Bugs - What are they and why do you care

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Bugs - What are they and why do you care

Post by Mars »

Every game has them, it's inevitable.
Bugs are pieces of the programming that either don't work as intended or things that are just a byproduct of something else and were never intended anyway.
Bugs take away from the intent of the game. They can be simple very minor things or hard very major things. Or anything in between.

Do we (the management of Drakkar) care about bugs. You bet we do. Like any exterminator, we would like to eradicate every single one of them from the face of the game.

What do bugs mean to you, the Player? Well, it means the game isn't functioning as intended which can adversly take away from your gaming experience. They can make the game less enjoyable for you or downright fustrate you.

How can you help?
Well if you find a bug. i.e. something does not work the way it appears to be intended to or you find the "ability" to do something that you know is just not right, REPORT IT. Talk to a sysop in the lobby or if one is not available, please email help@drakkarzone.com immediately.

What should you NOT do?
Do not keep "using" the bug. We don't expect you to test it, just tell us and let us fix it.

What are the results?
If reported: bug gets fixed and game is more enjoyable for you and all your friends and acquaintences.
If not reported: Game doesn't get fixed. You become dissatisfied, friends join you. Players leave and don't play.
If abused: This is the hard one. What is abuse? Well, repeated use of the bug/ability that either allows you to kill faster, wear something you shouldn't be allowed to, make copies of something you or someone else has, this ruins the game experience for everyone. Take duping for instance, if an item is supposed to be hard to get, or take time to get, how do you think everyone feels if all of a sudden, player A has many many of these items because they found a way to make as many as they wish. This disallusions everyone who plays.
What happens now? Well, we must take time out of making the game more enjoyable for everyone by adding new content, expanding on existing things, ect to research what happened, find every item that was duplicated, and remove them. We must spend our time looking for something elusive rather than fixing something found.
Players found abusing bugs will be dealt with appropriate to the situation. Scripting and leeching are covered in another post here along with the penalties for their actions. Abuse however, does not follow those guidelines.
Abuse penalties can result in a temporary ban/lock, loss of all gear/items (in every locker), rollback of an account to remove any gains, etc resulting from the abuse, or even deletion of an account.

Recently, we had to deal with a bug abuse. We had to stop everything we were working on to track this one down, discover all that was duped, find every account involved, "repair" the bug so it could not be "used" again. This took time, time we would have rather spent making game better for all. What happened to the accounts involved? They are closed. We deemed what was done so drastic to the game, we could not allow the players to continue to play and disrupting the game for everyone else. This is not a step we take lightly, we don't like removing players, but in order to support everyone else, sometimes you have to remove a "bad apple".

Please, we beseech you, if you find a bug (or even think you did), report it immediately. No player who reports a bug immediatly will face any actions in regards to it. However, if we must expend the time and resources to come to you AFTER we find out about it, we must take some action.

V/R

The Drakkar Team/Management

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Re: Bugs - What are they and why do you care

Post by Mars »

Gentle reminder

One of the bugs fixed yesterday apparently was known by some for quite awhile. They chose to abuse it rather than report it.

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