Gauging Interest for a Volunteer Auxiliary Dev Team

While I have not seen any studies, it kinda makes sense, that work done without a firm deadline is finalized to the point where the creator himself is satisfied with the result.
And not just "finished" when the creator runs out of time.

This is of course depending on the time-management-skills of everyone involved, which can vary from project to project. I have played many games(EQ1 included) where it was obvious that there were compromises made, due to strict deadlines.

That said, there are many factors that can affect the final result...Not having strict deadlines can also backfire and plague the project with feature-creep...

Living in a fantasy world where all is possible is also an opion... I think workers in the long run actually need money to pay bills, as money does not grow on trees

Tbh, I think a much better solution, would be to give up on the weird idea that the deadline always has to be dictated by x-mas. It would result in more polished expansions with better class tuning.

Lets be honest, players are not going to suddenly boycott expansions releases, just because DBG happens to miss an x-mas deadline...I don't think it would result in fewer overall expansion sales...

Letting religion dictate software release dates is pretty oldfashioned imho...

I don't think it isn't a Christmas deadline as much as a business deadline to have the expansion launched within the calendar year and get the revenue from that counted towards the same year. The launch is scheduled so that they have a chance to push out bug fixes before the holiday time off starts.

I would also argue that Christmas has become about a lot more then its religious origins anymore.

I love how the fact that it would be illegal to have volunteers do this under labour laws... keeps being ignored by the OP.

Religion and vacation time aside, Q4 ends December 31st. Gotta have that bump to make dividend payments.

That and they keep trying to equate interns to free unpaid volunteer. While interns might have been an unpaid position in the past they have never been volunteer work and many places are making it required by law for them to be paid.

Working occasional voluntary overtime is nothing new. The video game industry would come to a standstill if this was abolished, so would hospitals and many other essential services. Overtime is just one tool in the business toolbox that companies use all the time to meet deadlines or to finish products when fellow employees are absent from work due to illnesses and family emergencies.

Developers should be able to choose to put in extra paid or free time on anything they like in EQ.

The developer that created the amazing /useitem command apparently worked on this during his lunch breaks. If that dev had listened to the sentiment on these forums, that command may never have been invented.

You've made a few claims like this in this thread. Do you have anything to back these up, or are you just pulling things out of your dreams?

Despite your attempt to cross examine me, this is not a court of law. This is a discussion forum. I'm here in good faith and posting information that I believe to be true. I and others are under no obligation to post affidavits, footnotes, and links to prove the veracity everything that we say.

All I will say is that have heard that an EQ dev that is no longer with the company created this useful command on his lunch break. I think I learned that from reading these forums, but I am not absolutely sure. You can choose to believe me or not. Have a nice day.

I have already addressed this concern in previous replies.

The Christmas holiday season is the historically the busiest time of year for shopping because that's when most people buy gifts. It's a well-established practice in the video game industry to ensure that new releases and expansions arrive before Christmas. I believe there is data to show that games released for the holiday season sell more copies.

I have an unfounded suspicion that this rule only goes for people looking to purchase "new" games. The rare "true newbie". But they can just preorder, and won't miss the newest expansion before much later when they reached the level-cap.

Im not sure it also goes for expansion-sales for already active players. Most of them have already decided long ago, if they want to buy the newest expansion, regardless of the release-date. It is not an impulse-present for them. We don't need X-mas to justify buying an expansion.
We are already addicted...

Repost of my earlier post.

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...without-soulstones.278864/page-2#post-4081649


You are not alone. You can find help and get treatment. May I suggest the following.

1. Admit that you are powerless over your addiction to vendor diving–that your life has become unmanageable.

2. Come to believe that a Power greater than yourself can restore you to sanity. Chocolate can help.

3. Make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of Brell as you will learn to understood his mighty self.

4. Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself. The Find function can help with this.

5. Admit to Brell, to yourself, and to a dwarf, and if absolutely necessary even a lowly human character the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Do all that is needed to be entirely ready to have Brell remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly ask Brell and a GM to remove your shortcomings. Beg if needed. Remember that begging in General chat will reverse the effect.

8. Make a list of persons you have harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. Gifts of krono are best.

9. Choose to make direct amends to such people in a timely basis wherever possible, depending upon lag and the patch schedule.

10. Continue to take personal inventory and when you find that you have an abundance of krono, to rid yourself of this filthy lucre by gifting generous amount to every dwarf you may come across.

11. Seek through prayer and staring at our spellbook, err, remembering to sit down to improve your conscious contact with Brell as you may be permitted to understood the mighty one, praying for the knowledge of Brell’s will for you and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, you must try to carry this message to other scurvy, besotted, greedy, lag inducing vendor divers and to call them to repentance in general chat often until the entire server has you on ignore. You must then plan to persist through the evil, vile, intrusive, annoying, practice of cross-server chatting until you truly are hated by all.

Yes, I've seen suggestions on how to get around the law. You clearly don't understand how the law works.

Only way to fix it if they hire two more full time employees, minimum.

Wait, are you suggesting they staff properly? Next you'll be suggesting they should offer competitive pay. Absolute lunacy. We should subsidize their labor for free, clearly.

That would be the best solution. I may end up dying of old age before that happens given the current speed of how things work at Daybreak.

You can't prosecute someone for "getting around the law", that phrase is specious and hyperbolic and not a legitimate legal concept. The law is the law.

When California video game studios interns, is that against the law?

When California video game studios hire independent contractors, is against the law?

When California video game studios outsource most of their graphics and animations overseas, is that against the law?

I am not a lawyer nor am I a legal expert. This is not a nefarious scheme to help Daybreak earn more profits on the backs of unpaid workers. I have no dog in this fight. I have nothing to gain. I'm just one person with a series of ideas on trying to help make EverQuest better by addressing the lack of staffing. As per usual on these forums, no good deed goes unpunished by a handful of chronic detractors.

When I first introduced this good faith proposal it included the idea of volunteers. Thanks to the input of some of the replies, I have since amended changed it to include interns and independent contractors.

I do kinda want to program for EQ for free; it's my PowerBall dream to buy EQ, and code in all the changes I want. like slightly randomized per spawn mob stats, making the big damage DS's group-only auras, and having an Orc themed expansion, with a new zone for each of Crushbone, Deathfist, Shralok, Ry'Gorr, etc.