Well, I appreciate the work they've put in so far, they've done things that no other emu project has come close to(ethernalquest). But I don't think the project is really ready for the publicity it has, and the amount of people that actually play on the emu. I guess it helps them work out bugs and things easier with so many beta testers, but most beta projects that i've been involved with had more documentation available about what they are doing, what they're currently working on etc etc. But that can't be expected from such a small team. Yes, they've done an amazing job, but they've grown too fast and put no attention to keeping us, the beta testers, informed about progress. I think that this whole attitude about not being bugged about release dates from their perspective is valid, but from our perspective, it's pretty frustrating. It's coming on a month from their last release. I'm not saying that they're being lazy about things, they're people like all of us with real jobs, they don't have 8 hours a day 5 days a week to sit and code. But maybe they should stop and see where this project is as far as public relations goes. I'm sure half of the people signed up on the forums come here at least 2x a week seeing if there's any word at all about a release coming out.
If the team doesn't care about this, then they should say, hey look people, we don't care if tons of you people are waiting anxiously for a new version, we're doing this for ourselves, and our own growth as programmers. That's fine, a project like this i'm sure is really pushing the talent of the coders involved. But this feels too much like a secret CIA mission, and if word gets to SOE, they'll disavow all knowledge of such events.
The way this project is set up, this forum should be alot more active, with posts about things they are working on, things they are having difficult with, and things they just finished. Who knows, they might even get ideas about solutions from the wanna be programmers out there going to school or whatnot. Open sourcing the project is great, but where is the code now? It's been almost a month since the source available on the site has been updated, and only the dev team knows where things are now. How does that advance things to someone coming here now?
Thanks for the time you guys put into this project, and i really enjoy playing all the servers people release. You have a real chance to make this community, but you're undoing the confidence you may or may not be trying to build. Just think about that. Just try being a little more upfront about things with all of us faithful EQEmu users.
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