Comments from the Devs

[Kensaki]

Compare what was in 4.2 for wow compared to 1.18 for ffxiv and say again with a straight face blizzard has a smaller staff.

[Cureslime]

Blizzard likely has the same size team working on WoW. Only difference is S-E is a Japanese company so it's 90% useless management and 10% actual employees and Blizzard is 10% useless management and 90% actual employees.

[Lordender]

Yet even with a reduced sized dev team, Bliz is still consistently hotfixing bugs/problems/Balance changes with 4.2. When will SE ever get with the program? making people wait till an entire content patch to fix issues is fail.

I agree, Blizzards content production sucks now which is why WoW is kinda fail these days but they're still pretty active in their hotfixes.

[Gadritan]

Compare what was in 4.2 for wow compared to 1.18 for ffxiv and say again with a straight face blizzard has a smaller staff.

Blizzard has a smaller staff.

Spoiler: show

anyone have a real point here? or is it still cool to rehash the same arguments we've had for the past year?

[Hyan]

You guys do realize that SE's dev team probably has no more employees than a small gas station where blizzard is probably closer to a walmart...

No, we do not realize it, because it's total bullshit. They have a team of more than a hundred people (closer to 150 than 100) working on this thing. I don't know about gas stations in America where everything is larger but around here hundred people do not work on a small gas station.

A problem with all of you is the ridiculous oversimplifying of everything. There's not one reason why shit is taking so long and not one reason why Blizzard's situation is different. Even in the same dev department they have two quite different developing processes, because their situation is different too.

[Gadritan]

A problem with all of you is the ridiculous oversimplifying of everything. There's not one reason why shit is taking so long and not one reason why Blizzard's situation is different. Even in the same dev department they have two quite different developing processes, because their situation is different too.

But they're all experts Hyan. We clearly have people that work for SE and Bliz posting here and know the ins and outs of their respective businesses.

[Sephiroth]

I'm sure there's a bug in the code that causes disconnects during cutscenes. A lot of disconnects in my dungeon parties have happened either in the ogre cutscene or the Batraal cutscene. Quite annoying if your tank's healer disconnects during the Batraal cutscene.

[Fiddle Sticks]

Wow... I'm so sorry, I did not mean to hit a nerve and create a shit storm...

[Lucavi]

I'm sure there's a bug in the code that causes disconnects during cutscenes. A lot of disconnects in my dungeon parties have happened either in the ogre cutscene or the Batraal cutscene. Quite annoying if your tank's healer disconnects during the Batraal cutscene.

Problem is that the "bug" has been there since Alpha. How long does it take to fix a "bug" that disconnects you constantly. The only time I disconnected in Rift since Beta was when the entire servers went down for maintenance. Why is it so hard for SE to find the simplest of things and why does it take so long for them to fix them? I don't care how big or small the team working on the game is; they're professionals. They should act like it.

[Hyan]

Treating the symptom doesn't take that long. Curing the disease instead, can take longer.

[Lucavi]

There is no cure for the "disease". The disease is not only the entire game engine, but also the way the Japanese conduct MMO business. The best they could do is treat the symptom, considering that it shouldn't take that long and has an immediate impact on keeping the customer happy, or, at the very least, not thoroughly pissed off at you for a legitimate reason.

[Niiro]

It's almost as if people forget what's good for the players is good for SE, unless they intend to keep the game F2P forever.

[Sign]

There is no cure for the "disease". The disease is not only the entire game engine, but also the way the Japanese conduct MMO business. The best they could do is treat the symptom, considering that it shouldn't take that long and has an immediate impact on keeping the customer happy, or, at the very least, not thoroughly pissed off at you for a legitimate reason.

Which is kind of funny when you consider the fact that Japanese culture for the most part is more focused on preventative care with respect to disease and viruses rather than reactionary like here in NA.

[Hyan]

It doesn't matter what the customer thinks if there is no return of any kind for that investment.

They have only one road to travel now that they decided to give it a go. Cure the cancer or go down fighting. Otherwise there's no point.

You aren't thinking like a company should.

[Spider-Dan]

There is no cure for the "disease". The disease is not only the entire game engine, but also the way the Japanese conduct MMO business.

On a related note, Capcom recently announced Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. During one of the panels at Comic-Con, the producer (Niitsuma) was asked if Capcom would release a full changelog of the adjustments that were made from vanilla MVC3 to UMVC3.

His response was a hearty laugh.

There is a fundamental difference in culture between Japanese game developers and western game developers. I don't know if you should call this a "disease" as much as "working as intended." Fighting game players have been battling Capcom for years over the idiocy of unlockable characters (which is a problem when you try to run a tournament) and Capcom's response has essentially been, "Well, Japanese players like unlocking stuff."

[Hyan]

There is a fundamental difference in culture between Japanese game developers and western game developers. I don't know if you should call this a "disease" as much as "working as intended." Fighting game players have been battling Capcom for years over the idiocy of unlockable characters (which is a problem when you try to run a tournament) and Capcom's response has essentially been, "Well, Japanese players like unlocking stuff."

Oh, this is the reason why there seem to be no unlockable characters in some fighting games. Boooring.

[miokomioko]

love me some unlockables

[Grey Jorildyn]

Two people in my dungeon group regularly disconnect while nearing/standing on the blue circles.

[Lucavi]

It doesn't matter what the customer thinks if there is no return of any kind for that investment.

They have only one road to travel now that they decided to give it a go. Cure the cancer or go down fighting. Otherwise there's no point.

You aren't thinking like a company should.

I don't think you're thinking how a MMO company should. D/Cing is unacceptable in a MMO for anything other than server maintenance or resets. The fact that D/Cing has been going on since Alpha without a fix, and the fact that said DCs cause all manner of problems that are non-existent in any other MMO is completely unacceptable.

It shouldn't take 9 months to fix D/Cs. If its a matter of fixing the entire engine, then why not fix the engine before, you know.. you start the public Alpha or Beta, much less before take your customer's money.

@SD: I remember his laugh, and I remember the reaction by Capcom "fans".

[Alkar]

I don't think you're thinking how a MMO company should. D/Cing is unacceptable in a MMO for anything other than server maintenance or resets. The fact that D/Cing has been going on since Alpha without a fix, and the fact that said DCs cause all manner of problems that are non-existent in any other MMO is completely unacceptable.

It shouldn't take 9 months to fix D/Cs. If its a matter of fixing the entire engine, then why not fix the engine before, you know.. you start the public Alpha or Beta, much less before take your customer's money.

@SD: I remember his laugh, and I remember the reaction by Capcom "fans".

The current team had the game handed over to them 3 months after it launched. If the engine sucks it's not really their fault nor did they decide to start alpha/beta and release the game as it was. It's not the whole company at fault here, it's just a few individuals who decided that was a good idea.
Those people aren't really involved anymore.
If you guys can rebuild an engine that took 5 years to make in 8 months you should probably work for one of these companies.