Mythic's Patch 1.03 for WAR looks promising, although some points may look familiar. To put a positive spin I'll call it further progress in the areas of Pet behaviour, gold spam reduction, chat improvements, etc..

Some notable points:

• Potions will be dropping less to help bump up Apothecary? I thought Mythic was against making crafting professions a must-have. I've done Apothecary so far, but I've been considering dropping it because it's just not enjoyable to me. I don't want to feel obliged to continue, so this change irks me.
• You'll be able to retrieve your own Standard easier. Good, because so far it's too easy to toss away 2g. Standards should be harder to capture, once the novelty wears off it's no fun to basically just give your enemy a prize at your actual expense.
• Double-queues (two Scenarios popping at once) is supposed to be fixed. Yay. I suspect this is why Scenarios are sometimes short-handed, we had several this week that ended early due to the sides being severely unbalanced.

Hopefully they keep the small fixes rolling, but I'd really like to see them tackle some of the bigger issues that are haunting the game so far.

Mythic has announced their first big bug patch for WAR: Update 1.01 It's a doozy, at least in comparison to the minor fixes they've applied so far. The new patch should be going live sometime today.

I've been impressed so far with how small (as in filesize) their fixes have been so far, they've been barely noticeable to download but certainly appreciated in-game. We'll see how this biggun' goes.

Some highlights:

• Autoloot added.
• TAB targeting improved (thank God).
• "Target is Out of Range" bug fixed (This was driving me insane!).
• Various chat fixes like ignore actually working and your friends list not saying it's full with just three people on it (/facepalm over these in the first place).
• "The Gunbad instance lockouts will now be 30 minutes instead of 24 hours." (Good, I thought Mythic was against long raid-style lockout timer bullshit)
• "Player pets have learned to behave themselves." Plus other pet fixes (Yay!).
• The /petname command is now reserved for White Lions only. (Bastards! Let me name my Squigs!)
• The mail delay has been reduced to 5 seconds (Bankalt thanks Mythic).

If the pet changes are effective, I'll be a happy Squig Herder.

Sometimes something is so good that the flaws stand out like thorns on a rose stem. I'm sure that my next batch of posts about Warhammer are going to seem very critical, but I wouldn't bother pointing out what is wrong with the game if I wasn't enjoying it so much.

I hadn't expected to love WAR. I wasn't even sure if I'd play the game, it seemed in many ways to be contrary to what I prefer in an MMORPG. But what's there, the core of gameplay, is fun.

There are, however, a LOT of bugs and issues. But these are easy to forget when you're having a good time.

I was the same way with World of Warcraft when it was released. It was such a wonder at first that most players glossed over some significant issues that they would otherwise roast a game for. WAR is much the same, some of the issues are big, even close to show-stopping (the poor ways WAR handles lag come to mind), but it's worth playing.

That won't stop me however, from being very critical of Mythic. Some things need fixing now, while others should be addressed sooner or later.

Sooner or later I was bound to take this snapshot, because it's been nagging at me. This is my 2004 World of Warcraft retail box:

A whole lot of people either have selective memories, or they arrived on the scene later, but the release of WoW was not 'polished'. It had numerous bugs, abysmal server stability, barely passable Endgame and virtually none of the faction-PvP features that were highlighted during pre-release.

Sieges of course, were not included. Nor was the "mighty Dragon of Blackrock Spire", although Nefarian did arrive 7 months later.

It was still a great game.

Accolade it for what it was and what it became, not what it wasn't.

Following much criticism over their twice-weekly patching schedule and quality assurance issues, Funcom has moved to a weekly patching schedule and is now providing a test server hosting the next upcoming patch.

Details for downloading and installing the Testlive client are listed in this AoC Forums thread. An existing and current Age of Conan account is required.

Hopefully this helps them hit that threshold where a significant amount of bugs get squashed and the new content begins to outweigh the issues.

I've also noticed that today's patch contains mostly bugfixes.

In case you hadn't heard, there's a disparity between Male and Female damage output in Age of Conan. This was predicted by many during pre-release because it was obvious that Funcom was rushing the female animations out the door in time for release.

It's a no-surprise bug based on motion-captured animation speeds that while perfectly reasonable technically, is no doubt a PR disaster for a game that's already ripe for sexist accusations. There've been more than a few "OMG how could they let that one happen?" reactions.

Age of Conan's biggest selling feature is the melee combo-driven combat. It's very animation-based, which is what gives it a tangible charm (rather than say, watching a casting bar). You push buttons to whack at things and you ~see~ yourself whacking at things in "real time" (or a close approximation). This takes meticulous animation work, which is astounding considering how good their animation is and how much variety they have of it, including death animations.

Funcom has now addressed the issue to make players aware they've been working on it. I'm not sure if that was the wisest thing to do because it's likely to hit mainstream media now that it's been confirmed.

They were bound to slip on this, if not on gender then on classes. The biggest downside to me right now is how much the game will suffer from a lack of new animations while their teams put in many hours fixing this problem. It will also be keeping their QA department busy, which is noted in the post linked above.

I'm glad they're making progress on this, but geez this is an epic bug.

I'm providing these gems of insight to any company that wants to clean up their Customer Service. This is fairly specific to games, MMORPGs in particular.

This is meant as a simple guideline with emphasis on two key issues: Customer Perspectives & Solving Problems.

The mantra of this guide is Keep it Simple or to put it another way: Solve it more, deal with it less. The best customer service is misdirection. It sounds like a paradox, but it's true. To players experiencing problems, they should feel as though it's being worked on, to everyone else your customer service should be invisible. They should feel like problems are fixed mysteriously and magically.

Here are the points:

• Do NOT have Forums. It's drama you don't need. Focus your game on your design. If you want player feedback, ask for it via forms or hire perceptive people to follow the fansites.
• Provide strong community features in-game. This is to replace the server forums. Give them places to congregate and socialize, activities that build server communities. Lists of progression and otherwise. Cooperative content as well as the usual competitive features. Maybe even have in-game Community Managers.
• Do NOT have GMs. Unless you plan on them being actual Game Masters that control monsters and put the smackdown on griefers and exploiters. Otherwise, your GMs will just be magnets for abuse. Problems are better reported and forgotten than dwelling on them while waiting for a GM petition queue.
• Collect player reports. Instead of GM petitions. Sift them automatically if you can.
• Give automated feedback. It's just like gameplay, when you do something it should make a sound, have a visual clue and / or explanation. Player reports should be treated the exact same way, it's reassuring. If they're reporting a known bug, give an ETA on its fix, or point to a list of workarounds.
• Make a black hole. For incomprehensible or pointless player reports. Don't dwell on what cannot be understood. Feedback it as if it was accepted however.
• Do NOT discuss balancing issues. Not unless they're a glaring fix that's obvious. Let the theorycrafting players sort it out for themselves, that's what they like to do anyway. Meanwhile it will give those busybodies less control over your game and the rest of your players (the less vocal majority) will be happier with their characters by not being informed as much about who is overpowered and who isn't.
• Separate bug fixes from patch notes. Make your patch notes about content-only, no matter how small. This will allow players to celebrate the content without distraction. It will also reduce the "introduced more bugs than fixes" perceptions. Lists of fixed bugs should go elsewhere, but don't call them patch notes.
• Make a complete bug and issues list. Detail it thoroughly, categorized and catalogued. The point here isn't full disclosure, it's about flooding the information so it's too long and boring to read. This should result in less drama, although occasionally some nerd will be as thorough as you, but these obsessive geeks cannot be avoided anyway.
• Keep quiet on embarrassing bugs. At least until you fix them. The drama doesn't help the game or the players. Do this very selectively, only on the most extreme cases like say um, gender affects animation attack speed. =P
• Erase all mention of fixed bugs. List them as fixed once, then about a week later, obliterate them. No sense dwelling on the past, it's just another distraction from the game itself.

The idea here is to streamline the process, allow you to fix your issues while ignoring any drama from the players over the bugs. Ignoring and diffusing drama is key! It's not helpful to anyone, least of all the players themselves.

While following this guide, you may be accused of using draconian measures, but the truth is these are modern solutions. You cannot afford to cater to every little perceived need, do not handhold and babysite your players, it's just a waste of resources that could be better spent on your game.

To Players: This is a tongue-in-cheek guide.
To MMORPG developers and publishers: No, it isn't.