2000-04-12: Tough choices
Tough choices
Apr 12 2000 4:28PM
This was originally posted to Development at uo.com. [1]
I have finally been forced to make that decision that almost every game developer has to make at some point in their career. It isn’t an easy one. As I’ve stated since I took over the helm of Lead Designer with Toad at my side, quality and dependability are my goals for this team. I think we’ve done a good job over the last six months of delivering what we’ve promised in a timely manner. Renaissance is a big deal for me. Actually, it’s the biggest project of my gaming career to date.
It is of the utmost importance to me that the UO: Renaissance update is of the highest quality, and that it come within a reasonable timeframe. As you may already know (and as is often the case even when you have a team as good as this one) a bizarre train of events have conspired against our efforts to finalize our testing and we have to make some tough choices about what we can keep and what we must remove from the update to make our dates. In order to meet our goals of quality and timeliness, we have decided to delay The Faction System. The reason for this decision is two-fold. First, The Faction System was not part of the original UO: Renaissance plan. Second, the system is so complex that it would easily add another 3-5 days to QA’s testing schedule. Sure, we could give it the “once over” and boot it out the door... but we won’t. I believe The Faction System can be one of the most engaging game systems in UO, but without the proper polish it would merely turn into a system that only “tried”. You don’t want that. We don’t want that.
However, the positive result of this is that QA can finish up their testing on UO:Renaissance sans The Faction System, and we can continue to work on it immediately after the coming update. This gives us time to make those last little changes that will turn it into something fantastic, when it might have otherwise been merely adequate.
You will see The Faction System return to Test Center immediately after the UO:R update. It will not fall to the wayside. It will not be forgotten. We’re extremely excited about this system. As many of you who were on Test Center know, the basic framework is already in place and working. I’ve seen some great input from many players on it, and we will be considering ways to improve issues such as reputation, rank, combat, and politics.
In the meantime, this team is focused on polishing UO:R and responding to any concerns that arise from it. It’s a tough choice, but we’re down to the wire, and it’s the right one.
Anthony Castoro (SunSword)
Lead Designer, Ultima Online
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