Weekly Newsletter 03_24_08: Making Progress

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Updated Fri, Jan 02, 2009 by Dalmarus

Making Progress

March 24th, 2008 - By Dalmarus

Another week of playing with the live version of Game Update #4 has come and gone. During this time, numerous bugs have been discovered and noted. Players that take the time to trundle through the official forums have noticed an interesting phenomenon. Mainly, the developers have been doing over time in their attempts to communicate with the community about what's going on.

Silius, Hobart, Wamtin, and even more developers have been taking time to go through a number of posts and answer as many questions as they can. If you went over and took a count, you'd find more questions answered than most full-blown interviews achieve. A number of these questions revolve around game fixes, and for that, I say to the development team, "Bravo"!

A number of welcome answers have been given, but let me take a few moments to highlight some of the most interesting snippets.

One item of interest that has been at the top of players’ minds ever since GU4 went live is the lack of a Riftway hub on Kojan. Silius states he has put a new hub in Tanvu that will hopefully be seen in game sometime this week. If I had to make a personal guess, I'd say it would happen this Tuesday morning when the servers go down for their normal weekly maintenance.

Hobart also announced that a fix for a number of crashes that have been occurring since the implementation of GU4 will be going to the Test Server first thing Monday morning (he hopes). This should alleviate a number of crashing issues some players have recently been experiencing and will be a welcome addition to everyone.

A number of players have had issues with their soundcards now working properly recently as well. Wamtin announced they have finally tracked down the cause of the issue. It turns out it was a piece of code that was "completely unrelated to any sound code that broke the sound code's ability to enumerate the sound devices". He has submitted a fix for it although at this time, is unsure when it will go live.

I don't bring these issues up to point out any fault with anyone on the development team, but as a means of reminding the community that the Vanguard developers care greatly about the game and our enjoyment of it. It's easy to just read about what players think is broken in a game, but it's nice to see that the development team is taking some time to keep us informed on what they're doing to correct these problems. Considering the blowout that occurred a few weeks ago in relation to player/development communication issues, I'm pleasantly surprised to see them so active on the boards this past week.

In other news, a couple of weeks ago we ran a poll on the loot changes that had been made in relation to a 4th group in a raid. There's no doubt the discussion was at times intense and heated, but through it all it was obvious to see that people were simply passionate about their stance and everyone made a great effort to explain why they felt the way they did. In the end, a lot of information was discovered and it's greatly appreciated.

Unfortunately, an individual took it upon himself or herself to create over 50 forum accounts to skew the results of the polling. Those accounts have been banned and the poll has been closed as a result. When we run a poll at Ten Ton Hammer, it's generally for one of two reasons. The first is to see what the community thinks/wants/etc about any given topic, normally one that has already caused some amount of controversy. It's a good way to get a general idea of where everyone sits on it. That's what type of poll the one I mentioned above was. The other is nothing more than a "What If?" scenario, usually posted as an idea generating poll, or something to bring a bit of levity to a situation.

Aside from the fact that creating a number of accounts (especially with the intention of altering a polls direction) is against our policies, it's just not a very fair thing to do. We all have opinions and they should be weighted in a poll equally. Skewing the results serves no other purpose than a mental form of cheating. Since there's no prize to win or anything else of the sort, I fail to see why someone would waste the time to undertake such an endeavor. In any case, if you're going to participate in our polls, please have the decency to play fair like everyone else.

As I end the newsletter this week, I want to let everyone know that the Ten Ton Hammer guild is planning a dungeon run on Khelgor's End this coming Sunday, March 30th. If you're interested in joining the guild, please go to this thread. If you want to join the run, please post it here as well.

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