My surprise Q & A with Paul Gower!

Hey guys, after the treasure trail update was delayed, due to graphical reasons, the Runescape forums blew up as usual when something goes wrong. I was extremely unhappy myself, as this is the first update I have ever truly looked forward to in the entire time I've played Runescape. I made a comment along the lines of "Any second grader could figure out that the best plan would be to release the promised treasure trail update & delay the unwanted graphics update. The players don't appreciate being lied to in the BTS about an update coming out that month, then being pused to another month." in the sticky. Here's the response I got back in a series of PMs:

Paul: You know any second grader should be able to read the forum post he is replying to and realise that we specifically said that seperating the graphical update from the treasure trails is also not doable this week. And I don't know what lies you think we're telling- do you think that the trails are really releasable immediately and we're not doing so just to spite you.

Me: Wow, thanks for the response, pretty suprising! I realise I probably came off as a bit (Ok, a lot) harsh, but it's just in promising an update of that scale that the players have been looking forward to for years, then delaying due to a graphics update was rather irritating.

Paul: Yw- believe me, we don't want to delay any updates-that's partially actually that's entirely why we scrapped behind the scenes for awhile cos delays do happen.

Me: I can see how that could be a double-edged sword., it's nice to know what to expect that month, but when it doesn't happen, it is more annoying to the players (me at least) when the update doesn't come.

Paul: And indirectly users do want this graphical update because it's due to this lack of zbiasing that we've had to release a lot of unpopular graphical fixes to stop clipping which invariable causes rants (I can't make out what this next message said, I took a screenshot of only the top half ) What we expect to release this month but we do from time to time get unforseen delays which mean some things may not happen.

Me: Well that's just come to be expected from any update now unfortunately. Nothing can satisfy everyone.

Paul: I know

Me: I'm just curious as to why the graphics update delayed the treasure trail one, was it graphics with the treasure trail items? Or was it an unrelated matter?

Paul: Well I'm not entirely sure- but there's two common reasons for such things- most likely is that when the engine update was written graphics artists started making their new graphics dependant on it so possibly some of the new treasure trail items relied on it. Or it could just be that everything all got piled into one release version and extracting one update without the other will take some time- plus need a bunch more retesting to see if we've done it properly.

Me: So it sounds like it would just make more sense to err on the side of caution and just release it all together?


Paul: Well yep it's probably as quick to fix the issue as it is to build a different release version and fully test it.

Me: Ah, that makes sense. Are you planning on updating your older engines soon, to where all will be running on the same software? As far as snazzy goes though, I just got HD to work for the first time on my computer w/o serious lag issues, it looks great!

Paul: I think to an extent we have to have different people running on different things cos we're trying to make the game as snazzy as possible based on your specific computer specs.

Uhfolks: Well anyways, thanks for the response! Glad to know what's going on. I've got to head off, good luck getting everything pulled together hopefully soon

Paul: Thanks


~`~

This is 99.9% unedited, I only did things such as added in puncuation and combined messages together. This was done entirely in private messages, so it had very little punctuation in the actual dialouge. I decided to post it on here instead of the Runescape forums or other fansites because I just love this community & the podcast! Hope you enjoyed reading this!

P.S. I have attached the screenshot of the first part of the conversation to prove I'm just not completely making this up. I didn't want to post it ALL on here though, because it would make for a ton of pictures, which would take forever to load.

Some people have all the luck! Really nice unexpected Q&A, although I'm trying to remember the last time Paul himself actually responded to one of the rants. Who knows, you might be able to keep talking to him and get the heads-up on updates before anyone else.

Wow, thats so cool they actually care, to respnd!

I've only seen a Jmod once, well a group of them. So I completely agree that jagex needs to spend more time interacting with the community.

That's awesome to see that Jagex is actually talking and listening to the users. Excellent job folks.

Haha, I definately agree. This is much better than, "We're perfect, get over it." Though what you said about Jagex not doing this, is like getting a personal call from Steve Jobs about your broken Ipod & saying Apple isn't providing good customer service.

So I guess the moral of the story is if you want to get the attention of the staff, call them out in a mildly sharp way and you'll get a response. Perhaps Paul was just getting fed up and your comment probably pushed him over the brink. Not saying it's a bad thing, but every human has that urge to respond to a charge like yours and explain the whole situation. And again, these guys put in a lot of work I'm sure and try to do the best they can...most the time, hopefully, if not all the time. Try to give them a break. They want the game to be just as enjoyable for you as for everybody else. As you pointed out, you can't please everyone, but you can do your pest to please as many as you can with the right content in a timely fashion. I'm sure Paul will remember you and I hope you and everyone else who read the conversation can hear what I'm saying and try to be thankful for the great staff that works on this game. d=(^_^)z