Polish Isn’t About The Bugs - It’s About The Shine
Posted by Stropp on July 30, 2008There’s a quote from Paul Barnett going around at the moment saying that Warhammer Online is finished and that they are now polishing up the game before release in mid-September. According to Video Gaming 247 (thanks Waaagh), Barnett is saying that he would be comfortable in shipping Warhammer Online right now, and that it’s in a finished state.
That’s what I like to hear.
A computer game developer who actually knows what polish is.
As devoted followers of the MMORPG developer priesthood we often hear, after a game has been shipped, that the game still needs some polish, but hey, that’s normal for MMO games… right?
We then head out to our local game store, buy the game, and scurry home to install it only to find that the quests are broken, the graphics are glitchy, and even entire systems are missing. We hop on to the forums to see 350,000 players protesting the state of the game and another 350,000 defending it. This is a MMOG… they always need polishing after release.
Listen very carefully, I shall say this only once. (Sorry, gratuitous ‘Allo ‘Allo moment there.)
Fixing serious bugs in a game is not polishing the game.
Polish is always the final layer. If you polish furniture where there are serious imperfections in the underlying workmanship, all you will do is magnify those imperfections. Try whacking the paintwork of your brand new car with a chisel and then try polishing out the resulting chip. No matter how much elbow grease you use, it won’t look good.
That means everything else is to be done first. That’s getting gameplay right, getting the systems that you are going to release with in, and — very important — getting the known bugs fixed. Once that is done, the polish can applied.
"But hold on," you say, "All software has bugs. How can we expect <insert MMORPG here> to be free of them?"
Well, you’re right. We can’t. We especially cannot fix what we don’t know about yet. And you can be absolutely certain that the players of Warhammer Online will find previously unknown bugs, even mere minutes after the servers go live. But… what should be fixed, before the game gets its polish and certainly before it goes live, are the bugs that the developers know about.
And of course, we know about crunch time and how the management types often insist on getting the game out the door before it’s ready. Just because game development is a cool profession to be in doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its share of PHB’s (Pointy Haired Bosses.) Sometimes there just isn’t enough time to fix every known bug, or even test the system to perfection. Not every developer has Blizzard’s ability to insist, "When it’s done."
And that’s fair enough. As long as the developers fix all the known major and medium level bugs, and most of the minor bugs, the game can be considered ready for polishing. Then in the polishing phase, the gameplay systems are tweaked, rough edges smoothed off, and minor bugs like spelling errors in quest text can be fixed.
So when Paul Barnett is saying the Warhammer Online is in a finished state, my ears hear that he is saying all of the major and medium level known bugs are gone. That the game has been tested to a high level and that everything is working well. There are no obvious issues that will cause memory leaks, or premature crashing. All quests work and are able to be completed by players as intended. Now the only thing left to do is put the shine on the game.
At least I hope that’s what he is saying.
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When I hear finished and polish I think… We’ll fix that in patch 1.1.
They’ll say anything, they call it marketing. It’s to make you feel good, so you’ll buy it.
Unfortunately, I think you’re giving them too much credit. They only recently had to cut a huge portion of their promised game content because they couldn’t balance it. They removed classes that they couldn’t get right, they took out more than half the racial cities….
That’s not polishing. It’s not polishing when you take the couch you are making, chop it in half, and then try to polish it as if it were a loveseat. It’s not a loveseat. It’s a couch that you chopped in half, and people are going to be pissed when they don’t get the full sized couch they were advertised.
A polished game for WAR will be when everything they promised in the hype stages is actually integrated into the game with no serious (i.e. progress stopping, game crashing, immersion destroying) bugs. Sorry, but I’ve been in the industry long enough to know that simply doesn’t happen with MMORPGs.
That’s true. Cutting content isn’t adding polish. But I guess that’s where the furniture analogy becomes an imperfect metaphor. It’s definitely possible to polish up what is left and get it working as good as possible before release. It’s then up to the fans to forgive them if they like what they get. From everything I’ve been reading, I think that’s fairly likely.
People are making too much fuss over the cuts. Mythic is conducting the most thorough and extensive MMO beta I’ve ever been in (and I’ve been in tons), and I think they made a great decision at the right time. Most people aren’t even going to notice the difference.
However, remember Paul Barnett is paid to be enthusiastic. I don’t think he’s completely full of hot air, but it’s a damn good thing the game didn’t release when he said he was ready. Can’t say more due to NDA, but ask me again when it drops
Mmmm. Beta. Wish I was in it.
Wait a minute. No I don’t. The NDA would make it too hard not to spill my guts! I have no mouth, yet I must scream…
And don’t forget, I’ve heard some rumours that the cut content will be added in later anyway. Wether that’s in a paid expansion or a free content upgrade I’m not sure.
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