Tip.It Times Presents: A Lack of Clarity, and Nerfing

[Dragon_lord]

I was expecting the Durial event to be mentioned. Yes, it was a bug and he broke a rule by abusing the bug. But stop and think about it, who in Durial's situation could have resisted being able to get free party hats? Even if you say you wouldn't have done what he did, were you to have truly been in his shoes you would have done the same thing.

 

Yes, Jagex claims they take extra time before releasing updates for QA, but they're kidding themselves. Their QA sucks and everyone knows that. The blokes at Jagex Towers decided to take an approach where they let the community do most of the QA for them. They let the players find any techniques Jagex see as "imbalanced" and they get removed.

 

I'm largely against this. Although it may seem smart to let the game's community flush out certain things that Jagex employees would have otherwise never found in a million years, it's still no excuse. They should realize that players who indeed spend months trying to find and perfect techniques find it very annoying when Jagex suddenly remove them and all their hard work has gone to waste. We're not the ones on payroll, players shouldn't be the ones Jagex uses for QA.

[BabyPunchers]

Hated it. Read like it was written by a bitter person attacking Jagex for anything. :thumbdown:

 

 

 

Yes because they will really praise Jagex for letting big bugs get through.

 

 

 

The author compares Jagex's testing to Blizzard's testing, knowing full well that Blizzard has a lot more money to hire testers than Jagex does. Jagex does as much as they can.

[Ts_Stormrage]

Well done lad :)

 

 

 

I knew Deathmath was a good addition to both my clan and the writing team :)

 

 

 

Also worth noting; this is one of the first somewhat jagex-critical articles ever allowed to be posted, and you kept it clean :)

 

 

 

Once again; well done...

[burglescrum]

sorry, but what exactly does it mean when something is "nerfed"?

[oldyoung]

very good read i was lost until after the sara gwd quote but i tottally agrre that jagex isnt really makng enough effort in distinguishing between harmful bugs ans people beign stupid with chairs cuz were all stupid at some point :thumbsup: ive heard of people beign banned for the POH dinning room bench glitch wich really doesnt make any sense to me since its not harmful or anything. or is it and noone ever told me? :?

[amitoz]

You have to understand that for every bug that makes it through Jagex's QA department, there are probably dozens of bugs that are found and removed before the update. I'm not saying that Jagex can't do a better job, but you can't really say they're doing a bad job.

 

 

 

One thing Jagex's QA is bad at, however, is making sure that new content is properly balanced. For example, when Vinesweeper came out it gave 1/6 the amount of xp it gives now, which is really underpowered.

 

Not to mention 20 times harder.. The rabbits were super-charged roid-monkeys. :roll:

[amitoz]

I was expecting the Durial event to be mentioned. Yes, it was a bug and he broke a rule by abusing the bug. But stop and think about it, who in Durial's situation could have resisted being able to get free party hats? Even if you say you wouldn't have done what he did, were you to have truly been in his shoes you would have done the same thing.

 

Yes, Jagex claims they take extra time before releasing updates for QA, but they're kidding themselves. Their QA sucks and everyone knows that. The blokes at Jagex Towers decided to take an approach where they let the community do most of the QA for them. They let the players find any techniques Jagex see as "imbalanced" and they get removed.

 

I'm largely against this. Although it may seem smart to let the game's community flush out certain things that Jagex employees would have otherwise never found in a million years, it's still no excuse. They should realize that players who indeed spend months trying to find and perfect techniques find it very annoying when Jagex suddenly remove them and all their hard work has gone to waste. We're not the ones on payroll, players shouldn't be the ones Jagex uses for QA.

 

 

 

I hate that.. watch them [bleep] up PVP 2 weeks after release..

[Armadyllo]

Excellent article.

 

 

 

Don't be so quick to blame the QA staff for bugs getting through. Of course they're meant to catch every bug before release, but look at what chance they've got...

 

There are 25 QA testers listed on Jagex's credits page. (I don't count team leaders.)

 

Some of the testers must work for FunOrb, so there'll actually be fewer than 25 testing RuneScape.

 

Jagex releases a big update to RuneScape most weeks.

 

We know from their developer diaries that an update can be in development for months.

 

How many QA testers can they possibly be assigning to each project, and how long can they spend on it?

 

From the math, Jagex's QA team must be up against some seriously short deadlines, and I'd be inclined to sympathise with them rather than blame them!

 

 

 

100k players checking out an update for 60 minutes is, in a way, equivalent to 1 QA tester checking it out for over 11 years.

 

 

 

Jagex doesn't invite players to check out future updates. Now, that's more work than it sounds; to do proper beta testing of that nature you need to gather a group, schedule them to play through the update (preferably in a room where you can watch 'em to see where they get stuck), analyse the feedback, re-program the code according to the feedback, do more basic testing, gather a different beta group, schedule them to play through the update again... As a minimum, we're looking at an extra couple of weeks on each update. For a company that releases around 4 updates per month, that's a vast amount of extra time.

 

 

 

I'd still like them to do it. But I don't believe it's going to be a quick-and-simple matter for them to switch over to that kind of thing. For a start, they'll likely have to ditch the thing about updating most weeks. Which would be a complete change to the service they offer, so we'd better hope every player is happy getting fewer updates.

 

 

 

Or they could "just" hire and train another few dozen testers who know about RuneScape. I wonder how much that'd cost, and whether they'd end up cutting back on other useful things to pay for it?

 

 

 

Are they really banning people for messing around with bugs that do no harm but merely look funny? I approve of people being banned for spending hours clicking on a buggy tree patch that's giving 10k Farming XP with every click (which did happen), but it'd be plain moronic to ban a subscribing player for sitting on a chair in a way that looks funny.

[Cheefoo]

Hated it. Read like it was written by a bitter person attacking Jagex for anything. :thumbdown:

 

 

 

Yes because they will really praise Jagex for letting big bugs get through.

 

 

 

The author compares Jagex's testing to Blizzard's testing, knowing full well that Blizzard has a lot more money to hire testers than Jagex does. Jagex does as much as they can.

 

 

 

Not to mention, Blizzard barely does anything else with their game besides fixes bugs. They don't update it majorly for years, besides a few minor changes and bug-fixes.

[Ravenkana]

Excellent article.

 

 

 

Don't be so quick to blame the QA staff for bugs getting through. Of course they're meant to catch every bug before release, but look at what chance they've got...

 

There are 25 QA testers listed on Jagex's credits page. (I don't count team leaders.)

 

Some of the testers must work for FunOrb, so there'll actually be fewer than 25 testing RuneScape.

 

Jagex releases a big update to RuneScape most weeks.

 

We know from their developer diaries that an update can be in development for months.

 

How many QA testers can they possibly be assigning to each project, and how long can they spend on it?

 

From the math, Jagex's QA team must be up against some seriously short deadlines, and I'd be inclined to sympathise with them rather than blame them!

 

 

 

100k players checking out an update for 60 minutes is, in a way, equivalent to 1 QA tester checking it out for over 11 years.

 

 

 

Jagex doesn't invite players to check out future updates. Now, that's more work than it sounds; to do proper beta testing of that nature you need to gather a group, schedule them to play through the update (preferably in a room where you can watch 'em to see where they get stuck), analyse the feedback, re-program the code according to the feedback, do more basic testing, gather a different beta group, schedule them to play through the update again... As a minimum, we're looking at an extra couple of weeks on each update. For a company that releases around 4 updates per month, that's a vast amount of extra time.

 

 

 

I'd still like them to do it. But I don't believe it's going to be a quick-and-simple matter for them to switch over to that kind of thing. For a start, they'll likely have to ditch the thing about updating most weeks. Which would be a complete change to the service they offer, so we'd better hope every player is happy getting fewer updates.

 

 

 

Or they could "just" hire and train another few dozen testers who know about RuneScape. I wonder how much that'd cost, and whether they'd end up cutting back on other useful things to pay for it?

 

 

 

Are they really banning people for messing around with bugs that do no harm but merely look funny? I approve of people being banned for spending hours clicking on a buggy tree patch that's giving 10k Farming XP with every click (which did happen), but it'd be plain moronic to ban a subscribing player for sitting on a chair in a way that looks funny.

But I was uder the assumption that Jagex makes a large profit, i.e. several million, and could afford to increase their staff? After all, how many businesses that make 3 million plus have just 200 employees?

 

 

 

This article was... decent. The topic was good and it was fairly well written, but I'm disappointed that there was no mention of emergent gameplay, which I believe Jagex frowns upon. Other companies and game producers encourage it, from Will Wright and Sid Meier to Blizzard and Bungee. Of course, you could make the argument that creating an efficient suicide method with Bowser smash B, developing swarm tactics for the zerg, or finding some way to make a perfect duplicate of Charles Darwin on Spore somewhat different than exploiting terrain or game features that the developers never thought of in an MMORPG are two very different things, but I believe that Jagex doesn't like emergent gameplay simply because it reduces their control of the game. Look at the GE. If that's taught us anything, it's that Jagex likes themselves some control.

[Deathmath]

[hide=]

Excellent article.

 

 

 

Don't be so quick to blame the QA staff for bugs getting through. Of course they're meant to catch every bug before release, but look at what chance they've got...

 

There are 25 QA testers listed on Jagex's credits page. (I don't count team leaders.)

 

Some of the testers must work for FunOrb, so there'll actually be fewer than 25 testing RuneScape.

 

Jagex releases a big update to RuneScape most weeks.

 

We know from their developer diaries that an update can be in development for months.

 

How many QA testers can they possibly be assigning to each project, and how long can they spend on it?

 

From the math, Jagex's QA team must be up against some seriously short deadlines, and I'd be inclined to sympathise with them rather than blame them!

 

 

 

100k players checking out an update for 60 minutes is, in a way, equivalent to 1 QA tester checking it out for over 11 years.

 

 

 

Jagex doesn't invite players to check out future updates. Now, that's more work than it sounds; to do proper beta testing of that nature you need to gather a group, schedule them to play through the update (preferably in a room where you can watch 'em to see where they get stuck), analyse the feedback, re-program the code according to the feedback, do more basic testing, gather a different beta group, schedule them to play through the update again... As a minimum, we're looking at an extra couple of weeks on each update. For a company that releases around 4 updates per month, that's a vast amount of extra time.

 

 

 

I'd still like them to do it. But I don't believe it's going to be a quick-and-simple matter for them to switch over to that kind of thing. For a start, they'll likely have to ditch the thing about updating most weeks. Which would be a complete change to the service they offer, so we'd better hope every player is happy getting fewer updates.

 

 

 

Or they could "just" hire and train another few dozen testers who know about RuneScape. I wonder how much that'd cost, and whether they'd end up cutting back on other useful things to pay for it?

 

 

 

Are they really banning people for messing around with bugs that do no harm but merely look funny? I approve of people being banned for spending hours clicking on a buggy tree patch that's giving 10k Farming XP with every click (which did happen), but it'd be plain moronic to ban a subscribing player for sitting on a chair in a way that looks funny.

But I was uder the assumption that Jagex makes a large profit, i.e. several million, and could afford to increase their staff? After all, how many businesses that make 3 million plus have just 200 employees?

 

 

 

This article was... decent. The topic was good and it was fairly well written, but I'm disappointed that there was no mention of emergent gameplay, which I believe Jagex frowns upon. Other companies and game producers encourage it, from Will Wright and Sid Meier to Blizzard and Bungee. Of course, you could make the argument that creating an efficient suicide method with Bowser smash B, developing swarm tactics for the zerg, or finding some way to make a perfect duplicate of Charles Darwin on Spore somewhat different than exploiting terrain or game features that the developers never thought of in an MMORPG are two very different things, but I believe that Jagex doesn't like emergent gameplay simply because it reduces their control of the game. Look at the GE. If that's taught us anything, it's that Jagex likes themselves some control.

[/hide]

 

 

 

There is an issue with emergent gameplay, however I feel that this topic is too Jagex negative to go into farther. I however agree with your point.

 

 

 

And to the first one I say that the 25 people do fine, just jagex needs more.

 

 

 

And I know about blizzard, the updates take forever to come out, but the Blizzard and Jagex have different philosophies.

[Judobreaker]

But I was uder the assumption that Jagex makes a large profit, i.e. several million, and could afford to increase their staff? After all, how many businesses that make 3 million plus have just 200 employees?

 

 

 

I don't think it's that easy.

 

First of all, there's the payment of the staff.

 

Then there is the servers that need to be paid, kept up-to-date with hardware and stuff like that so they can handle the amount of players.

 

Believe me when I say that those kind of dedicated servers are NOT cheap.

 

They probably also have to pay a [cabbage]load of taxes, they probably have some copyrights and other stuff like that.

 

IF Jagex really made that much money, do you think they would have increased the membership price...?

 

I don't think so.

 

 

 

Life isn't as cheap as you think.

[Zillakilla69]

Good read but I sort of agree with Jagex making all those "nerfs". The reason you called it "bad testing" is because they dont have 1 million people working for JAGEX that can test it out. JAGEX even said it in a behind the scenes release a while ago about how scapers are also part of the JAGEX team that tests out any new updates. JAGEX has a certain idea in mind and although it might make killing a boss harder...Jagex doesnt want anyone hiding behind corners in the wall.

[Tim_Tam_Tan_Tien]

WoW also doesn't get updated every week. They have more time than Jagex does.

 

 

 

My friend told me that servers were down every Tuesday\ thursday ( something beginning with T) at a certain time just to fix and put patches into the game, i might be mistaken though.

 

 

 

Anyway it was the best article in a while in my opinion, Keep up the good work =D>

[Makoto_the_Phoenix]

It's a great read, but there is a lot of presumption here. I'm pretty vocal on the matter of the Saradomin/GWD bug, and with some experience as a [Java] student programmer, I can start to pick apart a few of the fallacies.

 

 

 

At JAGEX people had a concept for a cockroach lair etc, worked on it, and released it (with not nearly enough real testing.) They never realized this imbalance and let it get through.

 

 

 

Fallacy #1: Jagex doesn't do enough bug testing.

 

 

 

To begin with, Jagex has only 400 or so people employed, with about ±35% working on QA. This means that there's ±140 people testing. This might seem like a lot, and a large part of the major bugs get caught. HOWEVER, (and this is very important as a lot of people seem to miss this), 140 doesn't even register in the face of between 1 and 4 million people testing this game's new feature at once. Those 140 guys know how it's supposed to behave, because they've received dossiers/paperwork on how it's supposed to work, and they could probably view the source of the update-in-question (I dunno which programming paradigm they're using, so I can't say that for sure).

 

 

 

Jagex didn't know that the cockroach's range attack/defense was poor in the face of freeplay. Jagex didn't count on over 1,400 people in one person's house, and they sure as hell didn't count on that bug being extended out to the rest of the game world.

 

 

 

It's not a matter of poor QA, it's a matter of being outnumbered, about 7,142 to 1 in terms of bug testing.

 

 

 

By default a bug is not intended, but how do we know it isn't intended?

 

 

 

Fallacy #2: Bugs are contestable.

 

 

 

Various bugs that have cropped up throughout the history of the game, such as the KBD/KQ safespots, the Guthix Tea glitch, and the GWD door safespot are being contested as "legal features", and "oversights on the part of Jagex QA".

 

 

 

Do you think that a level 333 x2 boss's effectiveness should be marginalized to make it easy for one to camp?

 

Do you think that a level 276 fireball thrower should fry warriors without Antifire, but not a ranger in full Karil?

 

Do you think it's right for a level 570+ to not be able to attack you back when you're fighting?

 

 

 

It's a weird thing to see players rise up to defend these kinds of things, because it was clearly unintended -- all of these boss monsters [at one point] dropped things worth over 2M, and introducing them into the game at the rate that these safe spots would have would break the game.

 

 

 

Bugs are going to happen; the point of testing a game is to eliminate them. I have a cousin who did quality assurance for World of Warcraft, and I can assure all of you that the quality assurance for Blizzard is extremely good. Rooms of people play, messing around, and testing new areas. What do testers at JAGEX do? Make sure you don't fall through the floor and call it good? They should hire more staff (or more productive staff) to make sure that innocent people aren't banned and glitches aren't exploited.

 

 

 

Fallacy #3: Jagex doesn't have enough QA staff to help with bugs.

 

 

 

Well...the truth is that we're really Jagex's QA when it comes to game balance. If we think something's unbalanced, we let 'em know about it. When a glitch occurs, we're supposed to let them know about it. Well, we're supposed to...but even in the article, the Saradomin safespot had remained a secret for months, which doesn't mean that Jagex dropped the ball, but rather, greedy players wanted a leg-up over others, and abused a very critical flaw.

 

 

 

I suppose in the end, it was still a great read. But don't go blaming Jagex's QA for all the faults in the game...you're supposed to report them as you see them, too...

[Deathmath]

I see your point. If the world was perfect jagex wouldn't have to do anything. 8-)

 

 

 

No really great point.

[Lugia_Lvl138]

As I read this, my first thought was the Sara GWD glitch back in Feb that made me 350m in a week. And yet with all of these nerfs to Sara, I can STILL solo her a good 10-16 times per trip. And if I ever get an Elysian Spirit Shield, that number will probably go even higher.

[Ravenkana]

But I was uder the assumption that Jagex makes a large profit, i.e. several million, and could afford to increase their staff? After all, how many businesses that make 3 million plus have just 200 employees?

 

 

 

I don't think it's that easy.

 

First of all, there's the payment of the staff.

 

Then there is the servers that need to be paid, kept up-to-date with hardware and stuff like that so they can handle the amount of players.

 

Believe me when I say that those kind of dedicated servers are NOT cheap.

 

They probably also have to pay a [cabbage]load of taxes, they probably have some copyrights and other stuff like that.

 

IF Jagex really made that much money, do you think they would have increased the membership price...?

 

I don't think so.

 

 

 

Life isn't as cheap as you think.

I specified that that was profit, not income. That's what the company makes AFTER expenses.

[cuba_caramel]

I believe it was a very judging article with no open minded thinkin behind it... It was just like: JAGEX you got to hire more game testers!!! i think it is a very closed way to look at it

[Nenga]

I agree with this article. Though sometimes big bugs do get through. Say on a bug there is a 1/5000000 chance of it happening. Lets say jagex has about 50 QA staff, so out of 100000 tests 1 person would have that glitch happen. Besides they test big updates like gwd or construction, they also have to keep up with new updates so the spirit beast doesn't hit you for 2852. (no that didn't happen i'm just using that as an example.)

 

 

 

On that note: A lot of people seem to be having trouble with summers end, I wonder how that will effect the number of people with quest capes? Or will jagex nerf the rate at which the spirit beast attacks during the quest?

 

 

 

Though I do have my quest cape back .

[pokemama]

Also worth noting; this is one of the first somewhat jagex-critical articles ever allowed to be posted, and you kept it clean :)

I guess you mean from the Editorial Panel as opposed to old-style "The Editor" Times. A couple of those were so controversial that Andrew Gower personally posted a response on TIF. :D

 

This article was... decent. The topic was good and it was fairly well written, but I'm disappointed that there was no mention of emergent gameplay, which I believe Jagex frowns upon. Other companies and game producers encourage it, from Will Wright and Sid Meier to Blizzard and Bungee. Of course, you could make the argument that creating an efficient suicide method with Bowser smash B, developing swarm tactics for the zerg, or finding some way to make a perfect duplicate of Charles Darwin on Spore somewhat different than exploiting terrain or game features that the developers never thought of in an MMORPG are two very different things, but I believe that Jagex doesn't like emergent gameplay simply because it reduces their control of the game. Look at the GE. If that's taught us anything, it's that Jagex likes themselves some control.

A January 2007 Times article on Emergent Gameplay viewtopic.php?p=4175691#p4175691 (and again a few posts down.)

 

 

 

Note that several of his claims to emergent game play (drop parties and wilderness) have been removed since then, lol, although clan wars in theory does help replace one.

 

 

 

Gower had a valid point about balance though - the WOW forums are *constantly* full of balance issues, and WOW updates to classes (for balancing) always cause a huge outcry. Shamans were once so powerful it was ludicrous. Then Rogues were outrageous, etc. RS is FAR more balanced (I think rangers and mages have a harder time training, but that may just be me personally.)

 

 

 

I also don't think the Durial thing could have been avoided. The alignment of events was kind of like a train wreck - several things had to happen together. There's just no way to test every combination before a release. Construction was a HUGE release, YEARS in the making, and it was amazingly awesome. I do feel bad for the party hat guy. But I also remember reading that another guy started stripping as soon as he got ice blocked, dropping every bit of his armour, whip and all, so that his phat would be protected. Fast thinking on his part.

 

 

 

Basically nobody can hire millions of teens to completely exercise software - it's just not possible. I don't know how they decide who is an abuser and who is not.

 

 

 

Basically I agree with Ravenkana and the Jan 2007 article about control: sometimes Jagex exercises their need for it a bit too harshly.

[Xeen]

As a resident old-man (comparatively to most Runescape players) with ~10 years in Software Development, I can't help but speak up for a moment after reading this.

 

 

 

First, the comparisons to World of Warcraft. It's completely Apples to Oranges. They both qualify as games that a lot of people play. After that, there's almost nothing similar. The type of client, the update release cycles, the philosophy behind how the game is ran, the resources available to work with. It's all completely different.

 

 

 

WoW will release a major patch at varying amounts of time, but it's always months in between each releases. Sorry, but the Tuesday nightly maintenance is generally just downtime. The occasional 'hotfix' is employed at that point if necessary, but the argument that they take the servers down weekly to do these things is actually a point against the WoW comparison, considering they're fixing bugs that made it past QA.

 

 

 

WoW also uses a Public Test Realm, where normal players go on and test new patches. The players do it because they can learn new bosses and tricks without risk to their real character, get a feel for changes to classes, or sometimes maliciously learn about bugs that they can profit from in case they make it to live. Their slow release cycle allows this, Jagex's does not. The frequent updates by Jagex keep the game much fresher, but at a cost of, as pointed out, more potential bugs. But WoW's not exactly bug free. There's been item duping bugs, and in the original release of the new dungeon BWL, it had a bug where you couldn't get past the first boss. The door to move on literally didn't work. It was hotfixed that night. "Here's a new dungeon we worked on for 4 months. Yay team! What's that? You can't get past the first boss? Oops, we should have probably tried that." So WoW aside, seriously, the presumption that because bugs get introduced means that their QA department is inadequate is so wrong on so many levels.

 

 

 

I know this article is more about people wanting to vent that their favorite bugs were fixed and people are more interested in brandishing pitch forks and complaining at the top of their lungs, so I don't want to make an already long post longer by detailing all the different challenges too much. But really, life happens.

 

 

 

When my developer team publishes a software release, we release, we fix the bugs that were missed by us and QA as they're reported, and then when the dust has settled we sit down and categorize the bugs that made it through. We categorize under 3 columns: "Life", "Preventable", and "Bonehead". Life happens. We can try to minimize it, but the complexities of software development means that there's always something. Preventable is something we should have thought of and we need to figure out why it was missed and make notes/update processes to prevent that in the future. Bonehead is when Larry in the back cubicle completely ignores our already documented quality standards and does something so stupid that the QA team doesn't even think to test it because it's obvious. You never want something in that column, but things still end up there. They end up there for my team, they end up there for the WoW team, they end up there for the Jagex team, and they'll continue ending up there for every single development team on the planet.

 

 

 

So yeah. I give more slack because I understand what's involved. That doesn't mean they're not boneheads on occasion. But by everything I've seen from Jagex, they're doing their best not to be. But I suppose if we have it on authority from the author's cousin that Blizzard's "rooms of people play" is a far better model and not in any way vague second-hand hearsay, and that there's a handful of high profile bonehead bugs to use as examples, then I need to reevaluate my opinion of their quality. Clearly, the author's conclusion that Jagex's testing is terrible after an article whose premise is based more on what qualifies as a bug to a play, trumps all other reason.

 

 

 

:thumbdown:

[HeliosG]

I'm not quite sure where the author was going with this article. Was he/she complaining about 'nerfing' (such a perjorative word) or unfair banning, or the lack of testing as he/she perceived it. By the end of the article, i remained confused as to the ultimate conclusion.

 

 

 

To understand the complexities of software development, especially in a game environment where balance is a key issue requires a much deeper treatement than that given here.

 

 

 

As someone with 20 years of software development behind them in the commercial sector, I can fully support what Xeen says.

 

The law of unintended consequences plays a huge role in software developemnt. A small tweak here can cause a massive ripple there. Chaos Theory Rules!.

 

 

 

A commercial example would be code to round currency in a particular way in one part of the software suite different from the method used in the other 20 thousand lines of code.

 

It can and did result in a difference of millions of pounds / dollars, fairly key when deciding how much to put into the overnight money market (the function of this particular software suite). Trying to find and fix the offending lines of code in 20 thousand of them was particularly challenging.

 

Heads rolled on that one - a bit different from losing or gaining a few pixels.

[pulli23]

Wow: this isn't about BUGS - a bug is a mistake in the software, resulting into unexpected results. However these aren't really mistakes: if you make something weak it's expected to be defeated easily :roll: .

 

 

 

These are just game design mistakes: and they make a lot bad decision lately about game design.. Makes you wonder if they actually have some people who studied game design there! - Don't think they have :|

 

 

 

Ow and about testing:

 

Program testing can be a very effective way to show the presence of bugs, but is hopelessly inadequate for showing their absence.

 

 

 

* Source: Edgser Dijkstra @ The Humble Programmer

 

That quote dates from 1970 already: and it's still correct (and often forgotten lately)..

 

If you want to show the absence of bugs you have to delve the actual code and explain WHY it works: not just jam in code and hope it works like magic!

 

 

 

 

 

another quote

If in physics there's something you don't understand, you can always hide behind the uncharted depths of nature. You can always blame God. You didn't make it so complex yourself. But if your program doesn't work, there is no one to hide behind. You cannot hide behind an obstinate nature. If it doesn't work, you've messed up.

[obidiah]

I feel this article makes a huge false assumption in claiming that Blizzards testing allows for bug free releases.

 

A claim they have a significantly better track record than Jagex just doesn't seem correct to me.

 

World of Warcraft has had plenty of serious bugs and exploits. Theres been speedhacks, a plague bug, a "stat stacking" bug , duping.

 

Plenty of their players have been banned for bug abuse too.

 

 

 

Diablo II (a previous effort from blizzard) was plagued with duping and hack problems on the largest scale I've ever seen in an online game. Diablo's problems dwarf that of Runescape.

 

Obviosuly games companies should do all they can to stop these things sneaking through, but it's harder than you might think for in house testing teams to explore things as thoroughly as hundreds of thousands of players.