Misconceptions about Uthgard
PostPosted: Wed May 25, 2011 9:18 pm
Hello folks,
I know this is a little soon since my last post, but I felt I needed to get this out as it has been mentioned a number of times over the past few days. I want to talk about Uthgard, how they run things, and how we as a project are on friendly terms with them.
Uthgard's history began a long time ago, at that time the server was the test server for the DOL project, this was way before Storm.
Uthgard suffered the same way that Storm does now, the server was striving to provide features from live, therefore any development done by the Uthgard staff was shared with other servers. The competitive advantage at the time was features. The side effect of this was decreased motivation of it's developers as other servers benefited from their hard work.
Uthgard had another problem as it was a test server it always ran the latest code, the open source nature of the project meant that most contributors were accepted and there was a lack of quality control. Unstable code entered Uthgard and the staff there had to fix the code that someone else submitted. This meant some stablity problems on Uthgard which discouraged players, other servers having a longer code update process would usually receive the fixed code instead of the unstable.
Blue took the decision to split from DOL and work on his own, so he could keep a reliable code base. Many years later, their code has been altered significantly enough that merging with DOL is impossible and collaboration can only really happen on the overview level, such as packets.
We as a community I feel have changed a lot since then, we are past the feature grab for competitive advantage, and now offer unique setups. Uthgard with it's drive for classic, Storm with it's live like RvR, D2 with it's Diablo style system.
Uthgard has helped the project during it's time away from us, they work with us on some common fixes and features and most noticeably they were responsible for updating DAOC Portal. I invited them to do this because at the time it was common for shards to have their own server launcher, and we wanted all the players to be connecting from the same launcher and list, to give equal opportunities to find the server they wish.
They were given permission to add the Mod Manager and are the only server currently running mods to the client, this is because of their classic ruleset. Metty did some great work developing the mod manager, and the ability to create custom zones and people want this tool. Of course they do. The reason we don't spread the use of it is because we don't have adequate enough server side protection of client changes. Therefore only a handful top level people in the project have access to it.
I cannot say how the future of our relationship with Uthgard will be or their contributions to the project but we have always been on friendly terms with them. I have chats with their staff daily on topic and off and I completely understand how they feel and have felt, as we go through it too. Hopefully this post can dispell some myths surrounding their treatment and their actions.
I know this is a little soon since my last post, but I felt I needed to get this out as it has been mentioned a number of times over the past few days. I want to talk about Uthgard, how they run things, and how we as a project are on friendly terms with them.
Uthgard's history began a long time ago, at that time the server was the test server for the DOL project, this was way before Storm.
Uthgard suffered the same way that Storm does now, the server was striving to provide features from live, therefore any development done by the Uthgard staff was shared with other servers. The competitive advantage at the time was features. The side effect of this was decreased motivation of it's developers as other servers benefited from their hard work.
Uthgard had another problem as it was a test server it always ran the latest code, the open source nature of the project meant that most contributors were accepted and there was a lack of quality control. Unstable code entered Uthgard and the staff there had to fix the code that someone else submitted. This meant some stablity problems on Uthgard which discouraged players, other servers having a longer code update process would usually receive the fixed code instead of the unstable.
Blue took the decision to split from DOL and work on his own, so he could keep a reliable code base. Many years later, their code has been altered significantly enough that merging with DOL is impossible and collaboration can only really happen on the overview level, such as packets.
We as a community I feel have changed a lot since then, we are past the feature grab for competitive advantage, and now offer unique setups. Uthgard with it's drive for classic, Storm with it's live like RvR, D2 with it's Diablo style system.
Uthgard has helped the project during it's time away from us, they work with us on some common fixes and features and most noticeably they were responsible for updating DAOC Portal. I invited them to do this because at the time it was common for shards to have their own server launcher, and we wanted all the players to be connecting from the same launcher and list, to give equal opportunities to find the server they wish.
They were given permission to add the Mod Manager and are the only server currently running mods to the client, this is because of their classic ruleset. Metty did some great work developing the mod manager, and the ability to create custom zones and people want this tool. Of course they do. The reason we don't spread the use of it is because we don't have adequate enough server side protection of client changes. Therefore only a handful top level people in the project have access to it.
I cannot say how the future of our relationship with Uthgard will be or their contributions to the project but we have always been on friendly terms with them. I have chats with their staff daily on topic and off and I completely understand how they feel and have felt, as we go through it too. Hopefully this post can dispell some myths surrounding their treatment and their actions.