Bug after bug. The Release vent for you.
Programming can be the most rewarding and frustrating experience all at the same time. And I firsthand know that you can test something a thousand ways sideways, and still get unexpected results. That doesn’t even factor in programming for every possible scenario, and then having the massive # find a hundred new scenarios you never had imagined. From a player’s persepective, it’s frustrating.
I am glad to see the continued effort by the developers to provide balance and fairness, and sometimes they are too lax, other times too harsh, but that’s what balancing is. I have played other games where there was no fixes/enhancements/etc and the game became absolutely no pleasure. over time due to lag/bugs/etc. I know many of the game designers mentioned they are active players as well, so I know they for sure don’t like finishing a 2 hour dungeon and not getting tokens, or getting dropped from a party, or getting 30 sticks of butter off an event. So its encouraging to know they want it to be a better gaming experience as well.
I used to be a professional game tester for Maxis. You have no clue how much time/money is spent on testing a game. The paths that have to be tested in a game as complicated as GW2 are literally endless. And testing is limited by all kinds of factors – schedule, number of testers, hardware, bandwidth, number of clients it is possible to simulate…
The profit margin for the gaming industry is very small compared to the overhead.
I think one of the biggest things that contribute to this is the size of the company creating the game. Take a look will you at the number of employees this company has in comparison to some of the other monster MMOs out there and you’ll quickly see why the game released with the bugs it did, and why things here take so long to be fixed. It’s also something to be said for just how good this game is. It’s a shame that the bigger gaming powerhouses can’t come up with things like this….