[ardent]

It is not intended to be a personal insult. As I've said, learning to listen is a new trick the staff has learned and hasn't yet mastered.

But even with that understanding there are long-standing and -- from my perspective reasonable -- requests that simply get ignored. Whether that is inertia or intentional is difficult to gauge because it is never addressed. I am not referring to coding-intensive tasks here as I completely understand that there are half as many coders as would ideally be on staff right now.

This is important, because it speaks to why we are so perplexed and distressed by the refusal to simply figure out a way to import the best solution. For years the staff answered inconsistently and nonsensically, particularly for the folks who had seen the code. The limitations they spoke of weren't actually there, or in the case of a lateral move of statistics and mechanics from one spawn location to another wouldn't change perceptibly for players. We came to understand after a while that the product manager actually wanted this situation -- this situation that was driving players away from the game year after year in a way the "lure" of World of Warcraft could not. This was rendered somewhat comical when we discovered that this product manager spends much of his time playing World of Warcraft.

But the issue was actually spoken to directly by the staff member who owns the problem (and not even a day ago) and while I recognize her frustration ("it feels like developing new creatures is a waste of time") I have to shrug and admit that, from a player perspective, that is true. Probably painful to be told -- and thus unacceptable discussion material for the Simutronics forum -- but incredibly relevant to how development time and effort is expended.

Particularly when you are trying to develop for a skill range that is already well-served and already has choices that cover the entire spectrum. It was particularly egregious and roundly booed when yet another hunting hub for 100-250 ranks was developed and released. In Diku-alike terms, this is another quest hub for 20-30th level characters. When there are already about a dozen and you are expected to be 100th in a week.

To put this in perspective, the game is -- in theory -- built to support a 50/50 time split between training for experience and role-playing. My experience is more 75/25 and when I did not have means of simplifying the trip back from the far reaches of the realms about 99/1 and the 1 was more "accidentally ran into someone who got lost trying to get to somewhere they role-play and had to be in character while going to the bank to deposit these 60000000000 coins I don't give a crap about" than any intentional seeking-out of role-playing.

When your characters can still train in and around the populated areas that 50/50 split is less "fond memory/pipedream" and more truthful and accurate.

There was a period of time -- when the only place to train for virtually everyone was on the far fringes of the game -- that there were large populations that supported that kind of time split even at the far fringes. But the game world has grown significantly since then, the player population has declined significantly since then, and it seems a statistical impossibility these days, even with half of the population 140th and above. A lot of this has to do with how Simutronics staff half-asses solutions to problems. Those original problems -- the relative distance of good hunting from the main town (there was only one back then) -- were addressed pretty rapidly when the population de-camped from the main town. But once the exodus fell to a trickle and then reversed flow they washed their hands of the "problem" and declared everything hunky-dory. Literally cutting the player population in half for all intents and purposes was deemed the best solution.

In this Simutronics design philosophy, accountability, and follow-through reads somewhat like "Here, hold my beer and watch this" mashed up with "There, did I fix it?" writ into game development, with the occasional accidental toe-shattering shotgun discharge to make the stereotype come to life. The sort of thing that in non-commercial MUD development you laugh off as monkeyshines but seems wholly unacceptable from a company you're paying for a product. Their customer service -- not counting the folks who answer the phones at their main office -- is particularly, spectacularly awful. As is their mentorship program. This is defended as staff being charged with maintaining the environment for all players (so being a complete dick to a paying customer is acceptable behavior) and that their mentorship program is all-volunteer and player run. (It is volunteered for and run by players who, as a whole, have not actually played the game in about five years and routinely deliver bad information to new, impressionable players or recent returnees who are trying to figure out the whole actually playing thing again.)

The bottom line is if I were not invested, I would not be paying. In this, I am part of the largest demographic they have left.