Quote:
Originally Posted by Rulan
Not including changes in patch notes is one of the common things over the history of MMOs that have annoyed players. I'm confused as to why you would rely on one guy sifting through emails to compile a list of what changes were made. I must be missing something...

Could you not setup a central changelog where there is a central database which a coder is required to input what changes he has made? It would be no extra work at all for them. In fact you could even have it take the email they are sending and parse the text into the changelog. At patch time, all the changes made could be generated into one document, which could then be edited or reworded as needed.

I bet you could get someone from the community to create a web based script to handle that in an hour or less. No more complaints about missed changes in patch notes, because every change done would be recorded and every change made to that build would be documented...


We do need to do a better job with this. I would prefer we give more information out than less. We don't want to do anything stealthly. The downside is the more detail, the possibility of more confusion or misunderstanding, but I think we need to take that risk. We learned the hard way with EQ and made some bad calls keeping some changes internally. We either didn't want to confuse people and/or we wanted to see how things played out and/or we wanted to maintain the 'mystery' of the game as it evolved and changed. What we learned is it backfires. We need to have detailed patch notes, make them as clear as possible, etc. We also need to do a better job at posting changes and additions we have planned for the future so there are less surprises and our intent is more clear.

We're already making an effort to do this, and the team is working hard at this, and we're still very busy, but that doesn't mean we can't improve. In the meantime, thanks for your patience and understanding.

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