majmalphunktion wrote on Mar 20
th, 2014 at 2:55pm:
It is not that really.
Some of the things suggested, automated code checking exc. are awesome for our new game...and this does exist on IC.
For this thing, the 7+ years of who knows how many toes have been in the code pool. I doubt HAL 9000 could see down all the rabbit holes of a 7 year old MMO by any company.
Unlike something that you can tie a ribbon and version off, MMO's stay live. They have to always be backwards compatable. You cannot break legacy. These kinds of things stop us from doing 'the right thing'. We know how to fix say, handwraps. But to fix it, and version successfully, and not break people, or now god forbid support two types of handwraps...it's ROI. Some investments are just not worth the pain. Sadly there are many of these warts now in DDO. And maybe there is an argument that there were times that we should have been more aggressive about revamping things, killing others, exc.
Now take all of that, apply shared scripting that the ancients used, and attempt to untangle the web.
Why does it get missed. Sheer numbers usually. I have a few, you have many. You find the edge cases or the thing missed. 20000 vs the few.
It's cool, QA is used to the hate. We still have your back. You have no idea how much pain we spare you from.
Lag is the hands down biggest deal right now. It has a refocus on it...again. We have found some things, that again were designed poorly by the ancients that we can fix and hopefully help in raids, and big ass party situations.
Meh, I've rebuilt legacy code bases before. You need someone smart enough to figure out the contact points where you can cleave out the old safely and put in the new. For every ninety-nine people that tell you something is too hard, there's one person who can see how to do it. Hire that person.
I've done it before with code bases no one was willing to touch, no one understood, and everyone just thought worked like magic.
Code isn't magic. It does exactly what you tell it to do. The fact that most people writing it have little idea how to tell it to do what they really want is the problem.

ETA: You all let go of the person who was taking it on their own time to fix hirelings.