while there might be some debate over whether or not the changes to gameplay have made wartune better or worse, there can't be any question about the poor quality of the overall product that was delivered. things that worked are now broken, there are many instances where you can find yourself stuck and having to refresh your browser to get out and then there are the little annoying things that make you wonder what the developers were doing when they were supposed to be testing besides counting the money that the clothes would bring in.
the state of the code troubles me for a few reasons, but it doesn't surprise me as i was once a software qa lead, so i know that testing is typically given low priority in development team budgets and timelines. that's when you "hire" beta testers to do that work for free. for 1.5 it was the vaunted S1 players et al who were given the "privilege" of seeing 1.5 a week early to sniff out any bugs that the developers may have missed. after seeing the code and the bugs that are still in it, i suspect that the testing they did was probably just a formality as 1. i firmly believe that the S1 players spotted and reported much of what we're seeing, but 2. unless the game failed to run at all, the development team wasn't going to fix the issues before releasing 1.5 to the rest of the servers. given the fact that one of the bugs has to do with real life money, i'm calling foul on r2 for being so callous.
on top of it all, there has been little in the way of communication from the development team, let alone r2 management, saying anything about them hearing the concerns being voiced across the various forums (putting it mildly) about any of the issues at hand, gameplay or software quality. i honestly feel for the forum moderators as they get to bear the brunt of the ire of hundreds and maybe even thousands of disgruntled customers. and that's what it comes down to. paying or not, we're all customers who deserve a product worth our time, effort and money. i don't believe that r2 cares about that and it shows.
the state of the code troubles me for a few reasons, but it doesn't surprise me as i was once a software qa lead, so i know that testing is typically given low priority in development team budgets and timelines. that's when you "hire" beta testers to do that work for free. for 1.5 it was the vaunted S1 players et al who were given the "privilege" of seeing 1.5 a week early to sniff out any bugs that the developers may have missed. after seeing the code and the bugs that are still in it, i suspect that the testing they did was probably just a formality as 1. i firmly believe that the S1 players spotted and reported much of what we're seeing, but 2. unless the game failed to run at all, the development team wasn't going to fix the issues before releasing 1.5 to the rest of the servers. given the fact that one of the bugs has to do with real life money, i'm calling foul on r2 for being so callous.
on top of it all, there has been little in the way of communication from the development team, let alone r2 management, saying anything about them hearing the concerns being voiced across the various forums (putting it mildly) about any of the issues at hand, gameplay or software quality. i honestly feel for the forum moderators as they get to bear the brunt of the ire of hundreds and maybe even thousands of disgruntled customers. and that's what it comes down to. paying or not, we're all customers who deserve a product worth our time, effort and money. i don't believe that r2 cares about that and it shows.