Oakwynd Information and FAQ

The new TLP server is set to launch 2 weeks from now.

How quickly they put out new patches to Test to try and fix things (and how many they do) will be a good indicator of how serious they're taking this. However, I suspect they'll just let it ride as is until the server rollout and hope they've managed to fix the bugs as they unleash it upon paying customers. I could be wrong, but past history has shown they're more than willing to let screwed up code go to a live server in order to maintain a schedule/deadline and THEN start trying to fix it.

First, Did you play what they sent to test?

Second, Fix it??
This isn't the loot issues from Mischief.
Lets be brutally honest. These problems are much more complex. So many variable situations for every problem found so far, and there are A LOT. Its not logical to look at this from development and say it will be ok. Were working on it...

Yes, they are fairly complex but that means they are not going to have a response for you the morning/afternoon when the patch went out the night before. Personally I don't see the point of an update saying we are working on the issues rather then just have them work on the issues.

I was carefully optimistic about the whole FTE thing and I still think it would not be that big of a deal in daily play... if the mechanic was working as intended. Now with all the bugs though... I mean things like body aggro or pets being just broken, that is scary. Those are very core mechanics and it seems that the consequences of FTE may break a lot of existing features, probably even things which will not be discovered during the short test window.
At that point the question really is: "Is this worth it?" Are the benefits of this feature great enough to warrant breaking the existing game?

This is no different then any other major mechanics change , there going to attempt to fix the majority of issues before launch and it might take a few patches for the bugs to be ironed out but it will be done regardless.

That depends if any of it is hard coded or how imbedded into the game agro etc is.

Regardless , if it is hard coded it will be ironed out. I do admit there is going to be time involved , but the reality is if the power's that be want this to happen ... it will happen.

I don't see them fixing that mess in 13 days, in a few months maybe by which time it will be too late. They have already stated FTE is only needed for the early life of a TLP.

That leaves them 2 choices
Release Oakwynd without FTE
Delay the launch of Oakwynd

Will there be any other expansions released on the same days? There has been several other requests for expansions to be released together.

There has also been requests for other things on the Oakwynd server like reduced mob spawns at launch.

Can we at least get some feedback on other stuff even if you are not able to let us know what is going on with FTE?

I never expected it to be fully fixed inside of 13 days , that does not mean there will not be continued development and patches to address found issues. That is after all the entire point of the test server.

It is so broken atm I really have to question their entire release process. What was their QA testing? Did it build without errors??? I mean it took all of 5 minutes to find many of the major problems and bugs, in less than a few hours many more were found and documented...

aggro/hate list mechanics are a very core part of the game that have been modified over the years to lower threat for certain things, add threat for others, introduce threat drops, etc so it is very likely depending on how spaghetti the code is that there are pieces of the current implementation all over the place.

I am super unconfident they will have it in any kind of working order anytime soon given their track record.... especially since they have chosen silence since their half baked FAQ.

They absolutely need to lump everything from PoP up to GoD into a single release. As has been mentioned many many times already. That alone may be enough to save the server regardless of the FTE implementation.

In other words, Release PoP, LoY and LDoN on the same day (separate by an hour or whatever).

With all the bugs and that FTE on EQ wouldn't really work anyway, just scrap the whole thing and give us a free trade server lol

Meeko in the official discord stated the FTE can be turned off without a patch. So looks like that is what they will do. Disable FTE when Oakwynd launches and continue to work out the bugs and then eventually enable it again probably during Kunark.

So... what has changed in the last 4 weeks? Because as far as I can tell... nothing.

Whether they're aiming to isolate and fix every bug with the FTE system before the launch, or if they are indeed planning to let the server launch as-is and deal with it later, it doesn't matter.

It would take 10 seconds for Angeliana or one of the other community managers (not a dev) to type out a simple message. "We're working to improve FTE before launch." "We're going to delay FTE until sometime after launch." "We're talking amongst ourselves and deciding how we're going to handle the release of FTE."

From what I've read, there are three factions on this: those that want this change, those that don't, and those that just want an update on what the plan is for Oakwynd's launch. The third seems to be the majority. All they have to do is have someone with a blue tag type out one sentence to let that group know what's going on.

Sure but it is also silly to think that they are not working on fixing the issues at this point. And it should also be noted that I made that post less then 24 hours after the test patch and the expectations are different now that it has been a few days since the patch.

Sure, I doubt anyone seriously thinks they're just sitting on their hands for the next two weeks. But people are interested in Oakwynd, and how FTE affects its launch. That's where communication would be helpful.

Less than 24 hours after the test patch was when they should have been addressing people's concerns about their plans concerning FTE for Oakwynd. Silence just breeds speculation (see the posts in this and other threads). They pay community managers to manage relations with the community, so this seems like the sort of thing they should touch on.

I don't understand you..... you also thought they would never release such untested bad code to test and look what we got... Bottom line FTE was not QA'd and if it was that's even more scary.. It literally took 2 minutes to break FTE less because as soon as mobs spawned in lguk and started buffing other mobs it was broken...Does that sound like something that was EVER QA'd? Yet you think they are back there dilligently working on fixes?? lol