You know what I find more fascinating? How is Tankworld bot even profitable compared to EB. It would be great to see some statistics.
I was not privy to the business discussion regarding Exilebuddy. But any project manager worth his salt can easily answer this question... Tankleader requires 0.1 developers to maintain. Exilebuddy requires a full-time, VERY senior (and gifted) developer to maintain. Such things are also influenced by how much churn the game owner applies to the game client for each patch. My guess is that GGG applied a considerable amount of churn. So it was "run full tilt" just to stay even. Doing this and maintaining backward compatibility such that other components of the Exilebuddy ecosystem don't break can be a Herculean effort. My guess (and the information from Hawker's several posts in this thread) lead me to believe that Exilebuddy requires two full-time developers to support the product. Yet, the market is simply not there to support the second developer. So, the choices are 1) ongoing excessive downtimes after each patch, or 2) terminate the product since it is unsustainable with one developer. Either way, those trying to make money from the game lose out. Such business decisions are very difficult to make. If the above indeed was the case, I believe the right decision was made. Best to force people to move on, rather than be a continuous disappointment with product delivery, and completely burning out a very gifted developer. Product development is SOOO much more complex than most people realize. cheers, chinajade
Which is why pushedx said he rewrote and rebuilt parts of it to minimize downtime and have an easier job maintaining the bot, it's extremely strange that he was let to work on the bot for 1 and a half months and then immediately shut it down, with no notice to users.
Yep... All what China jade said makes sense , all for one thing... Why would you shut it down like this..
Hi, Roneo1, Again, I wasn't party to the decision, so another guess with a project manager hat... After the 6 weeks of refactoring effort, the decision makers looked at the benefits that could be gained by the improvements, and it wasn't nearly enough to solve the long term problems (e.g., removing the need for a second developer). The work might not have been finished, but enough to demonstrate that such improvements could not fill the gap. Its hard for all of us to let go of something. Not only for the developers, but to those in the Community that have poured their sweat and lives into a product. I'm certain it was not an easy decision to make. I do not know if things could have been handled any better given the current state of affairs. But, all things come to an end, and we must learn to cope with the disappointment it brings. Hawker's offer of refunds and key swaps are an honest and fair attempt at easing the blow. With this, I will cease speculating. cheers, chinajade
Now we can have Drew add his brains and innovation to other aspects of buddy's old(god no) and new(ToS, BnS, hell yea) products. How much was EB's source going for again? ;P.