I'm curious...

When arenanet uploads an update, why do some things change, and other, completely unrelated things go wrong?

Thursday July 27:
PvP change
PvP change
PvP change
PvP change
PvP change

The next day:
Fixed a bug that prevented obsidian and phantom keys from dropping in the Underworld and Fissure of Woe.

or how about Friday May 26
Fixed a bug in PvE
Fixed a bug in PvE
Fixed a bug in PvE

The next day:
Fixed a bug that was causing Ghostly Heroes in Relic Maps to refuse relics.

These are only 2 of the more rediculous examples. There are many more

The other thing is, after an update (like the nightfall pvp preview weekend for example), theres a bug (like party members/leaders not showing in town), and when they take the update down, the bug is still there. Do you not keep backups of old updates that you KNOW will be restored??

This is a question I ponder as well. I have never programmed anything as complex as GW, but in all seriousness, how do you change one thing in a game and then something completely unrelated screws up?

Modular programming imo.

So, you'd prefer no updates at all... or, do you feel that your investment in the retail price of the game is poorly spent based on their updates?

Bugs get fixed, that's all care about... and there hasn't been a major bug that's had an effect on my gameplay to date, so I'm happy.

What exactly are you asking them to do? Do you believe you're the better man to run an online role playing game, or that your model for an updating system is superior... if that's the case, apply for a job with them and set your woes to rest.

ill have faith in the game when they nerf something that is 12months overdue.. ahem ... iway....... anyways since anet loves iwayers because it constitutes half of the gw population, i can complain all day but nothing will happen.

GW updates must be proritized.... well the notorious ghostly running away from alter after capping is a glitch that i still have to see fixed... though not often it still happens from time to time..

Didn't realise the iWay thing had suddenly become a bug, rather than a build...

Update: Wednesday, September 7 2005
Fixed "I Will Avenge You!" so that it doesn't count dead spirits.

Update - Thursday March 2 2006
"I will avenge you!": reduced attack speed to 25%; fixed a bug that caused this skill to trigger off of dead ally minions.

What more could you want?

did iway ever have a spirit spammer or a minion master lol.... lets just drop the topic lest we start another iway fight...

Something tells me you've never programmed anything ever.

Numerous things can go wrong, modular programming or not. Not to mention that someone could upload fix A, which also has tweaks to parts B & C that they've forgotten they touched. When you have a large number of people all working on the same project, it's quite easy to fix one thing, only to have an unexpected influence on a different section, perhaps you and someone else both used the same variable without realizing it, who knows.

Not on the level GW is based on. Only basic text input, strings and calculations.

Even so, it just doesn't seem right that screwups like this happen if it's programmed properly.

Some of these updates were long standing bugs that they fixed when they realized the problem (like the key update) had been going on for a while I think, not just since that update...

Seems to me the OP point is that seemingly each time they adjust or add to PvP the PvE game is broken somehow. I've noticed this too and often wondered how two things so unrelated effect each other so much.
Take the henchies for example: The PvP event "broke" them and required a fix days later. Look at the update notes for details, but what in the world was changed in PvP that cause the henchies to act dumber? Didn't know it was possible till I saw it. lol

PS: I'm sure the reverse is also true (PvE fix breaks a PvP item), so I'm not saying anything bad about PvP or the like... have to say that these days for some reason.

If you were to look at the code you would realize how easy it is to break something while you try to squeeze in a fix or change. Just one line of code can effect several areas of the game, it doesn't matter if it is PvP or PvE. Just be glad things don't have to be rolled back each time a glitch or bug shows up.
If you were to look at the number of spelling or gramatical errors on these forums you can understand how things go wrong where it really matters in the code of the game. You can stare at a spelling error and just not see it sometimes.
I think they are doing a great job and they have my respect.

Maybe it's like when congress is passing a piece of legislation and
lobbying members for votes. Everyone want's to add a "rider" to
the bill in exchange for their vote.
So you start out with... say a bill to fund cancer research. You need
five more votes. You wind up with a bill to fund cancer research,
build an interstate highway across the Grand Canyon, designate Lake
Champlain a Great Lake, drain The Everglades so that sub-divisions
can be built there, etc....

You assume that things aren't related. You have no idea what commonality there exists between the way things in different areas of the game and how they work. You can make best guesses on anecdotal evidance, but it is speculation only. Only the devs really know.

well, dont want to stray too far from the topic but:
have you ever wondered why there are genetic diseases? have you ever searched info about one? some of them you will find that only a single gene is the cause of a lot of troubles.

on a gaming related issue:
one day, many years ago, when i played D2, i had several characters and i had heard about "modifying" them (ie hack them), (back then i didnt had internet either ) and so i grabbed my lvl 12 assasin (made sure i took first a back up copy ) opened his archive in pad, and saw a single line of wording... so i decided to add a few random letters, log in the game, and find that my lvl 12 assasin turned into a lvl 50 amazon with the title "sir champion" or sir something in it, of course the character was unplayable, i deleted it, restored the original and played as if nothing had happened.

Actually I had it better explained to me by a reputable friend involved in the software industry.

Basically, any decent software would be written in moduals, they would all use local varibles and not touch the global if they could help it (of course all teams would know about these global varibles in use). Now this is only a theory of what happens, but it seems logical to what is going on:

"They'll have people working on all sorts. So say a guy's working on a new bit of rendering code but it's not finished enough to make a full change but they go ahead and patch at that build with the dormant code there. Then somehow through errors it leaks and they have to patch it quicksharp even though the stuff they DID patch was nothing to do with that."

Of course my theory on the coding of GW, it's database and framework being poor is blown out of the water due to the regular updates on a constant basis would have made everything implode by now if it was coded poorly.

Old code gets activated accidently, coding effects other coding in a way unforeseen, unfinished/abandoned coding gets activated accidently etc. It happens and it gets fixed.

BTW...the Keys thing...has been a Glitch for MONTHS. It wasn't introduced with the day before's update...

I program C++ and Java. When I program something wrong in my drop rates for example, it does not affect character faces changing. I couldn't program things worse than Arenanet if I tried. I'm not joking, it takes a lot of math figuring out how to optimize the amount of bugs you can cause by changing one line of code.

/signed for getting a new programming team