Mediocromancy: The Art of Publishing on a Timeline

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Solid fog doesn't prevent missile attacks like it should.

An NPC in House Phiarlan won't allow you exit out of conversations…in fact it even follows you into an instance.

The beholder in the Dragon's Vault quest can shoot through walls.

Turbine, the developers of Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO), produced a game that feels unfinished instead of polished. Frankly, it drives me up the wall. I wish I was held to the same standards in my job; I wouldn't be responsible for anything but showing up for work.

The reason games get pushed into the marketplace before they're finished is simple enough--they don't make money for their developers and publishers while they're in production. It takes sales and subscription fees to sustain a game in the long term, so there's always pressure to get the product into the hands of the paying public, whether that game is ready or not.

If you look at the recent Dragon's Vault expansion, you'll see yet another simple mathematical equation at work: players are leveling quickly, and losing interest, and the potential drop in subscriptions could prove disastrous. So, to solve this, Turbine released new content, which was already being prepared before the game launched, along with some quick fixes to other problems within the game. Viola! You've got a free content update aimed at satisfying a restless player base.

Unfortunately, Turbine changed things without telling its player base. Spells were modified without prior notice. For example, in the latest patch, the devs made changes to Blindness. They could have provided a heads-up weeks before: “By the way, Blindness is going to change from this to this, just so you're all aware.” There is a good reason for giving advanced notice of important spell changes; people are still choosing spells. What if they choose a spell that, because of changes, will not meet their needs or expectations once a future update hits? With good communication from Turbine, regrettable choices can be avoided.

Here's my problem. I understand that DDO needs to keep the interest of it's subscribers by offering up new content. I understand that their company can only support DDO by keeping people paying for their subscriptions. I get all that. But by failing to tell people what is changing Turbine is screwing over their own customers. They provide very little information to their players, and what information they do provide is not accurate.

Game developers and publishers face the challenge of producing their game and its content updates fast enough to maintain subscriber's interest and keep funded, but because of this process, bugs and bits of misinformation inevitably develop. This has become an accepted practice among game developers--after all, games do need to make money in order to remain viable. But when developers fail to tell people what's being changed, and/or provide bad information, they are accepting money for a service they are not providing. I understand that things are going to change, and that mistakes will happen; no game is perfect. But that's no excuse for failing to keep subscribers informed, or for providing incomplete or inaccurate information.

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