Guild Wars 2

pelle ossa.9705:

i talked via email with arenanet support and Gaile Gray about SAb answer me this:

---

It is true that we have not said anything about Super Adventure Box in a while, but honestly, there is nothing new to say about it yet. I posted a few months ago to reassure the community of players that SAB will be back in the future, but that we did not have a date for its return. The same remains true today. We will be bringing it back, but we have not set an exact date for its return.

---

btw ty Gaile for the answer.

Guess it’s time for refund requests on the Infinite Continue Coin? If it’s not coming till after HoT, that’ll be two years minimum that the thing has been useless.

Tuesday and still nothing. The maintenance got my hopes up

Yeah, SAB should have been turned on. Maybe Gauntlet as well.

People complained about the Living Story being temporary, and not “an expansions worth of content”, they didn’t hate its existence outright.

minbariguy.7504:

Same here, I’m afraid. I had started to log back in and even purchased gems after they made the personal story replayable, but I’m now back to what is sadly becoming my default stance of not logging in or making purchases of any kind. Hot is also looking like an unlikely purchase at this point, but I suppose that depends on ANet.

I simply refuse to reward corporate behavior like this. It’s not even poor communication they are demonstrating here, it is blatant refusal to communicate at all. This kind of thing sucks all the joy out of playing a game for me. I can’t enjoy a game when I know that the company behind it thinks so little of its players.

Yeah. I stopped buying gems last year because of traits. Then the HoT announcement and the “we’re fixing traits, I’m not looking at you for news Q2” came, so I started again. Now the SAB mini middle finger over April 1st has put me back to not buying gems again.

Basically for all the effort they put into developing Living Story and HoT, they throw it away because they won’t spend twenty minutes on the forum treating their customers like… well, customers rather than naughty children.

Thanathos.2063:

The thread has too much pages, I don’t want to search the latest dev reply, but it simply doesn’t matter very much. We all know that the SAB WILL be back at some point. That’s not the point. I’m sure 99% of all players responding in this thread would be happy with a message like “We’re working on it at the moment” or “It will come after HoT, but most likely this year” or “Next year or maybe later, no certain plans at the moment”.
The actual state of simply avoiding to do any statement led to the riots.

Just so I don’t draw accusations of “see they’re never happy”, I’ll say now that I don’t think that would be good enough. At this point, I think there are only few options, one of which is similar to yours:

“We’re working on it at the moment, however due to the unexpected delay in producing this content, and the unforeseeable problem (X) which has prevented us from re-releasing existing content, we will be offering refunds to all those who purchased an infinite continue coin in 2013. We are very sorry for this, and hope you continue to enjoy our content in future.”

lordkrall.7241:

Eulolia.2467:

- Anet needs to focus on HoT content!
No content design is needed, they can just bring back what they already made.

Except for that tiiiiny little fact that everyone that have any sort of development knowledge knows: It might not work to just bring it back, since quite a bit of the game have been changed still. Even completely irrelevant stuff to SAB, might have broken stuff. So it WOULD require work (at the very least: Testing everything to make sure it still works, and at the worst: completely rewriting parts of the code.)

Given that people are clearly upset about this, and it would take maybe fifteen minutes of a single dev’s time to write a post explaining it, this isn’t really an excuse.

ANet could have come in, given an explanation as to why SAB wasn’t just turned back on, and maybe apologised. Instead, they stuck SAB minis in the BLCs the day before its second anniversary, then continued a policy of silence while customers got their hopes up, and then disappointed again.

lordkrall.7241:

Why are people ignoring the fact that we HAVE comments by the team in this very thread and that they have already outright stated that it WILL be back?

Because even if this is true (and ANet are throwing away reasons to actually believe them), “will” is essentially meaningless when we’re talking on a scope of literally years before being able to access a product you paid money for.

Xillllix.3485:

Maybe they are waiting until the thread has 100000 views and 10000 replies…

Nah, when they get to that point they open a new thread called “Super Adventure Box Part 2” and continue to ignore it.

Absolutely individuals are responsible for their behaviour, and if someone is a jerk to others its their own fault.

However, ANet are not helping. The SAB minis for me being the most glaring example. They knew people wanted SAB, they knew people were unhappy about issues relating to SAB (not just the box, but the coin and the communication), they knew people had their hopes up for the anniversary, and they knew that people would get their hopes up even further when they put the minis in the BLCs on the day before.

Players who are rude or abusive are in the wrong. But ANet doing things like this is not helping. If players feel angry and frustrated, and ANet refuse to communicate with them, then the next place for them to vent is at each other.

This just makes the lack of SAB all the more baffling. It was the perfect time for it to be turned back on. The content is already there, and after a year and a half there are loads of people who’ve never even played W1 and W2 so between them and the ones of us who love it (and have paid real money to play it) there’s no need for W3.

Pretty much all my positivity from the HoT announcement has gone again. Between SAB and traits, meh.

I don’t understand the communication thing. Given how much damage it does to player good will it just doesn’t seem cost affective.

It takes a heck of a lot more money to develop things to build up player confidence than it costs to pay someone to spend an hour on here making sure it doesn’t go away.

Moreover, they seem to be actively trying to anger people. Putting SAB minis in the BLCs on March 31st was so obviously going to upset the people who want it back. I realise that isn’t everyone, but what kind of company gives that kind of middle finger to any of its customers? It isn’t like every single player who cares about SAB has been rude to them.

Guhracie.3419:

The official response is: “SAB will return at some point in the future when we feel the time is right. No refunds will be granted on the infinite continue coin, because the content connected to it will be back.”

Could be this week; could be 40 years from now. But at least by then, people will know better than to buy anything from ANET without a guaranteed timeline attached to it.

Yeah. I might submit a ticket in a few days. But I definitely will be buying far fewer gems from now on. The SAB minis in the BLCs was so disrespectful to paying customers.

Dante.1763:

I Paid real money for the ICC. I do not agree that breaking the forum rules is the way to go about trying to get it back.

I’m not saying it is the best way. But after a year and a half of posting, and two in game riots… what is the best way?

As I said, I’m not encouraging rule breaking, but I can sympathise with people kittenort to it. My current best plan is “give up and don’t buy gems to support the game”, which probably won’t work either.

Dante.1763:

Sorry, im with Krall(Something i seldom say). If its against the rules, dont bloody well do it. You do not need to break the forum rules to get your point across.

I’m not encouraging rule breaking, but I can sympathise with it. ANet have ignored people who paid real money for a product for about a year now, and releasing the SAB minis yesterday was apparently a middle finger to paying customers… It’s a bad idea to break the rules, because ANet have all the power here, but I don’t think they really warrant “respect” for the rules here.

In the absolute best case scenario, SAB is being released tomorrow, and not releasing it was an April fools prank. In which case they weren’t giving us a middle finger, but they think that taking their customer’s money and running is something to joke about.

Mr Ko Killer.7206:

But, it was never once said that the release would be a steady thing. It was a gamble to buy the coin knowing that is was a limited release and it was up in the air as to when you would get use out of it again, but you will eventually get use out of it again.

I do really see your point, that people got shafted because they took a bad gamble but I can also see where Anet isn’t really willing to just give out a refund to everyone, based on that.

I think that was reasonable-ish for about the first year.

A year and a half later, especially with basically no communication on why it isn’t back, doesn’t seem okay to me. Sure they didn’t say in writing “SAB will be back in six months”, but there was a reasonable expectation. Even if there wasn’t, would simply talking to their paying customers really be that much of an issue?

Kamara.4187:

The best joke is going to explain to the shareholders why the game lost so much money on 4/1….love to be a fly on the wall during that board meeting…

I think this might actually have stopped people leaving. After the minis yesterday, SAB anger would have actually hit a peak (and a lot of people paid money for that continue coin). This has taken the steam out of that, and will be gone by tomorrow.

Don’t get me wrong, I think they’ll lose money after today, but they’ve averted a bigger loss.

Well, Anet seem to have succeeded in distracting everyone from SAB and the OccupySAB2015 thing.

So I guess well played?

Mr Ko Killer.7206:

That’s really why I don’t see the argument for the infinite coin. It was not a necessity for those that just wanted to play it. You earned plenty of baubles to keep purchasing regular coins, that was hardly an inconvenience. For those that bought it because it negated having to buy coins all the time, I just thought, then it’s really on you for impulse buying something that cost, I don’t even remember, 600 or 800 gems, that you could use only a month at a time, and if you didn’t plan on playing that much anyway, why would you need it? I certainly in your case, would never have bothered in the first place.

I do see your point though and why people are upset, but still, it boils down to people spent gems so they didn’t have to go to Motto with excess Baubles once every so often, which in my mind, it would be my fault for impulse buying something I never really needed.
I just don’t see how people can justify a good reason for buying it if they weren’t going to use it to farm, or if say, I didn’t have a lot of time, regular continue coins would be plenty enough for me. But like I said, people measure value in different ways, what I see as a good deal, many others don’t, and vice versa.

I bought it with the idea that in the long term (moderate play for a month, every six months or so) it would be worth it.

Yes, of course it wasn’t worth it for minimum play in the month of release, which is why people are unhappy.

I’m glad you got use out of it, and wish I’d farmed it as well (or just not bought the coin). But it wasn’t advertised as a short term farming tool.

Mr Ko Killer.7206:

I don’t really understand the fuss about the infinite continue coin though…I got my Tribulation achievements from it, I got a lot of different storm wizard and king toad skins from it. As far as I am concerned, I got my gems worth out of it for the time I used it. Had I known it would be another 5 years (exaggeration….maybe…) before I would be able to use it again, I’m not going to lie, I would have bought it anyway regardless.

As far as I see it, the infinite coin was for those aiming to complete/farm Tribulation mode, and unless you didn’t get very far due to the difficulty, or just didn’t have time to farm the skins, which I’ll admit, I had a lot of free time back then, you really should have gotten your gems worth from it. But I guess that people have different standards of measuring value too….

I agree that you got value for it, but you are not the norm. You had a lot of free time, bought the coin specifically to farm, and actually farmed.

A lot of us didn’t have that much time, didn’t buy it just to farm, and didn’t farm. We bought it because we wanted to play SAB as much as we wanted when it was around, under the justified assumption that it would actually be around.

In short, I would not have bought the coin had I known that this was going to be the functionality it offered.

Silvy.3816:

I think the main issue of GW2 is fact, that ANet dont have community manager, who can answer community’s questions. ANet dont have such person -> community make their own speculations -> speculations never comes true -> community full of disappointment.
Way it should be:
community: Would we have access to the SAB in the future?
CM: Sorry, guys, but it seems that we can give you SAB only after HOT release, coz we put all our resources into HoT development.
It is sad news, but it is not so disappointing.

The way ANet do it now is really idiotic.
Thay add untradable SAB staff into BLC, but dont add SAB and dont tell us anything about it.
Merged april fools topic have already had over 1.3k replies and still dont have ANet post like
“We are sorry about air crash and dont want any references to it”
“Sorry for missing “event OFF” button"
Its bad exaples ofc, coz it show my own opinion about 1.04 patch, but I still think that we need CM that would answer community questions or at least something like “Sorry dont have such information”.

The thing is, the last SAB riots were over their lack of communication (and no SAB). The riots this time have been talked about for weeks, they weren’t unpredictable (and you’d need to be really, really deaf to your consumer base to not predict the reaction to the SAB minis). This is beyond “bad customer relations” and into “actively annoying customers”.

If the SAB doesn’t open tomorrow, then I don’t understand ANet at all. Putting the minis in the BLCs was so obviously going to upset and anger some of their customers, and in particular draw attention to the Infinite Continue Coin for which they have unapologetically taken money and ran.

Providing a bad service is one thing. Providing no service when customers have paid is another. But this was just sticking a middle finger up to your customers after you’ve done it.

I mean, they do want us to keep buying their products and encouraging others to do the same, don’t they?

pdavis.8031:

While many people want SAB to return, it’s a lot more work than just copy and paste. Unless they released just the world 1 and 2. Which would upset more players than it would please, as they want world 3.

I am 99% certain that isn’t true. LOTS of players weren’t even around the last time SAB was open (it’s been a year and a half now), and I don’t recall ever seeing or hearing anyone say they would be unhappy with just W1 and W2. Sure W3 would be nice, but you see “at least just W1 and W2” loads in the discussions on the topic, and never anything like you suggest.

The problem with the bi-weekly content wasn’t that it was released every two weeks, it was that it was taken away every two weeks.

If they’d been adding permanent content every two weeks there wouldn’t have been nearly as many complaints. Also, the expansion is paid, I don’t see why it would require taking resources from the free content development (and if it did, they could have said that).

Monkey Fritz.9052:

Dante.1763:

Guys, Lordkrall will defend ANET till he dies. So really arguing with him is pointless.

This guy gets it.
There is practically only one voice in this thread against bringing back SAB or refunding the continue coin. Other players who actively hate the content hive chimed in that they think the coin should at least be refunded.

Personally I don’t want my coin refunded, I want the kitten thing to work. But it is pretty bad to know that no one has been able to get a refund when one is fully deserved at this point.

Oh I’d much rather they turned the thing back on. I’d love it if, if there is a mass support claim, they just turn worlds one and two on permanently. I’m really sad that it’s come to a point where I simply have to accept that coin is useless and ask for my gems back.

lordkrall.7241:

You mean just like last year?

Last year they responded with promises of an improvement in communication. I realise that they haven’t exactly made good on that, but they did react.

This year, the wait is longer, the trait anniversary is here, the ICC has been useless for a year and a half, we’re on an actual anniversay of SAB, and they’re about to release an expansion. Mass complaints, especially of the form “Don’t believe their promises” are not going to go down well if the gaming press takes note.

lordkrall.7241:

Then they will probably just keep saying: “No you can’t have refunds because it’ll come back”.
Why would they suddenly change their minds about it?

Because people complain on mass?

lordkrall.7241:

^ It is highly unlikely you would even be able to get a refund for an item that was bought over a year and a half ago actually. So I would say “mass customer support tickets” will not help anyone. Just the opposite in fact. It will just take time and resources away from real issues.

That might have been true if refunds had been available previously, but they weren’t. ANet can’t say “No you can’t have refunds because it’ll come back”, then after a year and a half say “No you can’t have refunds because it’s been too long.”

Dante.1763:

Xillllix.3485:

SAB is coming back in April right? I mean the game needs some sort of new content.

If its not they should offer refunds for the coin. Kinda feeling robbed to be honest! xD

I’m thinking that there’s a chance it’ll go like this:

March 31st: SAB protests begin.
April 1st: No SAB, SAB protests get bigger.
April 1st/2nd: Semi-organised mass customer support tickets requesting refunds.

I could be wrong. ANet might release SAB, or people might not care. But given we’ve had nothing in terms of communication since the last riots, I think something like this is pretty plausible.

Yeah, nice as it is in theory, it removes one of the best excuses to talk to strangers in the game outside of pugging.

Goo.7926:

They already made big announcements this week about legendaries to avoid this topic to come out in first pages of the forum.. I feel like they wanna bury the SAB for good (at least until HoT and everything..)…….

So what the plan? We RIOT ?

If they’re wanting to bury it for HoT, it’s a really strange plan. April 1st is a pretty well known SAB day, so it’ll be easy for riot momentum to happen again. After last year and communication, and the fact they took people’s cash, it could actually be genuinely bad press this year.

The SAB thing as an activity in itself might get shrugged off, but at some point “ANet took real world money for a service they almost immediately stopped providing” has to start slipping into articles, right? Combined with “Last year’s promises of communication amounted to basically nothing”, and the anniversary of the still unfixed traits fiasco, and this isn’t ideal news pre-HoT.

Arioch.7432:

I’m finding it annoying as well. there are a lot of skins I don’t have access to.

It shouldn’t be too hard to do it really. Clean wipe of those titles, and then re -link the GW 1 accounts to GW 2. That would give those who actually deserve it the titles/skins.

It isn’t quite that simple. What happens to the reward chests people got?

The simplest solution requires a clean wipe, a relink and a flag on accounts that already received the reward for whatever threshold they hit.

I’m not saying its impossible, or even difficult, but its not quite as easy as a simple reset.

Perhaps to help make things clearer:

revenant
?r?v(?)n?nt/Submit
noun
noun: revenant; plural noun: revenants
a person who has returned, especially supposedly from the dead.
“he was three hundred years old, a terrible living revenant”

I had no idea what the word meant until the news about Rytlock returning from the Mists, so perhaps there’s some confusion.

Yeah, what’s worse is this is if you complain this will be another “This is why ANet never say anything because players get angry when they don’t deliver!!!!!”

It would be, at minimum, polite if someone came in an gave an explanation as to what is going on and (shudders) maybe even apologise for the delay and lack of communication.

I’m not sure its going to entirely fit with the lore (because of the background choices your race gives you), but its a neat idea RP wise. It’ll depend on if they take any efforts to explain why a load of revenants now exist without going to the mists.

Yeah, while I agree this is an issue and should be reverted, I don’t think it is urgent. They must, as has been said, have a system for dealing with duplicate AP chest rewards, and it will always be possible to see how many actual HoM points are linked to the account.

That said, as someone who plays GW1 to unlock HoM stuff, I’m a little afraid to do anything in that game at the moment, in case it confuses the rollback.

Monkey Fritz.9052:

I’m not saying I agree with this, but the reason is likely along these lines:
w2 is seen as a problem, they will not re-release the problem to cause more problems and risk bringing more dislike towards the content. It was a massive barrier to their primary customer base: casuals.

They can’t release w1, because no matter how much some of us may like it, releasing less content than they had before would cause a kittenstorm. They can’t release w2, for fear of causing the same kittenstorm as when it came out. As well, there WOULD be people complaining that they had released it without any new content. They can’t even release an updated w2, because people would only complain about things they liked being removed or shortened, and yet more would complain that there was no new content.

From a content/marketing perspective nothing they do would generate positive feedback, unless they release an updated w2, and a new w3. Even this being silent and not telling us anything is less damaging to the brand of gw2, and even the brand of super adventure box, than if they did any of the things we fans would like them to do in the mean time.

From Anet’s perspective they cannot bring SAB back to the focus without releasing new and improved content. So it is simply best for them to wait until they are ready to announce w3.

I don’t like that either, but it really is the best thing they can do.

I respect you took the time to argue this, even though you dislike it, but I just don’t think its true. ANet’s biggest issue in terms of image is its communication, and at this stage the approach they’re taking is really damaging.

Moreover, we’ve had SAB riots once, and I suspect they may well return on April 1st, if not next summer (right around HoT launch hype time).

Finally, there has to be a point where the fact they took the cash for the ICC and ran away starts creeping into reporting on things like #OccupySAB. Remember Oblivion horse armour? That was at least usable.

I think I agree with the OP. The ethics of the situation aside, I don’t see any good that can come from this. Even in a situation of wrongful kicking, what benefit to the community comes from increasing animosity between players? If the kicking was wrongful, then ANet should be able to look at the logs and make a decision, because they can do something about it. Players can only be hostile or bad mouth the kickers, which even if “justice” isn’t good for the game.

1 file left and stuck, UK as well.

spoj.9672:

They cant give more details. QA testing can lead to discovering further issues that need to be fixed. Which would result in further QA testing after the fixes. The whole process is repeated until it is in an acceptible state to release. Giving an estimate might be a bad move if they miss it completely. Which is highly possible.

Which is fine for estimates and maximums, but not for minimums. They can say “At least a week”. They can say “This will be put into a Tuesday update”.

Currently players who were really excited don’t know whether to stay excited because it could come out any minute, or to let go of any hope of it coming out in the next month.

Is teaching players to abandon all excitement when something as innocuous as Gaile’s OP is given really a good idea?

I think they could give us some information. For example, people seem to be assuming it will be released “when it’s ready”, but is that actually true? Could the patch be released any minute, as soon as they finish, or will it be going into a Tuesday slot?

Plus, they said it was QA, which means that it isn’t just a fix they’re doing but testing. That means they know at least a minimal amount of testing that needs doing. They might not be able to say “This will be ready in ten days”, but they should be able to say “This will take at least a few more days, stop waiting”.

There are absolutely limits of what information it is possible to give. But there is a huge gulf between that and the information ANet’s current policy actually produces.

Manuhell.2759:

I sure hope that’s just art.
Tribulation mode skins are the only skins so far that properly rewarded a player for his effort and skill, without any RNG involved – you complete the content, you get a skin, and you can’t get it otherwise. No easy way like buying it at the TP.
Giving them away in an RNG raffle would make no sense, beside cheapen out their significance and value.

Yeah… this bodes badly.

Either China are never getting SAB (which is worrying), or ANet don’t understand how awesome the SAB reward system actually was (which is also worrying).

(Or, they’re going to use a different colour for China’s world 2 trib mode, but that seems odd.)

Shiyo.3578:

Is this the living world guy? So glad he’s leaving then.

Living world was a good idea, it was just badly executed. They’ve also sort of started learning how to do it well. I don’t like the idea that Living World will be abandoned (as then we have to wait for years between content and story), or the idea that someone new (who hasn’t learned from its mistakes) will step in.

lordkrall.7241:

Because when they were here last people raged like mad about them and thus it is likely that they would wait to release it again until they have done changes based on that feedback. Making changes takes manpower, manpower that is currently being spent better elsewhere, such as working on the expansion.

People objected to the length and difficulty of world 2, which was largely though not entirely fixed. Even if that’s the reason, they could still turn on world 1 (though I don’t think even the most extreme “ragers” actually suggested that W2 was literally worse than nothing).

Yeah I’ve always thought 7 was an odd limit. Either change it to 8 or give us more customisability options (ideally, including the option to make the account medals show by default and also show weapons and backpieces).

Siphaed.9235:

I will say this:

They sell boosts in the Gem Store.

They sell Boon Fire bonfires in the Gem Store.

Both of these things cost gems and yet after a certain time frame are gone/done with.

SAB 2.0 was available for over 3 weeks (Sept 3rd through 30th, well actually that’s relatively 4 weeks).
The use of the 600 Gem coin was available that entire time, 24/7 (well, at least when servers were up, if they were down for the 4-6hr weekly period, then it was more 24/6 +18) That would be more than 522 hours available for SAB. Being reasonable let’s subtract 8hrs per each day for sleep and an additional 8hrs (x5) per each week for work time. So that’s 522-224-160= 138 hours accessable to the SAB with the Infinite Coin and a full time job.

That is still a large time. Far larger than you would get out of Boosts for the same amount of Gems. And the skins you got out of it? Shall we put a market gold value on them or the generic 800gem price that most Gem Store skins are? Either way definitely got the value out of it there too.

There is no reasonable expectation for a refund on this item. You got more than it’s value out of it when available and it will release at some point in the extended future (and no, future doesn’t just simply mean weeks or months from now, but years can be included in that term). There should be no sense of entitlement here -which is what requesting/demanding a refund is doing-, because delivery and fulfillment have been met. Future use is bonus icing on the cake.

While I see what you’re saying, they’re different types of product, marketed differently. It’s like comparing a sweet to a toy. You don’t expect a sweet to have use long term, because it’s a consumable. You do expect the toy to. Also, the ICC wasn’t just sold in the first hour of the first day of Back to School, it was sold throughout (If I remember correctly, for the entirety), you could buy it with five minutes left on that update.

Monkey Fritz.9052:

MarkPhilips.5169:

Dunno, but i’ve a feeling, like sab on April First

I will be logging in either way. If its not there, we riot.

I think that might actually be the case. April 1st is such a significant date that enough people will be thinking about SAB for riots to come.

It isn’t just that people want SAB, it’s that the ICC will hit the year and a half mark without being refunded AND the OccupySAB movement was the thing that made ANet admit to bad communication and yet they still aren’t communicating on SAB.

I suspect that this will mean that April 1st, regardless of whether ANet hint at it being a SAB update or not, will be a breaking point for a lot of people if it doesn’t come.

Monkey Fritz.9052:

skullmount.1758:

Monkey Fritz.9052:

Mea.5491:

Noob question: Why do people like / want SAB so much??

Because it was incredibly fun and challenging and had a great reward system, both internally and in skins. There hasn’t been a single content release to match it since launch, with the possible exception of fractals.

Well the first release this was true. Then it got nerfed with the second release, but that added tribulation which was fun in world 1 (never tried world 2, since it already took so long on normal mode).

While true, and that unnecessary nerf did annoy me, it was still a better reward system than anything to come since, and Trib mode was one guaranteed skin upon completion. Even if one followed a video or a guide, it was still incredibly challenging, with a guaranteed reward at the end that could not be acquired any other way. (I think there was a 1 gold cost in there too.)

Yeah, I’m really worried they’ll ruin the reward system if it actually returns. It was basically perfect. Some skins (reasonably) RNG based and sellable. Some skins, which were identical apart from colour, for completing a difficult task and unsellable. Extra skins tied to achievements (the only criticism of which being that they don’t pop until you exit).

The best (and I think only) compromise between the groups that want reward for hard work and the groups that want to be able to buy the nice skins in the game.

Mea.5491:

Noob question: Why do people like / want SAB so much??

Short answer, because it was awesome.

Longer answer, because it offered really unique gameplay, was fairly deep and had in my opinion the single best reward structure of any aspect of the game. It was also genuinely challenging content, with a fair amount of replay value (especially if they’d just committed to it and added timed leaderboards).

minbariguy.7504:

I don’t think he was complaining about the delay in release. It seemed pretty clear to me that he was unhappy with the communication surrounding the delay. That is an extremely important distinction that I think a lot of people miss.

Although I personally am happy with the level of communication they provided here, his point seems to be that he would have preferred it to come a bit earlier and to have provided a bit more information about when they feel the patch might be released.

While I think you can definitely debate whether the level of communication presented was adequate, I don’t think it’s accurate to respond to his post as though he was complaining about the actual delay itself.

I wasn’t even being that critical of this thread. I basically made two points:

1) The original dissatisfaction with communication did not come from delays, it came from lack of an update on delays. (I was responding to someone else, not Gaile)

2) While this thread is good (I said that twice), let’s not go overboard. This is a last minute update, with no adjusted time frame, which while better than nothing is hardly spectacular. From a company without a woefully poor communication history, this thread would be pretty much the minimum level of customer service you would expect. I’m grateful for the thread, but I don’t think it counterbalances the larger communication issues we’ve had for the last two years in any way.

Adelas.6598:

What would you be doing differently if the patch was coming out today? Does having it today or tomorrow or next week make a hill of beans worth of difference in how you are planning your life and/or game time?

Also, they clearly stated that they need more QA testing on it before it can be released. In other words, something isn’t working quite the way it’s supposed to, and they don’t want to release it without being sure it will work correctly. There are no assumptions there, that is what Gaile said, translated for you.

However, you CAN infer that the thing that is not working is game-breaking in some way, whether it’s glitches/crashes, or exploits. Would knowing exactly what KIND of game-break they’re dealing with make a difference to whether you think it’s reasonable for them to delay the release of the patch? Whether it’s a problem with stability, a weird visual glitch with the new camera system, or something as specific as “a crash-to-desktop when someone uses the first person camera when wearing twilight arbor light jacket and arah light pants while wielding the silly scimitar and shattering clones inside of a necro’s dark field at the same time an ele is blasting a fire field”…

if a game-breaking issue was discovered just prior to release, that’s really all the info we need to know.

If it was an exploit, it’s probably better that we don’t know the details.
If it was just a bug or crash, but one that happens to be game-breaking… knowing the details doesn’t matter.

As far as the rest of what you said…

Conscious delay of the release precursor crafting and SAB are not on the same level as this type of emergency-fix delay. Conscious delays are like going to a grocery store during a rush of customers and they only have a couple checkouts open because some of the cashiers are working on stocking. This patch delay is like going to a grocery store and having to wait in the checkout lane because the cashier suddenly came down with food poisoning from his lunch, vomited on the conveyor belt and they’re moving everyone to another lane while this one gets cleaned up.

Instead of complaining that you have to switch lanes, how about a little sympathy for the guy that puked in front of everybody? He’s embarrassed, sick, AND probably going to lose a day’s pay because he has to go home.

I’m not sure how this is relevant to what I said?