Fix what we have!

Instead of bringing in more problems, take the time to fix the ones we already have!

That's the nutshell, yes. No more needs to be said, IMHO.

Taking a perspective from the community of the largest MMO in history (World of Warcraft).


Blizzard's development team is not a single person slaving away at code. there are multiple teams of multiple people working on vastly different aspects of the game. There is a dedicated "bug" team which goes about fixing bugs and gameplay issues. There is a dedicated "content" team which goes about implementing new features and content.

I highly doubt that LL is just employing a single team of coders. In all likely hood they have several different teams working on different aspects at once, so adding features is not slowing down progress on fixing the current problems.

Also:

There is a Beta grid. All the problems that you are seeing now were present on the beta grid, and you would have been aware of them and perhaps even given insight as to how they might be fixed if you had logged onto it.

Blizzard does this with great extent to appease the much more vocal and virulent community surrounding their game. The Test server for WoW is free for all players to log onto, and they can test out new features, report bugs, and be a part of the process to make sure the final patch works smoothly. Since the community surrounding WoW is very eager to experience "what's next" there are tens of thousands of people logging onto the test server giving Blizzard a great sample audience to find out what equipment setups, UI mods (kinda like scripting), etc. work/don't work with the upcoming changes.

Whenever I log onto the beta grid in SL I always observe the same people there, meaning that there's a much much less likely chance that the bugs people are experiencing are going to be found. Since a majority of the people use standard computer setups, they won't see most (if any) of the bugs people are posting about (excluding the Charlie Foxtrot that is group chat). If you're using any non-standard or just released technology on your computer it is essentially your duty to log onto the beta grid and make sure it all works, and if it doesn't to report exactly what's not working and why so that come release it will work for you on the main grid.

In short:

Log onto the Beta grid and be a part of the bug squashing process.

Well, I think Lineage holds that distinction, but why quibble?



I have heard that used as an excuse many times, and it is mostly INvalid. Yes, there are a lot of people all working on different things, but when you have a crisis caused by underperformance and bugs, you tell members of other teams to put their boiling pots on simmer and reassign them back on the things they have already made which are buggy. Often, the programmer who wrote the code is more capable of fixing it than some "bug fixer" group member. Also, you obviously only reassign people within their specialties; you're not going to do very well reassigning a graphics pipeline architect to a database performance issue. However, there are still plenty of issues in the graphics pipeline which need to be addressed before they write one more line of code on something like "sculpted prims" (as an example).

I've been in large development teams before when this had to happen, and it wasn't pretty, but it HAD to be done to get the project back on track before management started whacking with the Axe of Joblessness.



I've done beta before, and am quite thorough on reporting issues that I find. However, it is work, and it takes away my time to do what *I* need to do in regular SL. As such, I expect... no, I DEMAND software development companies take me seriously when I offer my time up like that to help them FOR FREE.

That said, from all the reports I have seen, many, many issues are reported in beta WITH LITTLE TO NO ACKNOWLEDGMENT, let alone resolution. I'm sorry, but that doesn't exactly inspire me to just "jump in" and help them out. I want to see a bug reporting tool that they pay attention to 24/7; I want to see acknowledgment of issues; and, most importantly, I want to see REAL COMMITMENT to resolve all reported issues BEFORE releasing a beta to live before I feel comfortable stepping one virtual paw into any beta server/grid and putting in that kind of effort. After all, if this crap is going to go live anyway, I don't see the value proposition in wasting my time in any so-called "beta" grid.



In short: show me the process works as it should, and I will be quite happy to be a part of it. Otherwise, I have no inclination to waste my valuable time with it.

The bugs don't get squashed. Thye merrily make their way into the release. Or they don't show up in the beta, and do in the release. And it is a lot of times, not new featutres. it's previously fuctional things that become broken. even someone who is as techically ignorant as I, who has no Idea what an MMO is, knows that any software released will not be perfect. But your assumption that LL is too busy adding "features" to fix current problems, doesn't speak well of their sense of "duty". As for my duty, I didn't know I enlisted in anything other than to use a product that I am paying to use, and would hope it works as advertised. Thanks for setting me straight.

understand that the beta grid is diffident form the main grid for the fact it doesn't get the traffic that main grid does. bugs sometimes come when the tress of people online.

You stated it much more eloquently, but I think I agree with you on this one.....