The future of gaming

[throx]

Programmer by profession for more than 10 years (yes that was after graduating from a 4 year college with a degree in Computer Science) with work experience on a vast many projects of various sizes including Military planning projects (used by joint ops strategic planning), scientific supercollider data analysis projects (silly little place called fermilab), web application design (mostly financial analysis systems & news distribution) ... but this isn't a resume. I honestly believe that I am qualified to have a professional opinion ... and that is that VI is slothful, ineffecient, and has poor implementation in the best of cases. I've seen dogs who put more planning and forethought into sitting down than VI puts into some patches.

Actually, given those previous jobs it sounds like you really have never worked on a large project which was the "bread and butter" of a company. I mean a project which was sold stand-alone for cash, had a well defined shipping date and if it missed that date then the company (or at least dev team) was all likely to be out of a job.

Having worked for public service development jobs (ie military and government), utility jobs (where the project wasn't the core business of the company) and real world off-the-shelf applications I can see where you get the misapprehension that Verant is sloppy etc.

Fact is, when you make promises that can't be broken at the risk of your job then silly little things like testing and bugs tend to come second to more important things like food on the table for your family. No amount of experience in government or utility jobs can really prepare you for that reality.

Having said all of that, I think Verant does cut corners occasionally but on the whole is pretty much on par for bugs in the product with every other commercial software develpor out there.

[Chutney]

Back for more...

Well, i hate to derail this thread further, but here are some considerations:

To derail further requires an initial derailment.

I started to respond in full ... but realize that doing so would be pointless. It has gotten extremely offtopic now.

I would, however, like to make a few closing comments in this debate.

I have never in my entire life written or run EQ, however, I do not see how this preculdes me from an opinion about programming practices.

$3 * 400,000 = $1.2mil ... a month ... $144mil a year ... so if they paid 144 programmers $1 mil that'd break even on the bug fixing budget if they increased user cost by $3. hell. I say hire 1,440 programmers for $100k.

Yes VI charges more for services they deem "premium". Action, tho, is rarely a good substitute for justification. I think Nazi Germany proved that point well enough.

I never said I could do better. I did say that Verant sucks.

[high_jeeves]

$3 * 400,000 = $1.2mil ... a month ... $144mil a year ... so if they paid 144 programmers $1 mil that'd break even on the bug fixing budget if they increased user cost by $3. hell. I say hire 1,440 programmers for $100k.

You are further proving that you arent familiar with the way large commercial projects work. Hiring additional programmers requires additional support staff (mangement, HR, office management, etc), it also includes addition building resources, computers, liscences, network resources, perks, etc. The cost of an employee is far greater than his salary. In addition, you arent counting in the revenue lost from the price hike (there is ALWAYS a loss of customers, when rates increase). Not to mention the press that is related to a price hike, and how that affects stock prices, existing deals, etc...

I have never in my entire life written or run EQ, however, I do not see how this preculdes me from an opinion about programming practices.

Not sure if you meant what you said here, you have NEVER run EQ? Then I would think that precludes you from most of this discussion.

The fact that you have never written something similar certainly makes it so that your opinion on programming practices is irrelevant. I can badmouth the practices of mechanical engineers all day long, i'm a trained engineer after all... but that doesnt make my opinion even remotely valid, since I have NO IDEA how they do their job, what their requirements are, what their timeline is, etc. Have you ever worked on any project that has full production releases every 2-3 weeks? I have, and it is a whole different world from 6-12 month projects. Everything works different, you cant even come close to comparing the two.

I never said I could do better. I did say that Verant sucks.

Then you are an ass. I hate to be blunt, but you are just whining at this point. "Verant sucks" is a childish comment with no backing. If they suck, and you cant do better, where does that leave you?

Yes VI charges more for services they deem "premium". Action, tho, is rarely a good substitute for justification. I think Nazi Germany proved that point well enough.

Ahh.. now they are like the Nazi's.. excellent.. I always stop discussion when some moron compares anything to the Nazi's... Do you play on legends? Do you have any idea what action they do, or do not take? Or is this just more anti-Verant crap? Are you the same kind of person that sits in a dark room all day complaining about how evil MS is (while using MS products)? If you dont like something, stop supporting it, until then, you are just a whiner... The whole concept of "YOU SUCK, here's my $14" is so hypocrytical that its laughable.. if you want improvement, then make them improve..

--Jeeves

[Chutney]

Please use PM to hurl further insults at me AFTER mis-interpreting what I've written. No need cluttering this board.

[wrongway]

/votes for Jeeves to be banned if thats a possibility.

[Mr. Suspicious]

Ahhh.. thems idiots are chipping into the discussion.

Thanks for your enlightening contribution wrongway, I enjoyed reading your comments and I realy must say, it surely added a lot to the discussion.

[wrongway]

It wasn't a contribution to a discussion, it was a comment on a flame fest, that should have never happened, and only happened because someone decides to make a personal attack out of a stated opinion. Yours was equally helpful Mr. Susupicious as all of your RTFM posts always are. I realize you have added a lot of content in the past, but I have not seen any posts by you in a long while that were actually helpful beyond RTFM.

Added thoughts:
At the point I commented there was no discussion left, and you had to further the personal insults as well. I have been a lurker here for a very long time, sir, and I'm not sure which is worse, the constant barrage of new questions from people who do not read or were using the wrong search words (which you flame them for as well), or your constant holier than thou elitest attitude. I remember a post a while back about making intelligent questions (actually a link to a post) and it said something about searching first, and trying to give all the information you could to help, but you take it beyond that. You pick apart everything anyone says and points out the flaw in it. I saw one person say something along the lines of: I searched for "this" and "this" and "that" and I found "this" but it didn't apply, any hints? YOU TORE THEM A NEW ASSHOLE FOR NOT SEARCHING. I'm sure you are a much better member of this community than me, perhaps I can learn from your examples o wise one.

More edit:
Whats wrong with voicing an opinion about something. We are a community a self governing group of people. If we do not make known our dislikes then we will never grow, and have our acceptable behaviors set. If we as a community accept his flames then we turn into monkly-business.com, or safehouse, or whever the flamefest whineboards are. If that happens then you can kiss logical reasonable discussion goodbye as I'm sure you know, and have done in the past with your attitude.

[Mr. Suspicious]

In a Cinema near you soon: "Look who's Flaming"

[wrongway]

Oh ok, now mine is a flame? Flaming is calling someone an idiot or moron, and not being logical and reasonable. Do you even read the posts or just skim them and post a witty one liner?

Edit:
You are right, I concede. Your overwhelming power has worn me down. I'm sorry I tried to bring some light on what I thought was a bad situation/happenstance. This is obviously how the community wants this board.

[high_jeeves]

I'm dying to know how the two quotes below are part of a "logical reasonable discussion"? These are the only two comments I gave him personal flak for. They are irrelevant to the existing discussion, and generally insulting. I am Jewish, and lost about 80% of my family past 2 genrations to the Nazi's. Whenever some moron comes along and compares MS, Verant, or some other corporate entity to the Nazi's, I lose all respect for him. As soon as "XX sucks!" and "XX is like the Nazi's" come into the discussion, the logical and reasonable parts are already done with... the childish whining has begun..

Yes VI charges more for services they deem "premium". Action, tho, is rarely a good substitute for justification. I think Nazi Germany proved that point well enough.

I never said I could do better. I did say that Verant sucks.

--Jeeves

[throx]

$3 * 400,000 = $1.2mil ... a month ... $144mil a year ... so if they paid 144 programmers $1 mil that'd break even on the bug fixing budget if they increased user cost by $3. hell. I say hire 1,440 programmers for $100k.

Except if they jumped the price another $3 they'd likely lose 10% or more of their installed base just from people who decide that 2nd account isn't worth keeping any more. That's a net loss and I don't think the 10% number is entirely unjustified either.

Bug fixing isn't as trivial an exercies as adding new developers either. In fact, adding a dozen or so new developers is the absolute best way I know to decrease productivity and introduce a whole slew of new bugs into a product. I'd guarantee bards would br broken for months if they tried this.

Read "The Mythical Man Month" for an interesting insight into adding developers to improve product dev times and quality.

[wrongway]

He didn't say anything like Verant is like the nazis, and I personally agree with loathing about statements like "XX is thisbadthing". I just think that we can not start flame wars here. He has opinion (whether you or I like it) that XX sucks. Its not my position to flame him personally about it.

As for the nazi comment, you just went off and called him a moron after taking what he said the total wrongway. In my opinion thats as bad as blatantly saying xx sucks.

Take that back, perhaps I'm the one who misunderstood. I took what he said as "X isn't necessarily right. X was proven to possibly be a bad thing by Y (insert case of bad thing happening here)" Maybe I'm just being optimistic though. Then Mr. Suspicious just went and called me an idiot for voicing my opinion about flamefests, perhaps in not the most subtle of ways. And then he had the never to say I didn't add anything to the discussion (which had ended) and didn't add anything of any value himself.

[wrongway]

Perhaps the increased revenue could have been used to Hire better quality assurance (not developers). Perhaps used it to delay the next expansion to get current features working better/cleaner. (lost new revenue offset by increased revenue from fees). I think his point was that the extra 14.4mil a year was a lot of money (perhaps only 5mil a year after lost accounts which I doubt). Some of that could have been reinvested into the game to make it more enjoyable and have less bugs/imbalances.

Edit numbers:
Not sure how 1.2 mil a month became 144 mil a year, shoulda been 14.4 mil right?

Another edit:

400k Subscribers X $13 a month is 5200k.
If they lost 10% subscribers it would be
360k Subscribers X (new price) $16 a month is 5760k

Is that right, or is my logic flawed? If they could only lose 10% and raise it $3/mo it would be a good thing to do.

[high_jeeves]

The question you have to ask yourself, is why? Because they are losing lots of people? No, they arent. Because they want to attract new customers? I think they are pretty market satured at this point. So why? Give me a business case why they should improve CS, or fix old bugs... (not a "touchy-feely" reason.. an actual business reason). If they cant come up with a business case for better CS, or better QA, they arent going to do it. Expecting them to risk losing lots money for little or no gain is niave.

As for the nazi comparision: I dont care what the purpose or depth of the comparison was.. The use of the Nazi's as a sample case for a business decision has no place in an educated society. Wouldnt you expect an outrage is somebody said:

They pick on bards. You cant pick on people of one class. The KKK proved that.

Its just plain insulting, it minimized a real tradgedy, and maximized a perceived (and in this case, totally assumed, since he doesnt seem to play on legends) wrong by a company to their customers.

--Jeeves

[wrongway]

I'm not saying it was a wise comparision, and it probably was used for shock value, but he didn't say Verant were like nazis like I thought you were saying. If you weren't saying that, then I apologize.

And yes your line about bards and the KKK I'm sure is outrageous (I know very little about the KKK or what it did), but it is a valid argument point, albeit unwise. I can't think of another well known doubleplusungood-thing that illustrates his point better than Nazi Germany did. But then again, I didn't follow his point terribly well, because again I am a self-centered kid who doesn't pay attention to the world around him, or the books I'm supposed to read.

Edit:
Added "like" in Verant were like nazis

/laugh Didn't answer part of your question
Its good business practice to keep people happy with your product, and with your business. Continual lack of CS and bug fixes will in the long run eat Verant up. I don't know about numbers, but I'm certain it has a noticeable affect. I've heard many people say they won't try another Verant/SOE game. Most of it is possibly talk, but bad press is bad press imho. In my limited knowledge of business, they have something called "Good-will" that has a monetary value placed on it. The next best thing (but not like me, sorry couldn't resist) could possibly take everquest out of the picture. That is of course assuming that Ratt isn't correct about there be nothing that is similiar to EQ being able to take it out.

Also, a lot of people are addicted, but the market is nowhere near saturated btw. 400k is not even .2 % of the US. In Korea they have like 40% of people on broadband and like 20% of people subscribe to one particular game don't remember the name of it. (Yes, that game is doing awesome)