Development Officially Delayed due to COVID-19

[Tsumdere]

Working remotely from comfy home is living hell, then what should tell those working in transport/food/health industry?

IT always full of themselves, as usual.

I never said that those working transport/food/health aren't going through a hard time either. Those folks are doing God's work. However, one person's struggles do not invalidate another's.

IT is putting themselves through the wringer to please people at the expense of their own happiness/mental health. Imagine working all day, every day because servers are buckling under the strain of everyone being locked at home all day. Or working all day because customer support cannot keep up with the incoming volume of tickets. Or being subjected to constant verbal abuse, gore pics, and death threats because you're not doing something a customer wants as fast as they want because the employees cannot keep up with the sheer influx of players/requests and the normal patch cycle.

Once again, bless to everyone who is working at this time, no matter the job. Everyone is putting their physical and/or mental health on the line to make people happy/healthy. Bless to the non-essential companies who take into consideration their employees and not cowtow to babies who couldn't cope if their patch didn't come out RIGHT NOW!!!!

[Barraind]

Are they though?

AENet is still releasing scheduled content and hasnt been in the office since March 6.

Darkpaw (formerly Daybreak formerly SOE) is hitting their monthly update schedule from home (their one delay had to do with a different kind of stupid) and is doing developer q&A's on the topic.

SWToR moved their monthly patch back a week due to issues in their Vancouver studios recording voice work, but have their next content patch targeted for the original date in june.

ESO is delayed a week for a similar reason; they couldnt get French translations.

Blizzard hasnt announced any specific delays, but Blizzard never releases anything on the first few dates they give anyway.


The only other major MMO suffering delays right now is Runescape, and JagEx UK handles that for western releases, not Netease NA.

[Gemina]

AENet is still releasing scheduled content and hasnt been in the office since March 6.

Darkpaw (formerly Daybreak formerly SOE) is hitting their monthly update schedule from home (their one delay had to do with a different kind of stupid) and is doing developer q&A's on the topic.

SWToR moved their monthly patch back a week due to issues in their Vancouver studios recording voice work, but have their next content patch targeted for the original date in june.

ESO is delayed a week for a similar reason; they couldnt get French translations.

Blizzard hasnt announced any specific delays, but Blizzard never releases anything on the first few dates they give anyway.


The only other major MMO suffering delays right now is Runescape, and JagEx UK handles that for western releases, not Netease NA.

Meh? There's too many unknown factors that determine the productivity any company is able to sustain. Much of what you mentioned pertains to content already released for those particular games and platforms, and by all retrospect, we could add FFXIV patch 5.25 among those as an 'on time delivery'. We don't know exactly how much content is going to be delayed. That is TBD.

[E4EO]

Inevitable that this would happen at some point considering just how good Coronavirus is at spreading, I didn’t expect sqeenix to pull a GameStop and continue operating.

Its good too, we wouldn’t wanna risk loads of SE staff getting sick cause of Coronavirus, wouldn’t just be bad for development but their health and well-being.

The only question is what we we’ll do with the lull in content, maybe I’ll start crafting again...

[DynnDiablos]

Seeing as by the end of this pandemic I will most likely be homeless, jobless and facing years of financial ruin and misery, the delay is the least of my worries.

[StriderShinryu]

The positivity in this thread is definitely nice to see. I just hope the understanding continues in the future given that the impact here might be felt for months or even years depending on how long the pandemic takes to manage.

And for those who are personally suffering in this time, I really am sorry for it. I know it's probably little comfort for some stranger on the internet to say it but I hope you manage to come through this well even if it seems dark right now.

[MoonPhaseAlpha]

People's lives and well beings are more important than a patch for a video game. I hope everyone stays safe. Please take as much time as you need. As this has been said before, we are all in this together!

[hynaku]

Not sure what scare this is all about I got it lasted 4 days and was over it. When I got West Nile virus in the past that was way worse.

[Vidu]

Not sure what scare this is all about I got it lasted 4 days and was over it. When I got West Nile virus in the past that was way worse.

I'm not sure if you're serious or not, but just because you - probably a young and rather healthy person (my asumptions may be wrong, in which case I apologise) - only had mild symptoms doesnt mean this virus isnt to be taken seriously.
People with pre-existing conditions and/or of old age might have a very, very different experience.
Furthermore the virus can be transmitted directly from human to human - considering that it develops in your throat, coughing or even spitting some out is very likely. Thats why social distancing is so important: To lower the chance that you get infected by someone else or that you infect someone else (please tell me that you stayed away from people as much as possible for at least 14 days and not only for the 4 days you had symptoms... you can transmit the virus even when you dont show any symptoms...) Looking at West Nile virus: Thats transmitted through gnats - so social distancing would do nothing, other methods probably will and those will probably be taken in areas where there are gnats that are know to transmit the virus.

Lastly: We dont have a (curative) treatment or vaccine for Covid-19 - and yes, we dont have one for West Nile either, but as I could hopefully make clear: Its a lot easier for Covid-19 to spread through an entire population thats cuddling in public transport, offices, schools, restaurants, parks etc.
Hospitals in most countries arent prepared for everyone to get sick and in need of a hospital bed - even if only a fraction of people will need a hospital bed and help breathing, the hospitals are not prepared.

You got lucky. Grats.
Others werent so lucky. As of right now 2.673 people in germany were unlucky enough to die because of the virus - and afaik germany only counts the deaths directly linked to the virus, not those were someone with a tone of pre-existing conditions that probably would have killed them in the next few weeks AND caught the virus on top died.
Globally over 100.000 people died because of Covid-19 - not everyone only has mild symptoms.
You got lucky.

[Paladinleeds]

I'm not sure if you're serious or not, but just because you - probably a young and rather healthy person (my asumptions may be wrong, in which case I apologise) - only had mild symptoms doesnt mean this virus isnt to be taken seriously.
People with pre-existing conditions and/or of old age might have a very, very different experience.

You got lucky. Grats.
Others werent so lucky. As of right now 2.673 people in germany were unlucky enough to die because of the virus - and afaik germany only counst the deaths directly linked to the virus, not those were someone with a tone of pre-existing conditions that probably would have killed them in the next few weeks AND caugth the virus on top died.
Globally over 100.000 people died because of Covid-19 - not everyone only has mild symptoms.
You got lucky.

To top it all off, I know how serious it can be. I've personally had to deal with a death within my family due to the coronavirus (I received the phone call off my biological father on Thursday). I'm only going out if I need to buy essentials, or pick up medicine. Even though our lockdown allows for a couple of other reasons (e.g. exercise), I'm refusing to do that. Heck, our household has also implemented a policy of "No non-essential items to be delivered", which means the tech upgrades I'm after are probably about 18 months away. But if me waiting on my tech upgrades means lives are spared, it's a small price to pay. With regards to the family loss, nobody is allowed to go to the funeral either. We can't go to say our goodbyes.

So please everybody, I beg of you, take this seriously. I get it, it sucks, being stuck in the house isn't fun, but at the end of the day, we have to do this to protect our countries. Consider it a social vaccine if you will. With things like Discord, Skype, etc, allowing for video calls, you can still see each other's faces and talk to each other, though obviously the physical contact is gone. My best friend's partner has also had to temporarily move away because she's high risk and he's an essential worker. I'm sure you can imagine the toll that's taking on her because of this. She's not allowed out of her house for ANY reason (not even to get essentials, they have to be delivered to her door, and then the delivery person to step away from the house so she can pick them up) for 12 weeks, and she's younger than me (and I'm barely considered middle age, more likely young age still). Not to mention, we've had a few die here that were young (like, teenager age) with no underlying medical complications, because of coronavirus. Not to mention, our NHS is already buckling under the pressure of the coronavirus.