Apologies from me: The article was slated to be posted at Noon. The website server crashed this morning, and both news post/articles were delayed by a few minutes or even, I think, by an hour or so.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MistressYichi
Actually if you want to be technical, they said the AT's would be here in January.... Then April......
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That part is very true.
You know, there are those at ArenaNet who feel we should not state even a vague timeline. They want to avoid putting the team under stress, and allow us to work most efficiently on what needs to be done first, even though that sometimes isn't what the players want most. (And yes, honestly, prioritization must be the developer's call. Not everyone demanded reconnects at the top of their list, but reconnects really was a more critical addition than, say, storage increases.) So some on the team say, "Don't make a promise, don't even let players know we're working on something."
I disagree.
I'd rather you know we hear you, and
are working on things you care about, even if we sometimes miss a deadline, as we did with the Automated Tournament System, or even if we get heat for not working on this one player's top "essential," or that other player's special request. I ask for timeframes all the time, and I like to give them to you because, when I was following games as closely as you follow Guild Wars today, I liked knowing what was coming, and I appreciated having some vague idea of what might be on the tracks, heading in my direction. We give the timeframes with the hopes that you'll understand if we might miss one. In fact, the ATS is delayed because we needed the team to work on some critical elements for GW:EN, so we had to make a shift in dates.
You probably have noticed we're not giving month or day deadlines as much any more. The ATS situation is one reason. We missed that date, plain and simple. Another thing to consider is that some players can leap to assume "You promised!" when we simply say we'll consider something or when we say "Maybe in a month" and it's longer.
Communication is a good thing -- we're committed to it as a company; I'm committed to it as a liaison. But please understand that we've never missed a game release date, never flubbed on a event release timeframe, and we've been adding a
lot to the game over the last two years. I'm hoping that you can look beyond the extra time that we regretfully needed for the ATS and consider the system on its merits, once it is released.