Year of the Dragon NPC Temporarily Disabled

[Br4d]

Not much of a conspiracy theorist, but sure is suspect the dragon breaks when giving away the Xpacks. LoL Does this shorten the window we can acquire our Xpack or does it fudge up the YoD calender schedule???

Never assume malice when spaghetti code is involved. Odds are pretty good that the person who designed the Dragon NPC did not understand how quests and x-pacs were attributed to accounts and so they missed something in the process of setting it up.

 

[Volarr]

Whatever the foul up was/is with the Dragons gifts has already taken a while to find/fix and still no stinking pots. Which we don't need. LOL

 

[DDO Gaming]

any update?

to DDO Gaming, the current update is:

I'm sorry! The celebration is temporarily on hold until I hear back from my allies

 

[DDO Gaming]

Whatever the foul up was/is with the Dragons gifts has already taken a while to find/fix and still no stinking pots. Which we don't need. LOL

its not a "foul up" but the consequences of dynamic/realtime testing.

 

[KatzyBaby]

Not much of a conspiracy theorist, but sure is suspect the dragon breaks when giving away the Xpacks. LoL Does this shorten the window we can acquire our Xpack or does it fudge up the YoD calender schedule???

I'm trying to figure out how this might be a conspiracy. Let's see, some guy in a Communist country, sitting in his mommy's basement, is sneaking into the SSG server code and rewriting it to only give the Xpacks to his friends? Aliens are using a space laser to destroy SSGs code to steal all the Xpacks for themselves? The monster at the center of the Earth is frustrated by environmental damage and is using this event to wage it's own war against humanity? As always,

 

[Br4d]

I'm trying to figure out how this might be a conspiracy. Let's see, some guy in a Communist country, sitting in his mommy's basement, is sneaking into the SSG server code and rewriting it to only give the Xpacks to his friends? Aliens are using a space laser to destroy SSGs code to steal all the Xpacks for themselves? The monster at the center of the Earth is frustrated by environmental damage and is using this event to wage it's own war against humanity? As always,

It's most likely that the NPC does not accurately display the x-pacs that you actually need.

This is the kind of bug guaranteed to shut down the process until it is fixed. SSG definitely does not want to have to deal with lots of fixes for all the accounts that took an x-pac they already have.

The process is further complicated because many of the x-pacs might have been purchased in the Marketplace for cash or in the store for points. Throw in the Expansion Trove, which may mark ownership differently than individual purchases and you have a major confuddlement.

 

[KatzyBaby]

It's most likely that the NPC does not accurately display the x-pacs that you actually need.

This is the kind of bug guaranteed to shut down the process until it is fixed. SSG definitely does not want to have to deal with lots of fixes for all the accounts that took an x-pac they already have.

The process is further complicated because many of the x-pacs might have been purchased in the Marketplace for cash or in the store for points. Throw in the Expansion Trove, which may mark ownership differently than individual purchases and you have a major confuddlement.

Um, I was actually kidding about the conspiracy theory. But, yea, it's like trying to drive a car with only 2 wheels. You know those wheels are good, but it's still hard to drive. Also, the whole process of refunding, tickets, etc. is why I usually wait a few days to even think about these kinds of freebies. I think it is a shared responsibility thought for ppl to know which packs they have, or at least which packs they want and don't have.

 

[dur]

The process is further complicated because many of the x-pacs might have been purchased in the Marketplace for cash or in the store for points. Throw in the Expansion Trove, which may mark ownership differently than individual purchases and you have a major confuddlement.

Yeah.. knowing there's a disconnect between USD n DDO Point purchases. It'd be nice to Upgrade when spending USD, but no ~

If there's any conspiracy, it's one that's existed since the dawn of Capitalism.

 

[cursedblessedone]

It's most likely that the NPC does not accurately display the x-pacs that you actually need.

This is the kind of bug guaranteed to shut down the process until it is fixed. SSG definitely does not want to have to deal with lots of fixes for all the accounts that took an x-pac they already have.

The process is further complicated because many of the x-pacs might have been purchased in the Marketplace for cash or in the store for points. Throw in the Expansion Trove, which may mark ownership differently than individual purchases and you have a major confuddlement.

Yeah the store let me buy Ravenloft even though I owned the Ultimate Fan Bundle at the time. It was totally my fault for clicking on it but it shouldn't of let me buy it when I owned it when we first got Ravenloft and the others for 99 point sale.

 

[dur]

its not a "foul up" but the consequences of dynamic/realtime testing.

IDK.. there's definitely a disconnect with the game tracking purchases via DDO Points(/VIP unlocks?) and USD purchases. Like they're 2 (*now 3?) different systems... been a thing for a while now.

*semantics

 

[Ykty]

“When you tolerate mediocrity, you get more of it.”
― Frank Sonnenberg
“It doesn’t cost more to strive for excellence, but if you settle for mediocrity, it’ll cost you dearly.”
― Frank Sonnenberg
“No one gets ahead by striving for mediocrity.”
― Glenn C. Stewart

I don't know who these guys are, but if you never plan for failure, then when it inevitably happens, you're stuck because you didn't plan for it:

• no one to work on it
• no information on what lead to the failure
• no way to reproduce it and make sure it's fixed, and prevent it from happening again

 

[voenixa121]

I don't know who these guys are, [...]

That's always the problem with these things. You can find anything you want as a quote from somebody, most of the time totally out of context. But you know, writers are the engineers of the human soul.

 

[Sweyn]

I don't know who these guys are, but if you never plan for failure, then when it inevitably happens, you're stuck because you didn't plan for it:

• no one to work on it
• no information on what lead to the failure
• no way to reproduce it and make sure it's fixed, and prevent it from happening again

I'm well aware of this. I've never argued against planning for failure, I've said you shouldn't be content with failure. Those are two very different things.

 

[dur]

ugh

IDK.. there's definitely a disconnect with the game tracking purchases via DDO Points(/VIP unlocks?) and USD purchases. Like they're 2 (*now 3?) different systems... been a thing for a while now.

*semantics

That's always the problem with these things. You can find anything you want as a quote from somebody, most of the time totally out of context. But you know, writers are the engineers of the human soul.

Read, Are you a dev? An apologist? Sorry, but this is... bad. The Airship tele; n then there's the "oh btw"post by Cordo on 'missed update notes.' BS.


Getting really tired of this level of stupidity/ineptitude. Glad they finally gonna intro scroll-bars. Really, Assuming it don't introduce moar unintended consequences . . . and way too many 'undocumented fixes' well before now.

It's almost like they want this game to fail. Devs certainly think we're a joke if they cannot document what they're changing.

 

[Bri]

Ah

We have temporarily disabled Xatheral, the Year of the Dragon NPC in the Eberron Hall of Heroes, while we investigate a bug with reward delivery. We will have more information on the timing and availability of April's Year of the Dragon gift soon.

Ok Cordovan , thanks for the information

I thought it was my problem that I didn't arrive at the event on time or that I had already chosen one of the packs without realizing it.

I hope it is resolved and good news arrives soon.

 

[_fully_carroted_]

the game is 18 years old
that will happen, just another sign of the game's age that years of spaghetti code will cause this

That comment has nothing to do with what I was saying.

It's why they can't make changes to the TR cache though - the TR code is about 15 years old and extremely fragile.

But accidentally forgetting to mark an entire raid's loot table as BTC? Accidentally forgetting to see if the "give things away" NPC can actually give things away? So many of the in-game problems are about lack of attention to detail.

And you can't blame "the game is old" for that. Quite the opposite - SSG is full of professional developers who have worked on this game for a LONG time, and know it with a great level of depth. They aren't incompetent, and they know what they are doing. From the outside (but with a little dev experience) the issues are about testing and planning.

 

[Volarr]

Scrollbars what a concept!

 

[Akla Thornfist]

Just make them all 99 points and be done with it , i still need IOD and the saltmarsh would gladly pay 99 for each lol. wow just noticed im new member been here since launch

 

[EwertonReis]

I came back from my trip happy to know I would have a gift, I just didn't know what it was

 

[Shardrena]

Not waded through the entire thread yet, but this caught my attention.

I get that this game isn't as important as rocket science or nuclear engineering, but holy cow does SSG need company wide training on the concept of quality control. With every single new release/update containing multiple bugs, it's apparent they don't test their products prior to release to ensure first time success. That, or they just don't care.

I find it apparent that Sweyn hasn't played many MMOs over the years. An MMO this late in it's life is basically spaghetti code. It's the result of code being patched into existing code hundreds of times, at least. There will be unexpected interactions, bugs, and problems. The bugfix patches are as likely to introduce new bugs as they are to fix bugs without additional ones cropping up. Hell, the same bug may keep cropping up, getting fixed, and cropping up again later. City of Heroes had a long history of fixing a memory leak bug after every single content update. Sometimes multiple times. And one bug fix patch in CoH accidentally removed a door, trapping people in an enclosed area with some quest givers, or blocking them from reaching said quest givers.

And sometimes, a bug doesn't crop up at all in closed or open beta testing, only to rear it's ugly head once an update hits live servers due to the greater load the live servers are under.