View Full Version : Community Communication 101
The folks over at Blizzard have done something that their community is insanely happy about: WoW Under-Development Site (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdevelopment.html) - Information on what's coming up in the next patch, future patches, and what's still being designed. I honestly feel KK doesn't even know what they're going to patch until a few days before it's done, and even then it seems hardly ever tested because time and time again, items in the"Patchnotes" simply will be wrong, nonexistent, or some other seemingly random portion of the game gets f-ed up and left like that for weeks (Soulclusters, Implant Popping, etc) *sigh*
Under Development
Our development team is devoted to providing players with the best play experience possible. In order to insure that World of Warcraft remains the top MMOG on the market, we will be making improvements and additions to the game on a regular basis. This includes opening new lands, introducing new monsters, incorporating new quests, and ultimately evolving the overall story of the World of Warcraft. This page will give you a sneak peek at the features and enhancements players can look forward to in the future.
Reminder: Some features listed in the On the Horizon section are in the concept stage and the final results may be different than originally described.
Even if they aren't incorporating the Communities Ideas/Wishes, at least the community knows what's on the drawingboard. We still have no clue what's up with NPC Playershops, Item Tracking, WoC Items, Accessories, RPOS/GUI Updates and Alternatives, Incomplete Texture Upgrades, the aging Implant Bug, Snow? There are a ton of things that we get no updates on.
Blizzard is just plowing ahead in the MMORPG market with their positive community communication efforts.
Cruzbroker
23-12-04, 02:09
And they got some good ideas.. :rolleyes:
paolo escobar
23-12-04, 02:23
well said FN, i agree totally.
And if u look at the current situation for the player base. For the nc1 players amongst us, i personally feel there is alot of boredom. With the knolege and some sort of picture in our minds of what we can EXPECT in the coming weeks/months it would at least on my part, give me a driving force, something to work towards. And hopefully something to keep us alittle more occupied.
Asurmen Spec Op
23-12-04, 02:24
The folks over at Blizzard have done something that their community is insanely happy about: WoW Under-Development Site (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdevelopment.html) - Information on what's coming up in the next patch, future patches, and what's still being designed. I honestly feel KK doesn't even know what they're going to patch until a few days before it's done, and even then it seems hardly ever tested because time and time again, items in the"Patchnotes" simply will be wrong, nonexistent, or some other seemingly random portion of the game gets f-ed up and left like that for weeks (Soulclusters, Implant Popping, etc) *sigh*
Even if they aren't incorporating the Communities Ideas/Wishes, at least the community knows what's on the drawingboard. We still have no clue what's up with NPC Playershops, Item Tracking, WoC Items, Accessories, RPOS/GUI Updates and Alternatives, Incomplete Texture Upgrades, the aging Implant Bug, Snow? There are a ton of things that we get no updates on.
Blizzard is just plowing ahead in the MMORPG market with their positive community communication efforts.
Its a good Idea yes, but the credit doesnt go to blizzard many other games ive played had that
Try and keep a handle on the scale of the two organisations here. Vivendi Universal Games' (Blizzard's parent company) turnover was a huge $312 million last year but they made an operating loss of $112 million (triggering a large reduction in force in it's U.S staff - Blizzard Entertainment was not affected by the restructuring). Those kinds of figures absolutely dwarf anything related to Neocron.
No doubt when KK have access to the financial clout that Blizzard/Vivendi Universal Games have, they'll be able to devote time and resources in a similar manner. In the mean time, KK's Theme Weeks allow the community a certain amount of involvement in the development process (which is certainly more than has been possible in the past) and provide details of upcoming content. No one can deny that communication has improved greatly of late.
N
Asurmen Spec Op
23-12-04, 02:30
Try and keep a handle on the scale of the two organisations here. Vivendi Universal Games' (Blizzard's parent company) turnover was a huge $312 million last year but they made an operating loss of $112 million (triggering a large reduction in force in it's U.S staff - Blizzard Entertainment was not affected by the restructuring). Those kinds of figures absolutely dwarf anything related to Neocron.
No doubt when KK have access to the financial clout that Blizzard/Vivendi Universal Games have, they'll be able to devote time and resources in a similar manner. In the mean time, KK's Theme Weeks allow the community a certain amount of involvement in the development process (which is certainly more than has been possible in the past) and provide details of upcoming content. No one can deny that communication has improved greatly of late.
N
aahh thank you nid
the first smart thing ive heard compairing NCto WOW
I love the mods
All that works goes into making WoW good yet it's still a shit game :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Not that I don't think that KK shouldn't communicate more. They would learn so much if one of them just spent a week in a clan like FF
Asurmen Spec Op
23-12-04, 02:34
All that works goes into making WoW good yet it's still a shit game :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Hero :)
Dr Strange
23-12-04, 03:56
No doubt when KK have access to the financial clout that Blizzard/Vivendi Universal Games have, they'll be able to devote time and resources in a similar manner. In the mean time, KK's Theme Weeks allow the community a certain amount of involvement in the development process (which is certainly more than has been possible in the past) and provide details of upcoming content. No one can deny that communication has improved greatly of late.
N
And the referee has thrown the bullshit flag!
Ok, there's what 500-1200 people playing NC2, give or take on all 4 servers (in a 24 hour period, not at any given specific time). Not counting in currency rates and differences, you figure they are making an average of $15 per person a month, plus $35 (counting tax) to purchase the game, etc
That's roughly between $17,500 to $42,000 for just the one-time-license-fee and $7,500 to $18,000 a month in monthly fee's. Now take into account it's only been released in what, Germany and the UK? No Asian, Austrailian, North American etc releases yet so those predicted figures will go up.
I'd say most of that is profit. Bandwidth and server fee's for such a small group of users cannot gross more than they are pulling in, in a month. AND I'd wager to bet they are making more since for example us Americans are paying more since we have to convert U.S. dollars to Euro's and the Euro is worth more than the Dollar.
Now, with all that in mind, KK has how many on their developmental staff, like 8 guy's in one big house out in the boonies of Germany somewhere right? I think for that much money, after costs and paychecks they could scrape together either A: enough to pay one of the 8 guys a little over-time to do this "In the future" communication system or B: hire a part time PR guy to round up information and do this "In the future" communication system.
And let's not forget, some of us don't really give a shit about "what's coming". I'd rather have the dev team concentrate on say, oh I don't know fixing fatal run time errors, the memory leak or the very flawed soul light system, as opposed to working on a guy or the whole team taking time out to make a whole sub-site/sub-forum for future developments and information. But that's just me.
Not that I don't think that KK shouldn't communicate more. They would learn so much if one of them just spent a week in a clan like FF
EDIT: Just remembered I got a warning for this last time
Sooo I'm not the only one who could not give 2 shits what WoW is like tbh I don't want to dance around casting spells and shit :\
Sooo I'm not the only one who could not give 2 shits what WoW is like tbh I don't want to dance around casting spells and shit :\
*phew* im not the only one that thought its shit.. :)
Dr Strange
23-12-04, 05:02
Actually WoW is a better game in terms of all around playablilty.
Now, before I site examples and reasons let me state this: I enjoy NC2 alot more, I personally find it the better of the two, however WoW overall is the better game.
- In WoW, the GUI is 100% customizable. This means for those of us who play in small resolutions either by choice or by force, can free up screen space or organize things the way we want. We cannot do this in Neocron.
- In WoW, you have your choice of PvP or non PvP areas/servers. In Neocron, all you have is an LE which late game, hinders you more than helps you thus making the one benefit of not dying to other players, a very moot point.
- In WoW, you cannot be randomly PKed unless you give permission. Yes, I am a carebear to a certain degree. I do not want to be killed gen repping to a location, I do not want to be killed the split second I step out of my apartment, I do not want to be killed by my OWN ALLIES AND MY OWN FACTION. I do agree with Op Wars and Dueling. Raids are fun but when it comes to the point of 3-5 guy's camping a sector and no allies coming to help and you can't leave your apartment without dying, that's not pvp thats grief play.
- In Wow, there are no cheats in "raids", when a raid takes place a GM is escorting the party to observe, anything funny and it's noticed by the GM. So the whole 3 second belt hack exploit woulda been found out very quicker and taken care of very quicker.
- In WoW, Blizzard is taking a strong stance aganist item farmers (people who sell accounts and items on Ebay). Now, I will give KK and Neocron a huge thumbs up cause compared to ALOT of other games, there is very few things like this going on. BUT, there is still the occasional person spamming Trade channels advertising their item auctions on Ebay. And let's not forget some people of a certain specific NC2 clan who quit/got banned and decided to spam every thread with their Ebay auction selling their accounts. Sure threads deleted and closed but, the auctions are still there. Least Blizzard is trying ya know..
- In WoW, there are engine fixes. I'm sorry but by now, Run-time Errors and the Memory Leak should have been fixed. No excuses. If the engine is this unstable, it should not have gone gold so fast. Don't get me wrong I love playing but seriously, 2 major flaws in the game are these.
Need I go on? And please, don't counter point me. I love NC as much as the next guy and enjoy playing it, I know what benefits WoW has that NC doesn't, arguing them won't change the fact that WoW has them and NC doesn't.
Sooo I'm not the only one who could not give 2 shits what WoW is like tbh I don't want to dance around casting spells and shit :\
that's why I'd assume why you probably don't have a monk. And it's honestly tough to review something you've never even tried. Now isn't it?
I mean, hey who wants content, excellent customer service, routine maintaince, and player bases that are insane and don't make the server preform like a super nintendo.
Yet TBH, IRL, blizzard is a much larger company and most likely owns reakktor in terms of employees. It's like saying hey this stone is just as good as a boulder. It's unfair to compare the two.
sanityislost
23-12-04, 06:16
Blah blah blah.....my dads better than your dad blah blah blah. oral shit, wanky spunk wanky spunk.
i dunno if i like or hate wow, but atm i dont really give a shit. The only real thing
nc and wow have in common is the MMO part so i dont see the point in trying to
compare the two....Tho back in the OT mode, KK are doing fine with the Theme
weeks really wish some of the whiners would give them a break....
SiL ..:..
Dr Strange
23-12-04, 06:33
i dunno if i like or hate wow, but atm i dont really give a shit. The only real thing
nc and wow have in common is the MMO part so i dont see the point in trying to
compare the two....Tho back in the OT mode, KK are doing fine with the Theme
weeks really wish some of the whiners would give them a break....
SiL ..:..
I do believe your improper edit of my post in quote is aganist forum rules. I would like a moderator to take care of this please, thank you.
- In WoW, there are engine fixes. I'm sorry but by now, Run-time Errors and the Memory Leak should have been fixed. No excuses. If the engine is this unstable, it should not have gone gold so fast. Don't get me wrong I love playing but seriously, 2 major flaws in the game are these.
Can I hear AMEN?`
tbh i have always thought that Blizzz > ALL.
Name a game from them that wasn't a bestseller?
WC1&2 Diablo SC Diablo2 WC3.. all fucking uber games and still hella fun to play em.. (Specially SC... it still owns any RTS there is..)
Yes they are bigger than KK, but it isn't an excuse for the flaws in the engine. Not saying that NC is crap, ohno.. it's uber, but the bugs in it makes it unplayable sometimes.. anyone? crash, synch in mid fight??
Little more 'bout engine... it's unbelievable how the GFX is ignored in it.. no matter how roxor gfx card you have, it means shit.
Fix em, and recieve huge grattitude from the community.
Dr Strange
23-12-04, 06:39
Exactly.
At this point in time, I'd almost be willing to pay a little extra money if they put all add on game content patches on hold and worked for like two weeks straight to make a patch that fixes run time errors and the memory leak.
What's that say about their developmental team when the user base has at least one or more people that are willing to pay MORE money to have major game engine flaws fixed?
Exactly.
At this point in time, I'd almost be willing to pay a little extra money if they put all add on game content patches on hold and worked for like two weeks straight to make a patch that fixes run time errors and the memory leak.
What's that say about their developmental team when the user base has at least one or more people that are willing to pay MORE money to have major game engine flaws fixed?
just curious, but is there any other games that use the tekktonic engine? 0_o
Dr Strange
23-12-04, 06:46
just curious, but is there any other games that use the tekktonic engine? 0_o
I would not know. Never played other games by them other than Neocron 2. Didn't even play NC1.
However, I've played computer games for over 7 years online, it does not take a genius to realize a game company has to stop and look at it's game engine that is drowning more and more each day.
Asurmen Spec Op
23-12-04, 08:59
Actually WoW is a better game in terms of all around playablilty.
- In WoW, you have your choice of PvP or non PvP areas/servers. In Neocron, all you have is an LE which late game, hinders you more than helps you thus making the one benefit of not dying to other players, a very moot point.
.
The one thing thats diferent though is WoW is in some fantasy world.
Neocron is cyberpunk, Lifeblows people rob murder etc, adds to the atmosphere of the style of game
but im sure you love nc
No matter how small the programming staff is, there are two things that surely must already exist. There has to be a bug tracking database. And there has to be a document, even if it's just some notes on a whiteboard, reminding the developers what the top priority items are. And actually, a third thing comes to mind: somebody has got to be making some kind of notes as to how far along various features are.
How much trouble would it be to do what not just WoW but (so far as I know) every other MMPORG does, and have a web page that lists the known issues and their status, and shows what the top priority items right now are? This doesn't seem to me to be very labor intensive. One person, 15 minutes, once a week. What's the obstacle?
To me, the nicest things so far about droner theme week and hacknet theme week have been the "known bugs" threads here (http://forum.neocron.com/showthread.php?t=117658) and here (http://forum.neocron.com/showthread.php?t=119658). Seeing lists like this at least tells people who are being driven mad by some parts of the game that (a) Reakktor is aware of this, and (b) no, it's not on purpose. That, all by itself, can be sanity-inducing. How many hours a week would Lupus and CoDi and others save by not having to read, let alone respond to, the flames that would never be written if every subsystem in the game had a list like that?
No matter how small the programming staff is, there are two things that surely must already exist. There has to be a bug tracking database. And there has to be a document, even if it's just some notes on a whiteboard, reminding the developers what the top priority items are. And actually, a third thing comes to mind: somebody has got to be making some kind of notes as to how far along various features are.
How much trouble would it be to do what not just WoW but (so far as I know) every other MMPORG does, and have a web page that lists the known issues and their status, and shows what the top priority items right now are? This doesn't seem to me to be very labor intensive. One person, 15 minutes, once a week. What's the obstacle?
To me, the nicest things so far about droner theme week and hacknet theme week have been the "known bugs" threads here (http://forum.neocron.com/showthread.php?t=117658) and here (http://forum.neocron.com/showthread.php?t=119658). Seeing lists like this at least tells people who are being driven mad by some parts of the game that (a) Reakktor is aware of this, and (b) no, it's not on purpose. That, all by itself, can be sanity-inducing. How many hours a week would Lupus and CoDi and others save by not having to read, let alone respond to, the flames that would never be written if every subsystem in the game had a list like that?
How do you decide between a simple bug, and something that might lead to an exploit? It can be a very fine line and may not always be immediately obvious.
I would like some better prioritising of features to be coded tho. These new hacknet dungeons etc are all very nice, but the existing hacknet is still unbalanced. Would it not be better to complete what we have first before adding these new areas?
And what about player shops - These were supposed to be in or shortly after NC2 retail, yet we have heard nothing about them recently - a feature which it seems the new item distribution system was designed around.
And Blizzard aren't all perfect. In fact they, for some reason, work on new areas on the live server - then they whine about players who are exploring finding these areas.
Athon Solo
Dr Strange
23-12-04, 11:37
[ edited ]
- In Wow, there are no cheats in "raids", when a raid takes place a GM is escorting the party to observe, anything funny and it's noticed by the GM. So the whole 3 second belt hack exploit woulda been found out very quicker and taken care of very quicker.
well actully its possible to hack a belt in 5 seconds don't know about 3 seconds but I think your humm going over the top with that one were in fact there hacking it in 5. but yeah ....
I do have a monk not far off using a HL actully names HeadCase had it since NC1 but what I meant was WoW is just not my sort the theme is swords axes and stuff.
No more discussion of exploits or GM corruption on this thread.
N
At the risk of getting flamed
In a toss up between playing with the 'Battlenet community' and the [in game] 'Neocron community' its a tough call!
I'll leave you to work out what I mean by this
[disclaimer I havent played WoW and I have no intention to at this point in time - but I have played on Battlenet and read enough WoW-related posts to know that they are the WoW community]
Try and keep a handle on the scale of the two organisations here. Vivendi Universal Games' (Blizzard's parent company) turnover was a huge $312 million last year but they made an operating loss of $112 million (triggering a large reduction in force in it's U.S staff - Blizzard Entertainment was not affected by the restructuring). Those kinds of figures absolutely dwarf anything related to Neocron.
No doubt when KK have access to the financial clout that Blizzard/Vivendi Universal Games have, they'll be able to devote time and resources in a similar manner. In the mean time, KK's Theme Weeks allow the community a certain amount of involvement in the development process (which is certainly more than has been possible in the past) and provide details of upcoming content. No one can deny that communication has improved greatly of late.
N
I just can't stop wondering how resource-intensive (time, employees, money) a decent communication to the community would consume.
I'm not talking about creating a complete site with all your plans and hour to hour logs of what you did but just a post here and there to let people know whats up. afterall, its just a few words on the boards saying you're now busy doing this and that. I'm not talking about making promisses, just a headsup on what is going on is fine. Even if it isn't a solution like just the message: "we don't know how to solve problem x and expect to be looking into that for a few months" or something similar is still better then no news at all.
so talking about budgets is a poor excuse for (almost) no communication.
Flamewars from the community are a poor excuse for not commmunicating, simply bercause most flames are the results of the poor communication and the rest by unsolved bugs on wich we don't get any communication either.
you don't need 5 scientists to screw in a lightbulb do you? well, neither do you need loads of resources to communicate.
I'm not talking about creating a complete site with all your plans and hour to hour logs of what you did but just a post here and there to let people know whats up. afterall, its just a few words on the boards saying you're now busy doing this and that. I'm not talking about making promisses, just a headsup on what is going on is fine. Even if it isn't a solution like just the message: "we don't know how to solve problem x and expect to be looking into that for a few months" or something similar is still better then no news at all.
In case you've not been paying attention for the last few weeks that's exactly what you've been getting. E.g. Seminus's post here (http://forum.neocron.com/showthread.php?t=120279).
N
I think you have highlighted the issue there Nidhogg. Us NC vets know where to look for news from the people at KK, where Reefer was not aware of the Theme weeks forums perhaps. (I'm going on the fact he has 34 posts and registered in Nov 2004 - trust me I was the same when I started using these forums)
These are some of the places to find offical posts and information. (For English)
https://ssl.neocron.com/launcher/ (This comes up when you play NC2, by far the most important page)
http://forum.neocron.com/forumdisplay.php?f=55
http://forum.neocron.com/forumdisplay.php?f=133
http://forum.neocron.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2
Now look at the first link. There is no news on the 123-125 patches.
Whether KK is a billion euro company or not, there is no excuse for poor communications. I would agree it's getting better, but it still had a long way to go.
And the referee has thrown the bullshit flag!
Ok, there's what 500-1200 people playing NC2, give or take on all 4 servers (in a 24 hour period, not at any given specific time). Not counting in currency rates and differences, you figure they are making an average of $15 per person a month, plus $35 (counting tax) to purchase the game, etc
That's roughly between $17,500 to $42,000 for just the one-time-license-fee and $7,500 to $18,000 a month in monthly fee's. Now take into account it's only been released in what, Germany and the UK? No Asian, Austrailian, North American etc releases yet so those predicted figures will go up.
I'd say most of that is profit. Bandwidth and server fee's for such a small group of users cannot gross more than they are pulling in, in a month. AND I'd wager to bet they are making more since for example us Americans are paying more since we have to convert U.S. dollars to Euro's and the Euro is worth more than the Dollar.
Now, with all that in mind, KK has how many on their developmental staff, like 8 guy's in one big house out in the boonies of Germany somewhere right? I think for that much money, after costs and paychecks they could scrape together either A: enough to pay one of the 8 guys a little over-time to do this "In the future" communication system or B: hire a part time PR guy to round up information and do this "In the future" communication system.
And let's not forget, some of us don't really give a shit about "what's coming". I'd rather have the dev team concentrate on say, oh I don't know fixing fatal run time errors, the memory leak or the very flawed soul light system, as opposed to working on a guy or the whole team taking time out to make a whole sub-site/sub-forum for future developments and information. But that's just me.
Ahem.
And the referee has thrown the bullshit flag!
Take a look at what you wrote...
Self Owned.
well actully its possible to hack a belt in 5 seconds don't know about 3 seconds but I think your humm going over the top with that one were in fact there hacking it in 5. but yeah ....
I do have a monk not far off using a HL actully names HeadCase had it since NC1 but what I meant was WoW is just not my sort the theme is swords axes and stuff.
well melee tanks can use swords, monks basically do a dance when casting... way more drama to spell casting in neocron than WoW. Which is my point.
The point of this thread isn't to compare the merits of WoW or NC, they're different games with vastly different budgets. Blizzard is just being used as an example of a good model of communication with the players. They are by no means perfect, sometimes their patches make absolutely no sense. Like the most recent one reduced priests' ability to help random people (shield is group only now), because of some really esoteric possible exploit that noone has seen happen yet.
The thing you guys here may not understand is that even though Blizzard is larger, has more resources, etc. They suffer way more abuse then KK, by far, and are held to a level of performance there's no way they can meet. The instant a server goes down, threads pop up demanding a refund for downtime. Any reduction in ability for a class will ellicit a flood of threads proclaiming it the end of the world and that class is ruined. Yet despite this, they still keep the doors open. There are constantly official/dev posts in the forum, often in response to major threads.
I really fail to see how kk can't at the very least put up something like the development page. That list has to exist somewhere already, though maybe it's in someone's head. If the concern is posting promises/deadlines, then make it explicit that this is not the case! Say, these are what we're currently working on, these are big issues we know about and want to address but we're not sure when we'll get to them. Even if it looks amaturish to say "we're not sure when we can fix it" or "this will take us a while", it is 100% better then simply leavin us in the dark.
What's even more fustrating is that kk of late has been vastly improving their communication, but it comes with gaps. Somtimes they do really well, then we're back to where we were before with no information at all. The Hacknet forum is great, but there are lots of issues not addressed there that we need to know about.
In case you've not been paying attention for the last few weeks that's exactly what you've been getting. E.g. Seminus's post here (http://forum.neocron.com/showthread.php?t=120279).
N
And all of us who've seen it are vey grateful, Nidhogg. But not everybody reads the forums. Having it on a web page somewhere would mean that you could link to it from the launcher window, like other MMPORGs do. (BTW, speaking of which, the launcher window still doesn't have links to any patch notes after 122.)
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