An Open Letter From <GRIZZLY>

[Dreez]

No, I want them to update the timeline maybe once a month, they haven't even updated it once in five months. The fact you don't see an issue with that shows how very ignorant you are and why the admins continue to provide no communication with the players. You people do nothing but pretend it's okay for them to provide us with no information for some bullshit reason or another. You posted four bland and rather uninformative ANNOUNCEMENTS they've made in five, read that again, FIVE, months. They've said new content soon, they're working on optimization (aka lowering view distance again), they're asking players to stop asking for updates because uh there's a timeline they posted six months ago and they're not going to update it but the players asking for it to be updated is unreasonable, and an announcement saying lag, "In the meantime, dedicated developers are working on Alterac Valley, thanks to the guilds that send us feedback from the Player Test Realm (PTR). The Dev team also has some developers focused on the current content available: thanks to the IsVV team, new patchnotes will be coming soon " which we know to be untrue and then bragging about players they've banned.

That's not a lot of information in five months, the fact you think that's a suitable amount of information is hilarious. Hell, let's go over what one of the very few announcements says. "In the meantime, dedicated developers are working on Alterac Valley, thanks to the guilds that send us feedback from the Player Test Realm (PTR). The Dev team also has some developers focused on the current content available: thanks to the IsVV team, new patchnotes will be coming soon "
They don't have any developers, this has been proven and discussed by former staff members. The bugs we reported in the AV testing sessions were NOT fixed as seen in the release. They said patchnotes soon and a very minor patch was applied TEN days later (https://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15653) with such fixes as "Shaman: Totem positive spells will no longer be resisted" that was reported every day for the first two months of the server and has been known for FIVE months.

The degree to which your idiocy extends and the shit you can put up with is admirable, really. It's amazing how ignorant you can be.

Funny how your arguments move towards pure insults without any reason.

Have a guess why this wowwiki entry exists: http://wowwiki.wikia.com/Soon
Blizzard simply didn't give you a fixed timeline because it was work in progress and pretty much everything got delayed.

Nostalrius decided to provide the playerbase with a timeline indicating the desired release dates to let them know what the server is about, clearly stating that it is not fixed.

What do you expect?
Seems like they keep their twitter up to date now as well https://twitter.com/NostalBegins

It's not hard to figure out content is going to be delayed when two months after Rag and Ony died BWL isn't out, it's obvious it's going to be delayed because it already is. It's not obvious how much longer it's going to be delayed and to what degree it will be, BWL is now TWO MONTHS delayed, how is this escaping you?

How difficult is it to figure out that if BWL is going to be on the PTR in two weeks that it will not be released within one month from now? I don't even want to see it within the next month, I'd rather go for a more fixed version of it and enjoy the current meta for a bit longer.

Drama for absolutely no reason if you're asking me

[pmizz]

6.6k pop > Delivering your BWL bug free within your requested time frame

Literally contract cancer, thanks

[Holmes]

Sure you can go ahead and call Grizzly a bunch of nerds/cheaters/exploiters/whatever, i'm sure you can find a lot of players who will agree with you. Regardless of your insecurities, the point that they are making is still entirely valid.

The fact that AV was on the PTR for SIX WEEKS and delivered in the state it was should concern anyone who gives a shit about the long-term health of this server.

1. they critizise the delayed content
2. they critizise the bugged content

do you see whats happening there?

if they deliver faster (as promised) youll have more bugs
if they fix all bugs first youll have to wait twice as long for each content update

maybe they need more devs
its a dilemma sadly every private server has

so if you dont like it here, you'll not like it on most private servers aswell.

Why would they say BWL is going to be released two months after Rag/Ony are dead if they can not even remotely stick to that? It's two months past due, did they think people were going to take three months to hit 60 and clear MC? This is not a fault of the playerbase, it's a fault of the administration. This is 100% their fault and they need to communicate better with the players and adjust their expectations accordingly. A tentative timeline is fine, when the word tentative is being used. Tenative has such been fucking demolished and is now the phrase completely unrealistic.

ofc its their fault. however, their promises hyped you and thus it has become the biggest vanilla server: succeeded

if they told you the thruth frm the beginning you would never have joined

[pmizz]

if they told you the thruth frm the beginning you would never have joined

Grizzly actually believes a scheduled content release is why this server is at 7k pop

[illroyjetson]

An open letter is a letter which, though primarily addressed to an individual (or in this case the server administration as a group), is intended to be read by the entire community. Open letters are often motivated by a desire to call wider attention to an issue, to incite constructive discussion. By choosing this medium of communication, the authors also open themselves up to criticism.

The leadership of <GRIZZLY> was approached by a staff member and asked to provide reasons for wanting to leave the server. This request was in turn conveyed to the rest of the guild. After no small amount of deliberation, the decision was made to air these grievances publicly. This was not done to dissuade others from playing on the server, nor was it an attempt to garner sympathy. Simply put, as has been repeatedly noted, many complaints and criticisms about the server all boil down to one thing: lack of communication.

What better way to promote communication and open discussion than the letter found on the first page or so of this thread?

You may not agree with the specific reasons provided for wanting to leave the server. You may feel that the size of the population or the fact that the server is free outweighs the downsides. You may feel that it is unreasonable to expect things from Nostralius that have never been provided by any server, private or otherwise. A counterpoint to that opinion is the fact that the major advertising point of the server before it released was the ability to provide something that had never been done before due to an extensive period of development over the past several years.

There are (at least) two possible interpretations of this. First, it could be that this claim was baseless, there was no such years-long development period. Second, it could be that after five years, the developers were only able to improve upon some quest bugs and a moderately passable Molten Core. As time passes, the inability or unwillingness of the administration to own up to the former possibility sows the seeds that the latter may be true.

Each piece of anecdotal evidence provided by others in the thread (cf. aqual quintessences, alterac valley issues, etc.) is individually a minor frustration, but collectively speaks to a larger, more serious problem.

That these flaws in the development of the server (especially alterac valley) are met with accusations and disdain towards regular members of the community who took the time to test and bug hunt content paints an unflattering picture of the ethos of the server administration.

Today we find it increasingly easy to be myopic, to attack those who disagree with us with insults and ad hominem. If I don’t play the game for the same reasons as you, then it is much less effort for me to call you a ‘window licker’ than consider your position.

Perhaps <GRIZZLY> is as culpable as the staff regarding timely and effective communication, perhaps not.

There are many in the guild, including those of us who took the time to draft, revise, and offer these comments, who want the server to succeed and its community to grow and prosper. That is the reason we have shared our thoughts with you.

Best,

Illroy

[zachqt]

** EDIT

[Imbaslap]

let's be real. the AV testing was beyond crap planning. granted, I did find a ton of bugs on the PTR and if AV released as it was. 5min AV games would be commonplace, and guilds would be tanking molten core with a 21k hp goblin shredder pet.

the AV testing is by far the most demanding to script and test. during open pvp beta. everyone dueled outside IF and orgrimmar instead of testing AV. 200-300 ppl max would run it a few times and barely reported anything. probably due to lack of knowledge of the game.

hopefully this is lessons learned for the Nos staff and viper and Daemon to start opening up more guilds for PVE content testing since there is no real pvp content left to be released now. update the PTR more often and communicate with the testers more like it was back in open beta prior to server release. we had fixes done next day, or even within the hour of finding the bug and reporting it. we also had the admins tell us what needed tested and checked in particular. on the PTR, its been. go in and tell us what you see. that's it... like we are developers of mangos core and such...

DM didn't have a "check mind control on all mobs" checkbox with it, nor were many people even looking at the instance like that. more polish and testing takes time, therefore the whole "rushing" the devs and demanding more would make it more sloppy.

to be honest though, the server is much healthier then majority of the private vanilla servers out there that had 10x the amount of time to polish their server and development, who still fail to do so to this day.

bwl before the fall is not a bad timeline, however it is not perfect. I am thankful to actually experience "patches" that change content in the game rather than an occasional reddit update on the smallest fixes that don't even matter anymore.

AV shouldn't have taken 6 weeks nor should it have had only 7 guilds testing it on strict schedules. it should have been a serverwide test to get the most gain out of it before releasing it. regardless though, this server aint that bad. it can be better if the admins want it to be.

/endrant.

[zachqt]

let's be real. the AV testing was beyond crap planning. granted, I did find a ton of bugs on the PTR and if AV released as it was. 5min AV games would be commonplace, and guilds would be tanking molten core with a 21k hp goblin shredder pet.

the AV testing is by far the most demanding to script and test. during open pvp beta. everyone dueled outside IF and orgrimmar instead of testing AV. 200-300 ppl max would run it a few times and barely reported anything. probably due to lack of knowledge of the game.

hopefully this is lessons learned for the Nos staff and viper and Daemon to start opening up more guilds for PVE content testing since there is no real pvp content left to be released now. update the PTR more often and communicate with the testers more like it was back in open beta prior to server release. we had fixes done next day, or even within the hour of finding the bug and reporting it. we also had the admins tell us what needed tested and checked in particular. on the PTR, its been. go in and tell us what you see. that's it... like we are developers of mangos core and such...

DM didn't have a "check mind control on all mobs" checkbox with it, nor were many people even looking at the instance like that. more polish and testing takes time, therefore the whole "rushing" the devs and demanding more would make it more sloppy.

to be honest though, the server is much healthier then majority of the private vanilla servers out there that had 10x the amount of time to polish their server and development, who still fail to do so to this day.

bwl before the fall is not a bad timeline, however it is not perfect. I am thankful to actually experience "patches" that change content in the game rather than an occasional reddit update on the smallest fixes that don't even matter anymore.

AV shouldn't have taken 6 weeks nor should it have had only 7 guilds testing it on strict schedules. it should have been a serverwide test to get the most gain out of it before releasing it. regardless though, this server aint that bad. it can be better if the admins want it to be.

/endrant.

** EDIT