Frid...*ahem* Saturday with Means - June 13th, 2009 - I'm not dead.
Sorry for missing Friday completely. I was sick as a dog yesterday and accomplished nothing but holding down the couch/bed for many consecutive hours. This timing was less than perfect and I missed the company summer party...as well as the annual presentation of AO to the rest of the company. I anticipate being made fun of uver this for at least 6 months. This was a short week for me as I was away in Stockholm until Wednesday and did not make it in on Friday. Good thing the rest of the team is working hard.
Metaing was in town this week for meetings concerning the rebalancing of specials, perks, healing etc with Genele. I was horrified when meeting them on Wednesday to see their ideas all making sense. None of these changes will be coming in the next update. ..so we will get a chance to discuss them. No reason for panic. A side benefit of him being here this week was also that he got to attend the summer party...and make an appearance at the Ark event in Oslo this weekend. Yep..the guy from Copenhagen made it to the summer party....the guy who could hear it from his house missed it. /fail
Work continued this week on getting the heart of the new instanced cities, instanced pande and the apartments working. There was supposed to be a new version on testlive for the weekend...I'm hoping it made it there.
Server Stability:
I'm truly sorry it took us as long as it did to figure out how some players were managing to casuse absurd lag through the use of bots. The German dimension was completely unplayable for an unnacceptable period of time. It is easy to forget that there are idiots out there who want to hurt us...a video game...staffed by players like themselves. I imagine it was too tempting with us running a reevaluation to let the returning players enjoy the new servers and the improved performance they have been delivering for the last few weeks. The timing was not coincidence and was done in the manner that would hurt us the most. It is honestly getting to the point where the next time this sort of childish behaviour happens I am going to make use of law enforcement and all other means available to me to ensure the perpetrator receives more than a meaningless ban for their efforts. This kind of thing hurts us financially and by extension hurts our ability to fund new development for our players. I am an exceptionally patient man...but I have my limits....and I will stop at nothing to destroy the next person who does this. I no longer care if this was a "childhood indescretion" that will cripple your future or not. This warning is much more courtesy and forgiveness than last weekend's offenders deserve....and it will be the last warning. At heart I am a vindictive, heartless, ruthless bastard and behaving in any other way is an effort for me. Moving in the video game industry made me more relaxed as the day-to-day activities were lighthearted and fun...if continued activity like this forces me to be serious someone will regret it.
Sorry to be all "doom and gloom" this week but I'm hoping this message gets where it needs to go and that we can all just go back to enjoying the game we love. People like this rarely take the second chance they are offered...but we can always hope.
Have a great weekend.
