So, what's up?

[Cz]

Hi everybody,

Thought I'd post a little update on what's going on over here at the moment, both with the dev team and myself. Figured you might appreciate that.


Shadowlands
Production of Shadowlands is the main task right now, and the dev team (designers, programmers, graphics and sound artists, world designers, the project manager and the game director) and our QA people are extremely busy. The beta test is about to start, and everything needs to be ready for it. That's priority #1 right now.

The beta test will start off with special invitations only. These people will be those we have worked closely with already, and know will be 100% focused on testing what we need them to test first. As we're sure the basics work as they should, and can support more testers without having to spend too much time on getting people started, we'll add more external testers.

Open application is not likely to start just yet, and it's still some time to wait after that for applicants to be accepted into the beta. More information about this will follow soon, possibly next week.


Updates
We're currently aiming for two updates before Shadowlands. The first one is 14.8.2, and is for fixing bugs, and some additional tweaks on changes in 14.8.0 (e.g. the ping-pong aggro). We hope to run this update the live dimensions next week (Wednesday).

The second update we're aiming for will be 14.9, which is a pure data update. That means no new code, though we have some "dormant" features in the game just waiting for this data, so you'll see some new stuff anyway. And some item data bugs are likely to be corrected here too. More stash, basically. And, of course, the long awaited Inner Sanctum dungeon.


Community
Currently I'm stuck in a bit of work connected with the Shadowlands beta, and have to get all that done before I can do much else. I currently have three priority levels on my tasks; Immediate, Priority, and Everything else. Most things not related to Shadowlands is currently in the last one.

One non-Shadowlands task I'm working on is feeding some e-mails into our e-mail system again, not having them sent directly to my inbox. This is due to many e-mails for the feedback and community addresses really being Customer Service issues, and having it the same system as them makes transfering the e-mails a lot easier. thomasj@funcom.com will still go directly to me, of course. I won't have time to reply to all e-mails though, as I simply get too much, but promise you I read everything personally, and forward what should be forwarded.

I still go through the Suggestions forum mostly every day, and see what's new on all forums. I get an e-mail for each new thread started on the bulletin board, with the subject of the thread, so I can just scroll through to get a general overview. Note that adding "Cz" or "to Funcom" in the subject is almost sure to make me not reply to the thread. If you want to contact me personally, use e-mail or private messages.

One of the things that will move up to Priority rating when I get some spare time is more forums on the bulletin board, possibly with player moderators (in addition to Funcom / ARK ones). I'll evaluate whether I need player moderators before I can open new forums. If I do, I have to set down some criterias, an application / selection system, and some extra rules. That's gonna take a little bit of time, so don't expect it up like next week.

---

Ok, that was a general overview. I hope it was of some use.