EagleDelta.4726

> @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > @"Bloodstealer.5978" said:

> > > @"maultasche.4082" said:

> > > So we crafted legendary armor to be restricted to 2 stat combinations now? Raiders had perfect build templates for the past years thanks to arcdps. Now we get a downgrade provided from Anet. I don't see the advantage of this.

> >

> > Then don't purchase them carry on using Arc templates

> There won't be Arc templates. They will be shut down as soon as ingame templates appear - that was the deal between delta and GW2 devs.

>

> > @"shadow.6174" said:

> > For those complaining about additional ones being charged or too few slots... that's why we hardly get nice stuff, whenever something is made, there are always some whining :tongue: Impossible to please everyone.

> Nah, the reason why we nardly get nice stuff is that, like in this case, whenever Anet decides to do something nice, they always add something to make us sorry we ever asked for it.

Because you want everything for free and continually ignore what it costs to actually make this stuff. Comparing it to GW1 doesn't make sense as most of that game's development was over 12 years ago...... I've been in tech for 10 years and things have changed ALOT in 10 years. For one, pay for everyone has gone up and devs have gone up in cost. A single team of 10ish devs can cost anywhere between $1/2 million to more than $1 million a year depending on skill level, especially once you factor in the benefits for those employees. And this is one team of just developers, I'm not counting the managers, designers, writers, artists, etc. Then factor in datacenter costs, costs for engineers to manage those datacenters (separate from the devs), support personnel (which tends to have more people in the company than the dev teams), etc.

Compare to GW1 all you want, but the ongoing development of that game was short-lived when compared to GW2. With GW1 I had 3 $50 purchases to make and 1 $40 purchase to make for everything. With GW2, I've paid $60, $50, and $30 to get the base content and expansions. I've paid nothing for LW content. So already they make less on the physical copies of GW2 than GW1, especially when you factor in the fact that costs to make this stuff increased, not decreased, over time.

> @"Dzjudz.9142" said:

> > @"EagleDelta.4726" said:

> > > @"Neutra.6857" said:

> > > > @"EagleDelta.4726" said:

> > > > > @"Neutra.6857" said:

> > > > > > @"Agrotera.1254" said:

> > > > > > > @"Dzjudz.9142" said:

> > > > > > > What would you say to people who have legendary gear for the convenience of swapping between lots of builds (many runes, stat combinations) and now being locked to only two possibilities (with having to buy gems for more options)? A ranger can for example use power soulbeast (berserker), condi soulbeast (viper), heal druid (harrier), deimos hand kiter (minstrel or whatever), wvw condi (trailblazer), and many more. What is the benefit of legendary gear if you lock the options via build templates?

> > > > > >

> > > > > > I believe this statement answers your question ...... "Equipment Templates can also record the customization of legendary items, which can freely change attributes and upgrades. You can equip a single legendary item to multiple Equipment Templates with different attributes and upgrade choices for each."

> > > > >

> > > > > The issue is that those who will most likely use templates can use a large number of different runes/sigils for different scenarios (like changing runes/sigils between fractals) an can easily have wy more then 3 or 4 different varieties all for the same armor stats.

> > > >

> > > > The impression I've gotten from the people I play with and the average player is that the player base that needs more than the 3 build, 2 equipment, 3 storage (+3 more) is actually a huge (but vocal) minority. The company has to make money or the game goes away. Developers are expensive to have on staff, so to justify the time spent on this feature, they have to charge money somehow.

> > >

> > > And doing so will only kitten of the player base, because they are losing what is a free system with infinite options that they have had access to for years.

> >

> > It's this or a subscription, you choose.

>

> Why are those the only two options? That's a false dichotomy. There are other options too. Just because they offer this, that doesn't mean that it's either their offer or a subscription fee.

How else do you suppose they make money then and pay their devs? As I've already stated devs are **not** cheap. There's a reason that in the 90s and early 2000s many "old-school" companies (and some current ones) see the Devs/Admins/Engineers as a black hole of cost. Technology is expensive, and will continue to be as long as there are more jobs than bodies to fill those jobs. You want this game around, then it _has to monetize_. Boxed prices can only be used for large content releases, but those don't sustain the game on its own, if it did then MMOs would've always worked that way. It doesn't MMOs have always functioned with MTX and/or Subs as the primary income source.

Players don't want a rise in boxed price, players don't want to pay subs, players don't want to pay MTX...... what is the option then?

Question for the devs:

How do the Character bound Build Template tabs interact with the Account Bound Build storage? Will there be anything similar to the Build Storage for Equipment templates in the future?

Thanks for the hard work!

> @"Neutra.6857" said:

> > @"EagleDelta.4726" said:

> > > @"Neutra.6857" said:

> > > > @"EagleDelta.4726" said:

> > > > > @"Neutra.6857" said:

> > > > > > @"Agrotera.1254" said:

> > > > > > > @"Dzjudz.9142" said:

> > > > > > > What would you say to people who have legendary gear for the convenience of swapping between lots of builds (many runes, stat combinations) and now being locked to only two possibilities (with having to buy gems for more options)? A ranger can for example use power soulbeast (berserker), condi soulbeast (viper), heal druid (harrier), deimos hand kiter (minstrel or whatever), wvw condi (trailblazer), and many more. What is the benefit of legendary gear if you lock the options via build templates?

> > > > > >

> > > > > > I believe this statement answers your question ...... "Equipment Templates can also record the customization of legendary items, which can freely change attributes and upgrades. You can equip a single legendary item to multiple Equipment Templates with different attributes and upgrade choices for each."

> > > > >

> > > > > The issue is that those who will most likely use templates can use a large number of different runes/sigils for different scenarios (like changing runes/sigils between fractals) an can easily have wy more then 3 or 4 different varieties all for the same armor stats.

> > > >

> > > > The impression I've gotten from the people I play with and the average player is that the player base that needs more than the 3 build, 2 equipment, 3 storage (+3 more) is actually a huge (but vocal) minority. The company has to make money or the game goes away. Developers are expensive to have on staff, so to justify the time spent on this feature, they have to charge money somehow.

> > >

> > > And doing so will only kitten of the player base, because they are losing what is a free system with infinite options that they have had access to for years.

> >

> > It think you're being overly dramatic about this. Most people I play GW2 with don't even use ArcDPS, let alone Arc Templates. It breaks after every update and doesn't add enough to be worth the effort when it does work. Even then builds randomly disappear from it and if your PC/Laptop/Harddrive went down/died you lost the templates.

> > I know non-technical users like to compare things like this as if they're the same..... they're not. To you it may seem that way, but you're comparing a plugin someone worked on in their spare time to something a company put money, a lot of it too, into.

> >

> > Additionally, a dev can cost between $70-100K per dev/per year (sometimes less for junior devs, and a lot more for senior devs). You have to justify where that dev spends his time otherwise the company (whose goal is to make money) won't approve the work. It's this or a subscription, you choose.

>

> I am not being dramatic about this at all, just pointing out that the system being used is likely to annoy the players who would use it. Most of GW2 player base does not care about builds at all. Thus this template thing is useless to them. Templates are used by those who have a lot of characters and whose characters change their build a lot, as in the more hardcore community.

>

> Correct the company put time and money into this, something that should have been released at the start of the game given it already existed in GW1. As the years went on and there was no signs of a template, another person spent their personal time to make something that was free to the user with essentially unlimited slots. True it would break when there where game changes, but that was because there where game changes and there where constant updates to fix it. Now that templates are coming to the game itself, that hardcore community is losing their free unlimited template, and you think they will be happy with this change?

The problem with your argument about someone else putting their own time into it for unlimited templates..... the community will always be able to do things and give people things for free that ANet can't do. They don't get to work on templates for free/in their own time for us. It never has and never will work that way in business.

Additionally, we don't get to say "you can't charge for that, it should've been in at the beginning". That's not how design works. Just because players ended up taking things beyond the original design does not mean that ANet ever intended there to be a need for build templates. The GW2 player base demands/expects a lot without realizing the fact that only some of those desires can be met at any given time.

> @"Vagrant.7206" said:

> > @"EagleDelta.4726" said:

> > > @"Vagrant.7206" said:

> > > > @"FrigginPaco.4178" said:

> > > > I'm very disappointed, but not surprised, to see that additional templates will need to be purchased via gemstore. People who play a higher number of build variations and game modes are ironically the ones hit hardest by this decision. I play across PvE, WvW, and PvP. Even if you get a new set of fresh templates per game mode that's an astonishing amount of locking done by this marketing decision.

> > >

> > > To add onto this:

> > >

> > > Several DPS meters offer plugins for build and gear templates (completely free, btw). ArcDPS notably has had the feature for years now. These templates supported theoretically infinite numbers of build and gear templates.

> > >

> > > My questions are thus: Why are you downgrading players on a feature that we have been promised for years? And charging for the privilege too? I thought Nintendo Switch Online was a bad joke, but jeez.

> >

> > ArcDPS agreed to discontinue their build template tool if ANet ever made their own. Not only that, but the dev announced back when the work on Build Templates was made known that he was discontinuing development on the Arc templates. Once this goes live and the Arc Dev no longer maintains his, then it will be a bannable offense to use the template tool.

>

> Which is pretty sad, because as others have pointed out in this thread, you could just save the traits chat code in a text file, thereby circumventing their monetization. The only thing you couldn't save independently would be the equipment setup.

It could very well be that is intentional on ANet's side. Allow you to keep the text files around for the capabilities and monetize the convenience of already having the saved template in the game. :shrug:

> @"ArmoredVehicle.2849" said:

> So technically we're getting a base of 3 slots per character, shared between PvE and WvW and further unlocks requires gems. After 7 years of waiting I have to say I expected a lot better. This is also what killed my interest in the game, almost everything has a relationship with the gemstore.

>

> In GW1:

> You want more inventory space = Play and work your way up for these stuff. - **Inventory space was very limited even after you got it. Only recently could you get more and it requires a lot of grind. Storage always cost extra money.**

> All Weapon Skins = Run specific dungeons, open chests, do special events...aka play the game.

> Armor Skins = Get materials + Money

> Templates = You can have hundreds of them, sort them in different folders, name them. **Wasn't stored with your account server side. Lost them if your computer/HDD died, etc.**

>

> In GW2:

> More Storage = Gems

> Weapon Skins = Basic skins obtainable in game, but exotics and flashy stuff = tldr. Gems

> Armor Skins = Even more Gems

> Templates = Heavily limited > more Gems are required

>

> If I were given the choice between paying €40 for 7 expansions or the gemstore stuff, I'd pick the former without thinking twice.

I get what you're feeling, but you have to keep in mind that in the last 14 years the cost of making games (specifically the cost to hire experienced developers and artists, etc) has gone up. The cost to maintain a game running at this scale is not cheap and money has to be brought in to offset those costs AND profit. Those costs include employees, benefits for employees, server costs, network bandwidth costs, storage costs, backup storage costs, security costs, compliance/auditing costs, office costs, etc.

Where I work, we do that by charging out customers (other businesses usually) monthly or yearly recurring fees based on usage, etc. We also work on our back end to improve the performance of our systems, usually unbeknownst to our customers, to reduce maintenance costs and improve revenue and income. So, while the cost of making and maintaining a game (or any persistent tech stack) has gone up, the average cost of boxed content has stayed the same or gone down. That money has to be made up somewhere and players/customers don't seem to be keen on subscriptions or price hikes, so that's where the Gem store/MTX stuff came in.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Nothing stays the same forever and GW1 was in a very different world than GW2 (and it costs very little money to continue running due to its unique nature compared to other MMOs)

> @"Neutra.6857" said:

> > @"EagleDelta.4726" said:

> > > @"Neutra.6857" said:

> > > > @"Agrotera.1254" said:

> > > > > @"Dzjudz.9142" said:

> > > > > What would you say to people who have legendary gear for the convenience of swapping between lots of builds (many runes, stat combinations) and now being locked to only two possibilities (with having to buy gems for more options)? A ranger can for example use power soulbeast (berserker), condi soulbeast (viper), heal druid (harrier), deimos hand kiter (minstrel or whatever), wvw condi (trailblazer), and many more. What is the benefit of legendary gear if you lock the options via build templates?

> > > >

> > > > I believe this statement answers your question ...... "Equipment Templates can also record the customization of legendary items, which can freely change attributes and upgrades. You can equip a single legendary item to multiple Equipment Templates with different attributes and upgrade choices for each."

> > >

> > > The issue is that those who will most likely use templates can use a large number of different runes/sigils for different scenarios (like changing runes/sigils between fractals) an can easily have wy more then 3 or 4 different varieties all for the same armor stats.

> >

> > The impression I've gotten from the people I play with and the average player is that the player base that needs more than the 3 build, 2 equipment, 3 storage (+3 more) is actually a huge (but vocal) minority. The company has to make money or the game goes away. Developers are expensive to have on staff, so to justify the time spent on this feature, they have to charge money somehow.

>

> And doing so will only kitten of the player base, because they are losing what is a free system with infinite options that they have had access to for years.

It think you're being overly dramatic about this. Most people I play GW2 with don't even use ArcDPS, let alone Arc Templates. It breaks after every update and doesn't add enough to be worth the effort when it does work. Even then builds randomly disappear from it and if your PC/Laptop/Harddrive went down/died you lost the templates.

I know non-technical users like to compare things like this as if they're the same..... they're not. To you it may seem that way, but you're comparing a plugin someone worked on in their spare time to something a company put money, a lot of it too, into.

Additionally, a dev can cost between $70-100K per dev/per year (sometimes less for junior devs, and a lot more for senior devs). You have to justify where that dev spends his time otherwise the company (whose goal is to make money) won't approve the work. It's this or a subscription, you choose.

> @"Vagrant.7206" said:

> > @"FrigginPaco.4178" said:

> > I'm very disappointed, but not surprised, to see that additional templates will need to be purchased via gemstore. People who play a higher number of build variations and game modes are ironically the ones hit hardest by this decision. I play across PvE, WvW, and PvP. Even if you get a new set of fresh templates per game mode that's an astonishing amount of locking done by this marketing decision.

>

> To add onto this:

>

> Several DPS meters offer plugins for build and gear templates (completely free, btw). ArcDPS notably has had the feature for years now. These templates supported theoretically infinite numbers of build and gear templates.

>

> My questions are thus: Why are you downgrading players on a feature that we have been promised for years? And charging for the privilege too? I thought Nintendo Switch Online was a bad joke, but jeez.

ArcDPS agreed to discontinue their build template tool if ANet ever made their own. Not only that, but the dev announced back when the work on Build Templates was made known that he was discontinuing development on the Arc templates. Once this goes live and the Arc Dev no longer maintains his, then it will be a bannable offense to use the template tool.

> @"Neutra.6857" said:

> > @"Agrotera.1254" said:

> > > @"Dzjudz.9142" said:

> > > What would you say to people who have legendary gear for the convenience of swapping between lots of builds (many runes, stat combinations) and now being locked to only two possibilities (with having to buy gems for more options)? A ranger can for example use power soulbeast (berserker), condi soulbeast (viper), heal druid (harrier), deimos hand kiter (minstrel or whatever), wvw condi (trailblazer), and many more. What is the benefit of legendary gear if you lock the options via build templates?

> >

> > I believe this statement answers your question ...... "Equipment Templates can also record the customization of legendary items, which can freely change attributes and upgrades. You can equip a single legendary item to multiple Equipment Templates with different attributes and upgrade choices for each."

>

> The issue is that those who will most likely use templates can use a large number of different runes/sigils for different scenarios (like changing runes/sigils between fractals) an can easily have wy more then 3 or 4 different varieties all for the same armor stats.

The impression I've gotten from the people I play with and the average player is that the player base that needs more than the 3 build, 2 equipment, 3 storage (+3 more) is actually a huge (but vocal) minority. The company has to make money or the game goes away. Developers are expensive to have on staff, so to justify the time spent on this feature, they have to charge money somehow.

> @"Rukario.1695" said:

> * Game still lacks proper rework of a newer graphic API which two singular developers of a console emulator can implement in a few months.

Only wanted to bring this up as those two developers didn't rework the engine to use a newer graphics API, instead they wrote a translation layer for dx9 -dx12.... very different and has its own host of potential issues. I play the game on Linux using WINE + d9VK a project that does something similar, but instead translates the dx9 calls into Vulkan calls. Does it boost performance? Definitely, but it (like the dx9 -> dx12 proxy) is a hack. To truly rework the engine in DX11, DX12, or Vulkan would require a lot more work than people seem to think.

**In fact, DX12 has more in common with Vulkan than DX9/10/11**. It was an entire rewrite from the ground up and was borne out of the AMD Mantle project (just like Vulkan was).

> @"tippolit.3591" said:

> > @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > > @"tippolit.3591" said:

> > > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > > > > @"tippolit.3591" said:

> > > > > Yep, which is insult to injury .. we pay for the expansion that others will now get free and all we get is kitten.

> > > >

> > > > You got to play the expansion since you bought it up to now when they couldn't. This kind of promotion is nothing new. The expansions have gone on sale numerous times. Should those that bought them when they came out at full price feel entitled to receive compensation?

> > >

> > > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > > > > @"tippolit.3591" said:

> > > > > Yep, which is insult to injury .. we pay for the expansion that others will now get free and all we get is kitten.

> > > >

> > > > You got to play the expansion since you bought it up to now when they couldn't. This kind of promotion is nothing new. The expansions have gone on sale numerous times. Should those that bought them when they came out at full price feel entitled to receive compensation?

> > >

> > > On sale is one thing .. free is another. Lets keep it real here.

> >

> > Not really.

>

> Lol. I see. So I buy a Hyuandai, my neighbor gets one later on sale, everyone else gets a free one. No diff, huh?

You're ignoring the key point that someone else already made.... every other MMO already does this and usually far sooner than GW2 does. This is not unusual

> @"SpyderArachnid.5619" said:

> Not sure what everyone was expecting. We knew it was a LW announcement. What did you expect? Expac? Elite Specs? Housing? Races? LW never had any of that. The stream was just fine for what it was meant for. A LW announcement with some QoL updates.

>

> As for me, I'm fine with it all. It was exactly what I expected. A new LW story and some QoL updates. Looking forward to checking it out on Sept. 17th.

They hyped up over the last season that LW **can** deliver Expansion level content, even to the point of making it an expectation for this announcement. ArenaNet set the expectations here, not the players

> @"MetalGirl.2370" said:

> I wish it was a joke. I already said in another thread.. but i will repeat it anyway

> They spit in the face of vets who paid 60 euros for exp and now they gave it for free... I bet it's cuz they see game is lacking in players big time so they wanna give them it so they'd stay and play.... but that's just gonna make vets mad and leave, utter disrespect...

Are you saying that EVERY MMO that does this (makes previous Expansions free after the newest one releases) is spitting in their veterans' faces? GW2 is giving us something while most games (WoW, FF14, etc) don't give the "early adopters" anything.

@"ArmoredVehicle.2849" - After you add d9vk support, could you keep the non-d9vk support around until Nvidia stable drivers catch up to the beta ones?

Some distros (namely Pop!_OS from OEM System76) have some QoL and performance improvements that they install for Nvidia Optimus that, but they **only support stable drivers**, they do not include beta drivers in their repo. Installing with the Graphics Drivers PPA will uninstall their system power and Optimus tools as they conflict with what the nvidia-prime package tries to do.

Anyone seeing FPS slowdown since the last patch?

@"ArmoredVehicle.2849" I'm not familiar with how their "builds"/Install scripts work either :(

It's something I'm willing to look at, but it won't be until closer to the end of Oct, busy with some other FOSS/Conference obligations first.

It would be nice to update the Wiki page about running GW2 under WINE with your build and a link to this Forum post

@"ArmoredVehicle.2849" - Would you be willing to have your build used as the Semi-"official" process for running GW2 via WINE and link to it on the GW2 Wiki and/or creating a Lutris installer for it?

This way (long term) you don't have to necessarily be the only maintainer of this

> @"mindcircus.1506" said:

> > @"EagleDelta.4726" said:

> > > @"mindcircus.1506" said:

> > > > @"EagleDelta.4726" said:

> > > > Why is this the norm in MMOs and why is it becoming even worse with GW2. If I spent time building something in my Software Dev job that only would be used for 3-6 months with no long term business value, I'd be out a job..... again, why is this acceptable with MMOs?

> > >

> > > As a software developer, you don't understand an iterative content model?

> > > I find that very hard to believe.

> >

> > Iterative code, yes. Workarounds, yes. But intentionally building something that has no long term business/customer value tends to be a something that is not encouraged at any company I've been at (except when it's an employer with tons of "Snowflake" customers). But Iterative implies evolution/changes/improvements.... not intentional abandonment.

>

> woooosh

The closest this get's to iterative development is in the way @"Blocki.4931" describes it (though that's not iterative development on its own, IMO) and I'd rather not have a special personal instance every few episodes.... maybe one per expansion or so... but even then it's unnecessary. Instead iterate by building out an Instance that can be built upon as the game progresses rather than creating throw-away instances that they'll never use again. I know it's rooted heavily in not wanting to create content that players may miss out on, but it's time to get past that.

ArenaNet limits their development because a handful of current players won't log in at all during the current patch or because new players may come in and buy PoF after the episode has passed.

I really like the Sun's Refuge and that's why I'd rather they not "fire and forget" it and find a way to utilize it long term.

> @"mindcircus.1506" said:

> > @"EagleDelta.4726" said:

> > Why is this the norm in MMOs and why is it becoming even worse with GW2. If I spent time building something in my Software Dev job that only would be used for 3-6 months with no long term business value, I'd be out a job..... again, why is this acceptable with MMOs?

>

> As a software developer, you don't understand an iterative content model?

> I find that very hard to believe.

Iterative code, yes. Workarounds, yes. But intentionally building something that has no long term business/customer value tends to be a something that is not encouraged at any company I've been at (except when it's an employer with tons of "Snowflake" customers). But Iterative implies evolution/changes/improvements.... not intentional abandonment.

> @"TamX.1870" said:

> > @"ArmoredVehicle.2849" said:

> > > @"TamX.1870" said:

> > > Hi, and thanks for the patches! Anyways, this newest one causes too much instability in my system, so I reverted back to the previous one. If you are trying to install GW2 at first time to Linux + Wine, I'd still recommend fresh install with staging wine. Also, the previous patch in this thread was pretty stable.

> >

> > May I ask what kind of instabilities are you getting?

>

> Of course. I can try again this evening, but last night (1) the new package first crashed to limit of open files, which I fixed based on the info here, and (2) after reboot it still crashed to an error I can't remember atm. I reverted the changes I made and went back using previous one. It might not be optimal, but for me it is OK if it can run PvP and WvW in minimal (graphics) settings. If you want, I can try the patch again this evening?

>

> EDIT: I'm running GW2 on Linux Mint 18.3, if that matters. It's Ubuntu-based distribution.

I had the same issue. If you are running on a newer Linux distro that uses SystemD, then SystemD is managing the open files limit and /etc/security/limits.conf is ignored. I'll take a look at my configuration tonight and post what I have setup (I'm using Pop!_OS 18.04), because you'll also have to setup your system to allow your user to change process priority as well.

I guess I'm of the mindset that if something is "Expansion Quality" content, it's designed to endure not only when it was released, but be used throughout the game's remaining lifespan (or at least until the next expansion). How would people feel if Gliders and/or Mounts were not usable in Season 5 or Expansion 3? That'k kind of how I feel about this. It's not expansion level/quality content if it only lasts for a few months or even just for one patch (which was implied in the reply).

Granted, I'm looking at this through the glasses of someone use to WoW doing the same thing, but making that content or feature last for ~2 years (at the least). I also see it from a software dev/sys admin standpoint where spending man hours to create something that has no long term customer value is a big no-no.

In recent interviews, Mike Z used the Sun's Refuge feature as an example of a feature that "Typically comes with an Expansion" but is being released with Living World. With the comment from a dev in the AMA/Developer Celebration stating there are no "Long term plans for Sun's Refuge beyond Episode 4", what does ArenaNet think Expansion features/content look like. To me that tells me that Sun's Refuge was designed with 3-6 months worth of content.... that's NOT expansion grade/level/quality content. GW2 is (obviously) not the only MMO to create and abandon features/content, but at least with WoW, FF14, and others that content is abandoned (or reworked) after ~2 years, not after only 3-6 months.

Why is this the norm in MMOs and why is it becoming even worse with GW2. If I spent time building something in my Software Dev job that only would be used for 3-6 months with no long term business value, I'd be out a job..... again, why is this acceptable with MMOs?

And more on topic, what does this say about ArenaNet's view on what Expansion Quality looks like?

@"ArmoredVehicle.2849" I'm getting a Network Error when attempting to download the latest update

> @"Jazun.5862" said:

> I adore that there are so many people that are sympathetic to Devs and the technology teams that are working on fixes for this issue but i have to say the real issue here is the release should have been rolled back by now. If your deployment strategy doesn't allow this it's time to look at the architectural decisions that were made that prevent this. I'm a DevOps engineer and i manage multiple deployment systems on very large production systems and i understand multi-platform systems like this are very complicated and hidden issues can come up. There are good arguments for ANet to take a better look at their deployment strategies and implementing configuration managed full stack environments is probably one of them but regardless of your environment or where you're at architecturally now, roll back strategies are principle to all deployment systems.

>

> I wish the devs good luck in hunting them bugs and fixing these issues but a serious look at your deployment strategy and SRE policies needs to be done in the post mortem of this incident.

While I whole heartedly agree with you (DevOps Engineer here as well), I don't think games have the DevOps capability that many other software applications have. They take a LOT more time to build and roll back (from what I can tell) and it seems that the Game Development industry as a whole is very much still in the Waterfall Development process. The few game devs I've talked to (some fairly well know, most are not) are very resistant to Agile and DevOps methodologies.

> @"Angoril.2179" said:

> Extremely disappointed with the way this is going today. After laughing at the failure that was the release of Bless Online, Anet takes the lead by releasing content that breaks the entire game... after delaying said content for quality control.

>

> I honestly hope the rest of the season releases will be without such major issues otherwise PoF was the last expansion I bought. Even F2P MMORPGs, which are notorious for bad patches, have better release states than this.

You clearly have no idea how production deployments of incredibly load intensive, complex systems work. No amount of testing on an application like this can test every variable that is brought on by thousands of players accessing the backend at once. It can be simulated, sure, but it's still a simulation and it sure cannot test against human ingenuity on how the game is played/used. This happens, get over it. This is nothing compared to some of the head scratching outages and bugs I've had to deal with in my career.