When I missed a day of school, I would usually return feeling a little out of step with the rest of the class. A similar thing happens here on EQII when you miss a day of work.
Last Friday I was out of the office, and Monday feels like a whole new ballgame!
We are getting ready to roll out Game Update 45 next week, so now most of us are at least partly working on bugs being reported on the forums, the test servers or ones we come up with on our own. But since last Thursday they’re almost all new bugs!
People usually come up with shorthand for almost anything they have to say a lot, so instead of saying “bug number XXXXX where a player can have this problem in their house under these circumstances…” it just becomes “The house bug” or “the AA bug” or “the crash bug”, each with a different meaning depending on who you’re talking to and what they’re working on. The big change for me is now not only do all those phrases have different meanings based on person or group, but they all got new meanings while I was out for just one day! That old “house bug” that I ask about? We totally fixed it last week!
So how do I deal with that? First I get a happy-glowy feeling for a minute because it means people were reporting and fixing bugs, and GU45 really does have some great stuff I’m looking forward to. But then I go back and start reading the reports in our bug tracking software called “DevTrack” and see who has what assigned to them. And then I try to talk to anyone that has a bug I don’t understand.
After I got to the point where one more bug report will make my eyes start to pop out of my head, or people are just really, really tired of me asking questions, I took some of my own feedback and threw it out for some reactions.
Last night while I was playing, we had need before greed chosen as our loot option. I hadn’t realized that if you’re using need before greed, each item will pop up separately. Three items had dropped off an NPC in a group instance and two of them were perfect for my class. I was looking at the first one, comparing it to all the stats on my current items and when the group asked “Do you need” I said “nope, I don’t”. I clicked on the “Greed” option for that item. Then before you could blink, the item set chest piece for my class popped up in the next loot window. I was so excited I typed “Woot chest!” to my group and went to hit the “Need” button but the lotto had timed out and the window disappeared with my mouse literally hovering over the now gone “need” button.
My group thought I had meant I didn’t need either item, and I was just stunned. And then, before my slightly watery eyes, as I was starting to scrolling back and forth to figure out what had happened, I see one of our group members turn my perfectly new and shiny chest piece into a piece of dust!
So if you happen to see the timers being increased for drops on need before greed lotto windows, you can think of me and my poor chest piece being ground to dust before my very eyes… and my Monday back at work!
Jennifer “Kirstie” Gerull
Associate Producer - EQII
