New Executive Producer's Letter, Sep 21

[lawrence]

Jessica Mulligan, Executive Producer at Nevrax, has just published her seventh "letter to the players". In today's issue, she's giving us more details on the schedule of the upcoming outposts feature, PvP and Episode 2 in general.

Link: http://www.ryzom.com/?page=news&id=1155

Feedback welcome!

[ajsuk]

heh, nothing unexpected by me.

[Jessica Mulligan]

Yeah, delays are never fun, but I'd rather delay a month than launch a feature early and increase the risk of major bugs.

I'm also happy the players will get more time to check out outposts on the test server.

[alexrowe]

Well at least you gave us the free month, for us the ones that got 1 yr sub still have a chance to see the outpost "Live".

[dmer25]

o-0 there we go again

[iphdrunk]

Well, ... I clicked the "discuss" link .. inertia I guess... but I really don't know what to say. What can we discuss? I started this posts as a rant, complaining about this and that, whinning a bit, but I guess it would have no purpose. No point in "under the effect" immature threatening with statements like "a few player will quit, population is this and that, players are getting bored, we're losing patience" since I don't really now....

I'd agree with "better delay it than release it with bugs", but it seems to me that this is getting a bit used as argument (been hearing it since open beta, when it was delayed to september). It also seems that the patch process that was nicely detailed may need some peer review too...

I guess you are well aware that this will disappoint some players, and that you just had to delay it, so no need to insist a lot on that. I guess waiting one more month won't change things much, maybe just let me add that it's a pity, like a bucket of cold water after all the good news that we had in august. I still have hopes for episode 2 and I hope outposts will be worth the wait

a bit sad,

[uhuhu]

..........

[Xavier Antoviaque]

I'd agree with "better delay it than release it with bugs", but it seems to me that this is getting a bit used as argument (been hearing it since open beta, when it was delayed to september).

Yes, that's a frequent reason for delays on complex pieces of software such as MMOs; and that's precisely the reason why we usually don't give dates - it is just too easy to slip at the last minute.

On outposts however, due to the legitimate impatience, we have pushed the communication to its limits: we have provided dates. It has obvious disadvantages when anything goes wrong, but at least you know very precisely where we are at.

And in any case, the worst now would be to rush the outposts without proper development and testing time - we have worked too hard on it.

--
Xavier.

[xenofur]

heck, i'm happy that we're told: "it get's pushed back to then and then" instead of: "it get's pushed back, but will be up soon(TM)"

[forever]

Thanks for letting us know. I'm sitting under my umbrella, waiting for the rain to stop. I know it will be worth it.