Hat's off to Delta Tao for finding new and novel ways to alienate the player base. Of course, I am talking about the clan bank account fiasco, where thousands of coins disappeared from the bank ledgers.

This is just completely and utterly inexcusable. It demonstrates such a flagrant disregard for technical quality control and standard programming practice that my mind boggles. I'm sorry to Monday-morning quarterback the coder who did this abortion, but I write code for a living, and I have two words for you: transaction log. It's time someone takes all the coders aside and teaches them a little bit about coding in anticipation of possible defects. No one expects people to write perfect code. Unfortunately, it would seem the development team working on Clan Lord thinks they can do just this and proper error checking and exception handling is thrown out the window. I have news for the development team. You've demonstrated you write buggy code just like the rest of us mortals, so what are you going to do about it? And, obviously the depth of testing is sorely lacking as well.

Delta Tao time and time again implements features to the game with a reckless attitude. To them, it's only a quaint little hobby, no big deal if a few coins, ranks or items are lost. You can always just get them again, right? It's only a game, right? The hours the players invest in persuing these things as well as the money they pay to participate are dismissed lightly. Herein lies the huge gulf between those who pay to play and the "staff" of Clan Lord. If I spend 4 or 5 hours trying to earn enough coins to get something in the game, I want that time respected by Delta Tao. Saying it's just a game and go have fun is assinine in response to the undermining of player effort. Maybe someone should get onto the Clan Lord development server and delete about 10-20 hours of coding, scripting and area design effort ( I seriously doubt they have backups) and then remind them how much fun it is to code, and they should code for the sheer fun of it. Perhaps a light-bulb will go in someone's head.

I am very sympathetic to those who lost coins. But, I do have to point out one thing. I refuse to be an early adopter of anything in Clan Lord. I have seen people be burned over and over again. Sure, there are some exceptions, especially with trainers, which tend to get ramped down and never up. Let's look at some track history: Awaria, the storage lockers, untrainus, dyes (hey, I changed my pants, and I lost my dye!), and now this. Let me suggest that any time a new feature that comes out in Clan Lord, don't jump into with both feet.

One word of advice to Delta Tao: Treat ranks and coins like they were real honest to goodness cash. Respect them, preserve them, and about all, never disregard their value to the player community.



posted 9:55 AM | link |