time, that is usually a safe'ish bet.

[C-Dog]

Deathward wasn't working, which allowed spellcasters to 1-shot some high-level raid bosses with insta-kill spells.

Yesterday reverted the "fix" that caused that problem.
Today will (hopefully) apply the original fix correctly.

Meanwhile, if we all complain ad nauseum, sarcastically point out the obvious and beat a thoroughly dead horse, the game will improve before our eyes. It must be so, why else would so many keep doing it?

[Vectordaemon]

Ok so this is what I am hearing and I agree, you need to have better quality assurance before you roll out hotfixes or patches and test them better. This is getting kind of ridiculous, though I get that code is not perfect there is only X amount of time in Hardcore league and every down time that is extra eats into it. So maybe test it better on the test server and look at player feedback more before you decide to roll out something that is this glitchy, might help keep the backlash down. It just feels kind of hollow when you keep failing to fix issues, and just end up creating more. This is a hallmark of the Turbine era, which honestly DDO was horribly managed and treatd in the end by them as they favored LOTRO. So please just pick up the ball and give is better QA testing on patches, so this is not the normal every time. Thanks, would be appreciated!

[jfgddo]

This whole game is exploitable so why worry about it now? This game is on a serious decline. Been here since the beginning, and its the last 5 years that have really just gone in the crapper.

Agree!!

[Jofor]

True that voting with your dollars (not paying for VIP or store purchases anymore) is typically a great way to get your point across. In this case, if SSG stops making money on DDO, it is less likely to incent them to invest in the game, which seems to already be seeing deep declines in participation, but more likely they will simply sunset the game. The best way to get them to invest in the game is to make it look like a growth source of income for them. So keep playing, recruit friends, BE KIND to new players, and spend within your entertainment budget if you like the game. You do not have to stand for mistreatment of course. I hardly think 2 hours of downtime is mistreatment, though it is frustrating so definitely politely let them know when they have made mistakes, you see bugs, or you have ideas to improve the game. Or, if you just can't stand it anymore, then vote with your feet, but that will not encourage SSG to invest in DDO.

This ^^

[Searious]

I applied to SSG last year - but it never went anywhere cause I didn't live in Boston. They severely limit themselves on resources, (especially QA, that can be done from anywhere) with their location requirements.

[liosliante]

What is the problem now? Not again please, not again.

[Volarr]

Most of us just want to advance our characters and have fun playing the game we love. I personally waited most of my life for this game to be created so I could play it. I have no thoughts of ever stop playing it. I will die first.
I am also sure there are those that will exploit anything they can. We have even had a couple of them in our guild that exploited past bugs BUT they were caught and are now BANNED so if you are going to try to get ahead this way all your doing is killing your own fun. They will catch you and they will boot you out and we will be better off with you gone.

[ariellyn]

How many of us have nothing else to do in life but play this game? I feel a little blue myself about even more downtime. However I remember the beginning of the game and am surprised DDO can actually function without daily crashes.

Dogbreath68.. are you out there? You mentioned being here since the beginning. Do you remember the first day? Blindness and Curse were permanent. Enhancements were lacking much interesting. You had to spend action points per level or lose them. You could actually get stuck before reaching maximum level with no way to gain any more Experience Points. Think about that and everything else that was. The appearance of the game.. its feel.. seemed like developers were under tremendous pressure to complete a product by some unreasonable deadline. I'd bet real money there was not even an Entity Relationship Diagram mapped as the code was laid out. I suspect there still may not be an accurate map.

Now here we are as any MMO clients are eagerly always waiting for the next new content. Developers try to keep up with our insatiable hunger for the coming thing. .. And they eventually release everything for Point cost for those with patience to spend time instead of money (I sincerely thank all the impatient clients that gotta have it and gotta have it now. You keep the game going). I would not be surprised to walk into rooms where programmers write for DDO and see nothing but gray hair and bald heads for the frustration they must feel trying to get something new to work right with the mess of code just thrown in a heap at the beginning.

Stopping memberships, Market purchases and Store purchases is not going to make a company listen to grievances about downtime that cannot be helped. What that would do is make product owners decide to cut losses, close and take the money for use in the next project. That is one of the first lessons taught in project development; when to shut down the project. When this particular company no longer makes profit we're out. All the way out.

1600 hours for me now. There's a couple more hours of downtime here. Maybe there will be more troubles that will extend that time. ' Dunno. I think I'll log into my Ultima Online. .. Or City of Heroes. Maybe I'll just get glass of wine and sit out back and watch the sun set over the lake.

Yes.. we always come back and they know it. The game always comes back, too and we know it. Sit in a developer's chair, try to fit those square pegs in the round holes they must be facing every day. I'm saying ease up on 'em. There's so much a tangle of code the test server feedback isn't gonna catch everything. So what there's downtime again. I'd like to quote Shatner: Get a life.

[Vectordaemon]

I applied to SSG last year - but it never went anywhere cause I didn't live in Boston. They severely limit themselves on resources, (especially QA, that can be done from anywhere) with their location requirements.

Really now? So they limit people to Boston, thus cutting themselves off from so many more resources. That explains the lack of quality QA, nothing against Boston or its people but they need to expand and look broader to get a deeper QA testing pool.

[MistaMagic]

We do not have release notes for today's hotfix. The work done today will correct an exploitable game bug.

So you can fix an exploit bug super duper fast but we have to wait 3 - 4 weeks for a dev bug/bugs to be fixed?