I work as a Sys admin for a fortune 250, allow me to correct some overzealous ignorance here.
Definitive deadlines only lead to problems. Both for the development staff and for those looking for the deadlines.
When a developer sets an arbitrary deadline by giving definitive information (For Example: "We'll have a build ready to go by Monday and we expect the expedited review to put the software up by Wednesday"), they set a line in the sand they MUST meet.
What happens if at 11:00pm Sunday Night (or 7:00 AM Monday Morning, or whenever you think the "by monday" deadline is) they find a bug that will affect a significant number of users? Do they then post "Oops"? How many people do you think THAT will turn off? WHat happens, then, if at 11:30 they find a quick fix to the problem and then have to post "Oops again, never mind!" and again 15 minutes later another crash bug comes up?
Software development and trouble shooting is a fluid process. You NEVER know as you dig into a problem how deep or wide that problem will extend. Any deadline you set is ARBITRARY until you have the full scope of the problem identified...and by that point posting a status is immaterial because you're almost done with fixing the issue anyway.
It's also inadvisable for the customer/client to be paying attention to definitive time lines. How many people are pissed off because they were expecting the release on a certain day? How many times have you heard people on WOW's boards or somewhere else going "I took the day off for this and now I can't play WAHHH!!!!"
On the flip side when a development staff is faced with a line in the sand (We will release the iPad version by the end of November) it creates a push to "Get it out regardless". It creates a "business morality" dilemma for the production staff...do we release a game to meet deadlines and not lose sales even though we know it's not ready/has problems or do we piss off our customers and lose business by only releasing when we know it works properly?
MORE of these dilemma setting points in the sand is NOT going to be helpful.
You have your updates...twitter has given you ALL THE INFORMATION YOU NEED. They're working on a fix, they're intending to expedite the review if that fix works, and their time frame they want to work under is Monday. NOTHING HAS CHANGED, THERES NO NEED FOR AN UPDATE.
"Still on track" is not useful. As much as you'd like to see it, it's not useful for the developers and (despite your opinion) it's not useful to you either. Because "Still on track" can change with each letter typed on the keyboard, with each line of code written, with each build compiled and with each test done. EVERY TAP on the iPad's screen in their testing department can identify a new bug..."still on track" is so ephmeral as to be useless information...one second you're on track, the next second you're not, and the next second you are.
The next update from Beamdog needs to be "We're done and submitting" everything between now and then is USELESS information. Even "we're not going to make "Monday" for submission" is not really useful information because they won't know that till Monday is done.
It is not GOOD practice to perpetually update customers on a fluid situation. "good, not good, good, not good...OMG!"
You don't WANT to know how your sausage is made my friends. Sit back, relax, understand that it will be out in short order, and quit haranguing the development staff for updates that wouldn't be useful to you if they gave them to you.
Look at it this way, you're not downloading this app till it's done and released on the app store. The app won't be released to the app store till it's complete. Despite angry commentary to the contrary, we're GOING to buy and download this game, regardless of when it comes out...because it's a good game and we've been waiting this long for it already. It'll be done when it's done, and released when it's released.
Quit asking for status, it's a determent to them to give it to you, it's a determent to you to have it, and it won't matter one way or the other if the game comes out today or tomorrow or next week...you're buying it anyway.
--Illydth
Wow..just wow. Come down off the soapbox for a second and look at where the release for the iPad version says "November". Is it asking too much to change it to maybe a more current month? You know for all those people who don't live in the forums?
And a little advice from a fellow sys admin...sys admins with piss poor customer service skills are not very good sys admins. People deserve and expect proper communication. Your right, we don't to "need to know how the sausage is made" but nobody here is demanding indepth technical reasons for why the app was not approved. Overhaul is setting their own deadlines and expectations. When those deadlines pass they owe an explaination.
Hi guys, I just saw a tweet on Trent Oster his said that : #BGEE for the iPad is 1.8GB is size. We made it as small as we could as there is a lot of game there ;-)
I don't know if the game is ready for IPad but in my own view I guess it will be released soon.
A build was submitted to Apple on Friday. The team hard tested all weekend, couldn't find any more showstoppers and thus applied for an expedited review this morning, and now we're waiting for them to hear from Apple whether an expedited review is being granted?
They applied for an expedited review Friday when they submitted, but that's correct. Apple should tell them today or tomorrow whether the expedite was approved, after which it could come out at any time within 48 hours.
It should be out by the end of the week regardless.
@IIIydth I totally agree, but when people keep asking for more info, deadlines etc. it's most often because people are excited about the product, and therefore I tend to see it as a good sign
Illydth - capitalising words is a bad way to make a point. It makes it seem like you think the reader is not clever enough to understand your genius. I will not labour the point I will just say that it is interesting that the website has now been updated to say that iPad version MAC etc are 'coming soon'.
@senza: Your opinion is all the rage in this thread is about the fact that the webpage still says "November" on it? Really? Is it that important that the web page says "Coming Soon" or "December" on it?
Ok, it now says "Coming Soon" on it, guess we'll stop hearing people posting "What's going on?" because "Coming Soon" is exactly what's being asked for in this thread right? Obviously they missed November...it's Dec 3rd by the date on my watch. Did anyone here REALLY think it was going to go out past December...especially since the updates on Twitter are coming across in DAYS not WEEKS for a submittal?
So what's the point of taking the time to go in and update the Web Page? What additional information did that give you? Did you need to know that it wasn't going to be out in November or did you need to know that it would be shipping soon? Which of those two pieces of information wasn't clear to you by the current status of the iPad release from information publicly available to you and today's date?
My point is, you're getting updates, they're coming across twitter by a company representative when there's a realistic change in status of the software. Asking or complaining that they're not giving you SPECIFIC updates is what my complaint is. If you're a fellow sys admin how many times do you post "The system will be up by 10:00" to your customers? You don't. Instead the communication with your customers is "We are aware of the problem and are actively working on fixing the issues. We expect to be complete with the changes sometime in the next 24 hours. Update in status when something changes."
Which, if I don't miss my guess, is EXACTLY what we got from Trent on Friday. The only additional updates the community could be requesting beyond what was posted Friday would be "We're 35% done with a fix and are still on track with submittal on Monday" which is a BS update that only serves to cause problems when another issue or problem is discovered.
"Overhaul is setting their own deadlines and expectations. When those deadlines pass they owe an explaination [sic]. "
Which they gave you on Friday and Today. Where's the part where updates weren't quick enough or that this was being handled poorly?
As to the comment above that "one shouldn't have to follow twitter" for information (that's not a direct quote) if the company publishes information in a public format and you choose not to use that format you don't have the right to bitch that they've not given you the information you want how you want it when you want it.
They discovered a bug that caused them to pull the build from the App Store last week (on the release date). Since that point they've been working to squash that bug and re-submit the application to Apple for approval.
As of Friday Trent let us know that the build to squash the bugs was still being worked on and would be worked on through the weekend and that they were hoping to re-submit the application to Apple for review Today. They also let us know that an expedited review (i.e. requesting apple to move the application farther up the review stack) is being requested to get the application back onto the apple store as quickly as possible.
With all due respect, it's no surprise that most people on the internet don't read anything more than about a paragraph, two at most before posting TL;DR and skipping the rest.
Capitalization in a forum post means one of two things:
1) It's "Screaming" which is considered bad form. Generally this is considered if LARGE amounts of text are posted in all caps. This tends to be frowned upon. What "large" amounts of text refers to, however, can be questionable.
2) It's "stressing" a point or the most important parts of a point. Note the use of all caps on the world "Large" in point 1 above. GENERALLY (like that word) it's used in place of bold faced or underlined type to stress the importance of a point. In the last sentence the all caps word was used to stress that there may be exceptions to the point I just made but that those exceptions are, in fact, exceptions and not rules.
In the post I make above I follow the second definition of all caps and intended the all capsed portions of my comments to stress a point that could otherwise be lost in a wall of text.
Take the three capsed portions of the above post and you have all the information you need:
You've been give all the information you need. There've been no changes, there's no need for an update.
Apologies if you felt I was using caps to do anything but stress my points in leu of having a bold faced or underlined font I could use to do the same.
@senza: Your opinion is all the rage in this thread is about the fact that the webpage still says "November" on it? Really? Is it that important that the web page says "Coming Soon" or "December" on it?
Ok, it now says "Coming Soon" on it, guess we'll stop hearing people posting "What's going on?" because "Coming Soon" is exactly what's being asked for in this thread right? Obviously they missed November...it's Dec 3rd by the date on my watch. Did anyone here REALLY think it was going to go out past December...especially since the updates on Twitter are coming across in DAYS not WEEKS for a submittal?
So what's the point of taking the time to go in and update the Web Page? What additional information did that give you? Did you need to know that it wasn't going to be out in November or did you need to know that it would be shipping soon? Which of those two pieces of information wasn't clear to you by the current status of the iPad release from information publicly available to you and today's date?
My point is, you're getting updates, they're coming across twitter by a company representative when there's a realistic change in status of the software. Asking or complaining that they're not giving you SPECIFIC updates is what my complaint is. If you're a fellow sys admin how many times do you post "The system will be up by 10:00" to your customers? You don't. Instead the communication with your customers is "We are aware of the problem and are actively working on fixing the issues. We expect to be complete with the changes sometime in the next 24 hours. Update in status when something changes."
Which, if I don't miss my guess, is EXACTLY what we got from Trent on Friday. The only additional updates the community could be requesting beyond what was posted Friday would be "We're 35% done with a fix and are still on track with submittal on Monday" which is a BS update that only serves to cause problems when another issue or problem is discovered.
"Overhaul is setting their own deadlines and expectations. When those deadlines pass they owe an explaination [sic]. "
Which they gave you on Friday and Today. Where's the part where updates weren't quick enough or that this was being handled poorly?
As to the comment above that "one shouldn't have to follow twitter" for information (that's not a direct quote) if the company publishes information in a public format and you choose not to use that format you don't have the right to bitch that they've not given you the information you want how you want it when you want it.
They discovered a bug that caused them to pull the build from the App Store last week (on the release date). Since that point they've been working to squash that bug and re-submit the application to Apple for approval.
As of Friday Trent let us know that the build to squash the bugs was still being worked on and would be worked on through the weekend and that they were hoping to re-submit the application to Apple for review Today. They also let us know that an expedited review (i.e. requesting apple to move the application farther up the review stack) is being requested to get the application back onto the apple store as quickly as possible.
With all due respect, it's no surprise that most people on the internet don't read anything more than about a paragraph, two at most before posting TL;DR and skipping the rest.
Capitalization in a forum post means one of two things:
1) It's "Screaming" which is considered bad form. Generally this is considered if LARGE amounts of text are posted in all caps. This tends to be frowned upon. What "large" amounts of text refers to, however, can be questionable.
2) It's "stressing" a point or the most important parts of a point. Note the use of all caps on the world "Large" in point 1 above. GENERALLY (like that word) it's used in place of bold faced or underlined type to stress the importance of a point. In the last sentence the all caps word was used to stress that there may be exceptions to the point I just made but that those exceptions are, in fact, exceptions and not rules.
In the post I make above I follow the second definition of all caps and intended the all capsed portions of my comments to stress a point that could otherwise be lost in a wall of text.
Take the three capsed portions of the above post and you have all the information you need:
You've been give all the information you need. There've been no changes, there's no need for an update.
Apologies if you felt I was using caps to do anything but stress my points in leu of having a bold faced or underlined font I could use to do the same.
Yes it is important that the web page has a meaningful date on it. A date in the past for a product not launched will likely give the impression to the casual observer that something is very wrong. I'm not talking about the forum but the actual main landing page that everyone who looks for this game is likely to see first. Those of us who followed the game for months know the trials and tribulations, they do not make good reading. To more or less invite others to either a) leave the site bewildered that a games release date has passed. Or b) look behind the curtain and see the mess therein. Far better for someone to come to a landing page and see "coming soon" and then leave thinking " I'll pop back later then"
That said I guess I slightly disagree with you. A release date 3 days past is not going to throw people into a tizzy. I appreciate if we're closing on the middle of December and the release date says "November"...I get that to be a misleading problem.
I don't know, with the forum link on top of the page, I don't see it being much of a stretch for someone to do the following:
1) Land on the main page and see "Coming in November" 2) Look down at their watch and say "It's December, wonder what's going on." 3) Click the "Forums" link on the main page. 4) Click the "ipad" link in the forums (clearly marked). 5) Click the CLEARLY marked "Release Date" post. 6) Read the comments by us here on release date identifying what's happening.
*shrug* Maybe I'm giving humanity too much credit, but this certainly isn't much of a stretch for getting information. I don't know that "coming soon" is any better...at minimum leaving the "November" date in there encourages digging deeper whereas "Coming Soon" doesn't identify the "immediacy" of release. Maybe that's a good thing...I don't know.
The other thing of concern about the change to "coming soon" is it's obviously a "get off our asses" effort. "Coming soon" can stay up there forever and doesn't have to be changed. If a major problem comes up that pushes the deadline for two more months they don't have to change "coming soon", whereas if it were still "November" it's just as easy to put "January" instead of "Coming Soon".
At the end of the day it's obvious that complaints like this caused them to take a bit of "specific" information and generalize it to stem community outcry.
That's bad for all of us. If BG2:EE Does happen, do we really think those in control at Beamdog won't take this as an example and learn that posting generic information will keep the community outcry limited while posting specific information causes problems?
We're training our game companies to be less communicative with complaints and threads like this. We've been doing it for years and obviously will continue to do so since gamers don't seem to be smart enough to realize that the more complaining they do about missing deadlines the less specific those deadlines will get.
Thanks for the breakdown of the meaning behind your capitalisation of words. I guess my response was a bit too subtle. As to the meat of your post really all we are asking for is information about something we are all interested in. It does not seem that unreasonable to me that some extra effort could be put in by Overhaul regarding this. Have a look how many times this topic has been viewed. Do you think that the sort of effort required would go unappreciated? Show some sense! You don't always do things because you have to sometimes you do it because it will engender good will. Your 'they will buy it anyway' post really says it all frankly!
And my entire point in this thread, Kallisti, is that we are getting information, and it's timely information, from the developer. We're getting information that we need without interrupting their development schedule or taking time away from what they're doing.
They posted Friday that they were working on a build to distribute to Apple and were going to request an expedited review. What more did you want? What posts would you have put up other than "Still on track" which as I've explained aren't worth posting since the status of "on track" can change every 5 minutes when doing bug checking and QA.
Do you really feel that "Coming Soon" is a better status update than "coming in November"? What more information does that give to you? What more information did you want? Look at what people are posting to missing "Coming in November" and ask yourself if your next move after all of that would be to post "Coming December 5th".
Ask yourself further, given what you've read in this thread, if on BG2:EE's release, Beamdog should post "Coming in November" or "Coming when we damn well get it done so stop asking."
At least with the second one there's no more complaint of "OMG you MISSED A DEADLINE!" (gasp).
They posted Friday, from what I've understood they've posted several times today (haven't checked the twitter feed so I don't know this first hand)...what more do you want other than "Give us the exact date and time you will submit the build to Apple and exactly when it will become available on the app store, and DON'T SCREW IT UP this time!"...which I feel is EXACTLY the tone being taken in this thread.
Agree, I bought this ipad a few month ago, and waiting the release is sept..oh khm: november. And now its DECEMBER! Now we are really learning patient.
“@TrentOster: Current iPad build has been rejected from iTunes. We've got some work to do!” “@TrentOster: We are frustrated, but every extra day is a chance to make the game better ;-)”
To be honest, I'd rather wait for a few more days or even weeks. When I finally get my hands on the game, I would like it to work flawlessly. Crashing bugs would ruin my experience that's for sure. Who would have imagined that this game would be resurrected after so long anyway? I'd say we should be grateful and patient; to possess BG on your iPad deserves no less.
Considering some of the crap I have seen get approval, this must really be terrible.
Just the luck of the draw. Remember, a previous build was already approved.
I don't think it has anything to do with luck, unless Apple is flipping a coin. Or they gave us their most incompetent reviewer. Or the build submitted was crap. Maybe a combination of those factors.
@wakenblake I meant that different reviewers can be more/less thorough, and BG is such a huge game that it is possible to play the game for a while and not find problems, or find them right away, depending...
Screw it, I will just wait for it to come out on PirateBay.
The only reason this game will be good is because the original was good. Just wipe Beamdog's steaming pile of crap off of it and hope it works.
If you hate it so much, why on earth would you steal the game?
This is not the place to promote pirating, and it shows an utter lack of respect for the hard work Beamdog have done.
I don't know why you'd call this amazing game a "steaming pile of crap", since any normal thinking adult who've actually played the game can see that it's not true.
I'll never understand why some people goes to the trouble of signing up in a forum just to spew bile.
If you have any legitimate complains against features or lack thereof there's plenty of places here you can report them.
Comments
http://coderun.net/the-apple-app-store-expedited-review-process/
And a little advice from a fellow sys admin...sys admins with piss poor customer service skills are not very good sys admins. People deserve and expect proper communication. Your right, we don't to "need to know how the sausage is made" but nobody here is demanding indepth technical reasons for why the app was not approved. Overhaul is setting their own deadlines and expectations. When those deadlines pass they owe an explaination.
I don't know if the game is ready for IPad but in my own view I guess it will be released soon.
I'm hopeful for a release today!
Baldur's Gate on the train, epic.
A build was submitted to Apple on Friday. The team hard tested all weekend, couldn't find any more showstoppers and thus applied for an expedited review this morning, and now we're waiting for them to hear from Apple whether an expedited review is being granted?
I am bad at patience, I know.
It should be out by the end of the week regardless.
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@senza: Your opinion is all the rage in this thread is about the fact that the webpage still says "November" on it? Really? Is it that important that the web page says "Coming Soon" or "December" on it?
Ok, it now says "Coming Soon" on it, guess we'll stop hearing people posting "What's going on?" because "Coming Soon" is exactly what's being asked for in this thread right? Obviously they missed November...it's Dec 3rd by the date on my watch. Did anyone here REALLY think it was going to go out past December...especially since the updates on Twitter are coming across in DAYS not WEEKS for a submittal?
So what's the point of taking the time to go in and update the Web Page? What additional information did that give you? Did you need to know that it wasn't going to be out in November or did you need to know that it would be shipping soon? Which of those two pieces of information wasn't clear to you by the current status of the iPad release from information publicly available to you and today's date?
My point is, you're getting updates, they're coming across twitter by a company representative when there's a realistic change in status of the software. Asking or complaining that they're not giving you SPECIFIC updates is what my complaint is. If you're a fellow sys admin how many times do you post "The system will be up by 10:00" to your customers? You don't. Instead the communication with your customers is "We are aware of the problem and are actively working on fixing the issues. We expect to be complete with the changes sometime in the next 24 hours. Update in status when something changes."
Which, if I don't miss my guess, is EXACTLY what we got from Trent on Friday. The only additional updates the community could be requesting beyond what was posted Friday would be "We're 35% done with a fix and are still on track with submittal on Monday" which is a BS update that only serves to cause problems when another issue or problem is discovered.
"Overhaul is setting their own deadlines and expectations. When those deadlines pass they owe an explaination [sic]. "
Which they gave you on Friday and Today. Where's the part where updates weren't quick enough or that this was being handled poorly?
As to the comment above that "one shouldn't have to follow twitter" for information (that's not a direct quote) if the company publishes information in a public format and you choose not to use that format you don't have the right to bitch that they've not given you the information you want how you want it when you want it.
@qrmzplt
They discovered a bug that caused them to pull the build from the App Store last week (on the release date). Since that point they've been working to squash that bug and re-submit the application to Apple for approval.
As of Friday Trent let us know that the build to squash the bugs was still being worked on and would be worked on through the weekend and that they were hoping to re-submit the application to Apple for review Today. They also let us know that an expedited review (i.e. requesting apple to move the application farther up the review stack) is being requested to get the application back onto the apple store as quickly as possible.
@kallisti
With all due respect, it's no surprise that most people on the internet don't read anything more than about a paragraph, two at most before posting TL;DR and skipping the rest.
Capitalization in a forum post means one of two things:
1) It's "Screaming" which is considered bad form. Generally this is considered if LARGE amounts of text are posted in all caps. This tends to be frowned upon. What "large" amounts of text refers to, however, can be questionable.
2) It's "stressing" a point or the most important parts of a point. Note the use of all caps on the world "Large" in point 1 above. GENERALLY (like that word) it's used in place of bold faced or underlined type to stress the importance of a point. In the last sentence the all caps word was used to stress that there may be exceptions to the point I just made but that those exceptions are, in fact, exceptions and not rules.
In the post I make above I follow the second definition of all caps and intended the all capsed portions of my comments to stress a point that could otherwise be lost in a wall of text.
Take the three capsed portions of the above post and you have all the information you need:
You've been give all the information you need. There've been no changes, there's no need for an update.
Apologies if you felt I was using caps to do anything but stress my points in leu of having a bold faced or underlined font I could use to do the same.
That said I guess I slightly disagree with you. A release date 3 days past is not going to throw people into a tizzy. I appreciate if we're closing on the middle of December and the release date says "November"...I get that to be a misleading problem.
I don't know, with the forum link on top of the page, I don't see it being much of a stretch for someone to do the following:
1) Land on the main page and see "Coming in November"
2) Look down at their watch and say "It's December, wonder what's going on."
3) Click the "Forums" link on the main page.
4) Click the "ipad" link in the forums (clearly marked).
5) Click the CLEARLY marked "Release Date" post.
6) Read the comments by us here on release date identifying what's happening.
*shrug* Maybe I'm giving humanity too much credit, but this certainly isn't much of a stretch for getting information. I don't know that "coming soon" is any better...at minimum leaving the "November" date in there encourages digging deeper whereas "Coming Soon" doesn't identify the "immediacy" of release. Maybe that's a good thing...I don't know.
The other thing of concern about the change to "coming soon" is it's obviously a "get off our asses" effort. "Coming soon" can stay up there forever and doesn't have to be changed. If a major problem comes up that pushes the deadline for two more months they don't have to change "coming soon", whereas if it were still "November" it's just as easy to put "January" instead of "Coming Soon".
At the end of the day it's obvious that complaints like this caused them to take a bit of "specific" information and generalize it to stem community outcry.
That's bad for all of us. If BG2:EE Does happen, do we really think those in control at Beamdog won't take this as an example and learn that posting generic information will keep the community outcry limited while posting specific information causes problems?
We're training our game companies to be less communicative with complaints and threads like this. We've been doing it for years and obviously will continue to do so since gamers don't seem to be smart enough to realize that the more complaining they do about missing deadlines the less specific those deadlines will get.
They posted Friday that they were working on a build to distribute to Apple and were going to request an expedited review. What more did you want? What posts would you have put up other than "Still on track" which as I've explained aren't worth posting since the status of "on track" can change every 5 minutes when doing bug checking and QA.
Do you really feel that "Coming Soon" is a better status update than "coming in November"? What more information does that give to you? What more information did you want? Look at what people are posting to missing "Coming in November" and ask yourself if your next move after all of that would be to post "Coming December 5th".
Ask yourself further, given what you've read in this thread, if on BG2:EE's release, Beamdog should post "Coming in November" or "Coming when we damn well get it done so stop asking."
At least with the second one there's no more complaint of "OMG you MISSED A DEADLINE!" (gasp).
They posted Friday, from what I've understood they've posted several times today (haven't checked the twitter feed so I don't know this first hand)...what more do you want other than "Give us the exact date and time you will submit the build to Apple and exactly when it will become available on the app store, and DON'T SCREW IT UP this time!"...which I feel is EXACTLY the tone being taken in this thread.
The only reason this game will be good is because the original was good. Just wipe Beamdog's steaming pile of crap off of it and hope it works.
EDIT: Sorry for being a douche, BG:EE for iPad is out now. My nerd rage is at its end. For now.
“@TrentOster: We are frustrated, but every extra day is a chance to make the game better ;-)”
To be honest, I'd rather wait for a few more days or even weeks. When I finally get my hands on the game, I would like it to work flawlessly. Crashing bugs would ruin my experience that's for sure. Who would have imagined that this game would be resurrected after so long anyway? I'd say we should be grateful and patient; to possess BG on your iPad deserves no less.
This is not the place to promote pirating, and it shows an utter lack of respect for the hard work Beamdog have done.
I don't know why you'd call this amazing game a "steaming pile of crap", since any normal thinking adult who've actually played the game can see that it's not true.
I'll never understand why some people goes to the trouble of signing up in a forum just to spew bile.
If you have any legitimate complains against features or lack thereof there's plenty of places here you can report them.