The Church of Alvis

POSSIBLE SPOILERS IN THIS LINK (thanks for reminding me, Cuspar)

http://www.torhead.com/guide/leaks

Take it all with a grain of salt, but it all seems rather legit.

Major spoilers on that link...

But that all sounds very badass!

A good lie always starts off with a grain of truth. While the patch preview here may look somewhat legit, I can't help but feel like it's a troll.

It's true that the developers are hard at work creating new content, but it's also true that there are a ton of broken bug ridden things in the content that is already there. Along with the fact that 90% of the time developers don't even know whats going to come out in the next patch never mind 5 major revisions from now. They can have a general idea, but most of the time those are optimal estimates.

I would think it's far more likely for flash points and operations to be added until the quirks and bugs in the base gameplay, quests and classes are ironed out. By focusing on instanced content they don't run the risk of breaking things that already exist (like the level 47-50 quests on corellia) and it's easier to revert the content if they find something "game breaking" with it.

That said this could very well be the developers plan for patches, but plans tend to change as content is added, flaws are exposed and problems arise.

Josfe wrote:A good lie always starts off with a grain of truth. While the patch preview here may look somewhat legit, I can't help but feel like it's a troll.

It's true that the developers are hard at work creating new content, but it's also true that there are a ton of broken bug ridden things in the content that is already there. Along with the fact that 90% of the time developers don't even know whats going to come out in the next patch never mind 5 major revisions from now. They can have a general idea, but most of the time those are optimal estimates.

I would think it's far more likely for flash points and operations to be added until the quirks and bugs in the base gameplay, quests and classes are ironed out. By focusing on instanced content they don't run the risk of breaking things that already exist (like the level 47-50 quests on corellia) and it's easier to revert the content if they find something "game breaking" with it.

That said this could very well be the developers plan for patches, but plans tend to change as content is added, flaws are exposed and problems arise.

I definitely see your point. It is definitely wise to take all of that with a grain of salt, no doubt about it.

However, I do firmly believe that the information provided in the link is a genuine rough draft of their plans. I also think that they don't have the entire team dedicated to the creation of new content. That's hundreds of people. I think that the whole TOR team is divided up into smaller groups, dedicated to various aspects; whether it be fixing bugs, working on the UI, I know the former Mythic team is dedicated to PvP, etc.

It's fairly safe to say that there will definite be more patches in between, that's in that link is only their planned Content Patches. Hotfixes and the like will always be unplanned, because issues will always arise as you implement new things or change old ones. There will definitely be patch 1.2.X, for example.

Those are definitely different teams. New content is 90% done by the design team. These people are not developers. Most don't even know how to code. Bug fixing is done by the engineering team. And usually only a portion of the team. The rest of the team is working on new features that require code (guild banks, capital ships, customizable UI, etc).