stainer wrote on Dec 1
st, 2011 at 10:39am:
It might be worth getting 5 or 6 people together and going to 404error with a plan for a static testing group of high caliber players. The thing is, you couldn't plan it in the open, because it would immediately eliminate you from Mournlands. Posting this idea eliminates me right off the bat.
Are you sure that it is posting the idea that eliminates you?
I don't understand their obsession with secrecy. It's not like someone at Blizzard is going to say "DDO is planning to add underwater combat!!. ZOMG!!! We've got to get that into WoW first, chain the coders to their desks again!!!!".
We see the Lama preview. They hear feedback on forums after releases that they then dutifully ignore. There were a ton of comments about broken Mabar mechanics and lag the first two times, and they brought it back proudly unchanged a third time.
There are some faint signs of hope - I think it was MajMal who said that Mabar was being modified before it returns. He's talking about releasing more, rougher, and earlier Lama builds, so that they can collect feedback and make changes before live.
For me, time on Lama is unrewarding other than as a preview to decide if I want to buy new content. The last time I bothered to use it, the bug reporting system was abominably slow - it needs to be something I can do while in a group between quests, or even better, within a minute or two inside a quest.
MajMal talks about making it more rewarding to contribute on Lama. I doubt they'll get the incentives right on the first try, as something like 5 TP per bug report would be a huge mistake. The reward that matters is even expensive - they need to do a better job of engaging and interacting with players on Lama. I don't know how, but unless I feel that my time spent was worthwhile and my contributions were listened to and resulted in a change, Lama will remain a waste of my time.
As long as the devs appear detached from the playerbase and continue listening to a vocal minority like Shade, the game will inevitably spiral down. All things come to an end.