#13 - Nov. 4, 2010, 3:39 a.m.
Xandercaine, I'm happy to attempt addressing any issues that you are experiencing, but your post is very vague and gives me very little insight as to what is inconveniencing you at the moment. If there is something I can assist with or properly direct you to for further assistance, I would be most happy to help.
If you feel that there is something we can be doing better as a company, then that feedback would best be submitted either via our Suggestions Forum, or the information box prompted when canceling your account, if you are truly displeased.
Q u o t e:
Fix the issues, fix them now, not tomorrow, not when Cataclysm launches, now, as in yesterday, last week, last month.
Were we able to fit time traveling into our scheme of Quality Assurance, we would not be having this discussion.
Q u o t e:
There's a serious question here that's getting missed.
What level of QA are we expecting be applied to a new or a major patch - before it goes live?
A lot more than you may perceive. The unfortunate issue is that our internal testing servers, public test servers, beta servers, and live servers do not always produce the same results - particularly when comparing the first three to live. There is a lot of stress testing that is simply unable to be done due to the audience that we have. And, as I have said before, there is always something bound to happen that could simply not be accounted for. As black and white as we like to believe technology is, if you've worked regularly in the field, you've found that sometimes the things you program don't quite do what you intended them to.
Q u o t e:
It it economically viable / defensible for insufficient QA work to be done & instead have the GMs worked off their feet with customer complaints. Then there's the issue of the collective intangibles like long term customer satisfaction. These intangibles have impact, are hard to quantify but will affect the bottom line over time.
Interesting thought, but not how we currently operate. Our Quality Assurance teams don't intentionally try to make our Game Masters' lives tough - in fact, they do take steps to provide heads up on upcoming issues, or workarounds where available while more permanent fixes are in the works. Due to the somewhat unpredictable nature of coding, that is sometimes what is necessary for the situation at hand.
Q u o t e:
Personally, I'd be willing to wait at least another year for a new release for a vastly improved stability.
I'm afraid that not everyone is of your line of thinking, though this is generally the train of thought we pursue. It's times like these I like to point out our Mission Statement.
Blizzard Entertainment's Mission Statement http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html In this case, "Commit to Quality."
Q u o t e:
“Blizzard polish” doesn’t just refer to our gameplay experiences, but to every aspect of our jobs. We approach each task carefully and seriously. We seek honest feedback and use it to improve the quality of our work. At the end of the day, most players won’t remember whether the game was late -- only whether it was great.
If you do not feel that an aspect of our company or of one of our games is up to par, then we encourage constructive feedback in our Suggestions Forum. We want to provide you the best experience we can, and that does include balancing in providing that experience as soon as we are able to get it to you. We ask only that when providing feedback, you do so in a manner best befitting polite conversation rather than a one-sided argument.
