08-02 20:22:00

What is the life cycle of a #DDO bug? Looks a lot like a bill! Play this (I'm Just a Bill) and read along

I'm just a pill,
A bitter ol' pill, 
Rolling down from Turrbine hill
Well, it's a long, long journey
On the needs-fixed gurney
It's a long, long wait
For the player committee
But I know I'll be a patch some day
At least I hope and pray that I will
But for now I'm such a bitter pill

"Gee, pill, you certainly have a lot of patience and courage"

"Well, I got this far.  When I started I wasn't even a pill, I was just a fail. Some folks playing the game
decided they wanted the bug fixed, so they filed a bug report, and Turbine said 'Thank you for your
bug report.'  Then they sat down and filed it into the bug system, and I became a bug, and I'll remain
k
a bug until they decide to make me a patch"

I'm just a pill,
A bitter ol' pill, 
A bug that made it to Turrbine hill
Well, now I'm stuck in reporting
And I'll sit here and wait
While engineering has a debate

Whether they should let me be a patch, 
How I hope and pray that they will, 
But for now I'm just a bitter pill

"Listen to those players arguing! Is all the anger and malice about you?"

"Yeah, I'm one of the lucky ones.  Most bugs never even get looked at by engineering. I hope they 
decide I'm worth fixing, otherwise I may become a feature."

"Feature?"

"Yeah, become a permanent part of the game.  Oooh, but it looks like I'm actually
a problem!  NOW I go to the senior engineering team and they consider fixing me"

"If they fix you, what happens?"

"Then I go over to quality control and the whole thing starts all over again"

"On no!"

"Oh yes!"

I'm just a pill,
A bitter ol' pill, 
A bug that made it past Turrbine hill

Well, I'm off to the programmers
Where I wait as a line
With a other line items
That need be assigned
And if the coder saves the day, 
How I hope and pray that he will, 
but for now, I'm just a bitter pill

"You mean even if all the players scream you need to be fixed, the coder can still say no?"

"Yes, that's called god mode.  Even if management ok's me, and the player base is
screaming, the only person that can actually do anything about it is the engineer,
and if he decides it's not worth it?"

"By that time, it's very unlikely you'll become a patch.
It's not easy to become a patch is it?"

"No!"

But I hope and pray that I will. But today, I'm a bitter pill.

"He rewrote you!  Bug, you're a patch!"

"Oh yeah!!!"

07-14 06:01:00

#DDO downtime got you down? Check out the Oracle's new Wayback Machine! Revisit the guilds of 2013 and travel time!

To 'celebrate' the anniversary of the loss of DDO character data a year ago, the Oracle has brought forth ? the Wayback Machine!

The Wayback Machine contains the guilds and guild rosters of all the worlds of DDO, as they were last scryed in May of 2013. Beyond this, they also include the previous guild members and members who were no longer active. The Oracle is serious about watching you.

Find out who used to be in your guild. Find your character build from 2013. Reminisce about guildies long gone, or be surprised to see who used to be in your guild. For DDO is community both across the Earth, and across time.

02-24 04:06:00

The Oracle releases new Oracle Trax - realtime DDO server activity for your website!

And now for something completely different - the Oracle is now serving up DDOracle Trax, a graphic designed for DDO fansites that shows the current server loads for the last 4 hours, updated every hour.

Currently 2 sizes are available, the 240x400 banner standard size, and a 480x800 high-res version (.big.png) with extra detail if you'd like to offer a Zoom feature. Linking the graphic to the Oracle's Traffic Report would be much appreciated, and we'll see how it goes. Adding it to your own website is as simple as the following code snippet:

<a style="border: 0" href="http://ddoracle.com/Traffic.html" alt="The DDOracle Traffic Report">
  <img width="240" height="400" src="http://ddoracle.com/serverLoadTicker.png"> 
</a>

Currently the ticker is updated on the hour. It fits well in the current size, but if you'd like a different size please ask.

As this is an entirely new kind of feature, this may evolve considerably as we get feedback. In the meantime, enjoy!

01-20 22:34:12

The Oracle is starting to wonder if the #LotRO crowd realizes what the new LorRO Traffic report is?

It's been a week since the Oracle has added the new Traffic Report for Lord of the Rings Online., but outside of a considerate retweet the LotRO crowd has been pretty quiet.

Given how popular and how closely watched the DDO Traffic Report has been, this is somewhat surprising? Who knows.

Since LotRO traffic is now a standard report, the previous special report Perspectives has been removed. Now either side can see how the other half lives at any time, just need to figure out where it goes on the menu!

08-10 05:50:12

With all the people watching the #DDO traffic, the Oracle felt it was time for some Perspective. A new special report at www.ddoracle.com

Interest in DDO traffic is at an all time high and your Oracle has tried to keep things very fresh. Still, there is a sense that people want more and thus it was time for another special report. Your Oracle brings you Perspectives, a first hand look into a day (today) in life in Lord of the Rings Online.

No, that's not a graphic error. There are more servers than will fit on the legend, more servers than the Oracle could find colors for, and yes, that's the traffic for a single day.

Lord of the Rings Online? You watch Lord of the Rings Online?!?
I like to watch.

The glass half-full and glass half-empty factions may begin their earnest debate now.

07-17 05:21:01

Today's Traffic Report shows Wayfinder is still making gains, but _what_ is up with Ghallanda the last 2 weeks?!?

06-27 02:57:12

The Oracle has heard your cries for the truth, and brings knowledge. See the mighty impact of the MotU expansion! #DDO

Seeing the big spike in interest in the Traffic Report recently, the Oracle scryed and found active discussions on several forums concerning the impact of the new Wayfinder changes, the upcoming expansion, and general activity.

So to bring light to the darkness, your Oracle has prepared a special report, MotU One Year Later, a large, hand-annotated graph. This is not a production item, and the lower axis is a bit hard to read with 365 data points, but it should provide food for thought, and be better than people trying to sew things together from past updates and memories of earlier figures. Click on the upper right to zoom in.

The Oracle thinks the impact of Update 14 has been underrated, but see for yourself.

06-26 01:00:00

Long has the Oracle watched #DDO's lonely world of Wayfinder, and pitied it's people. Kudos to Turbine for taking steps to help.

06-13 01:00:00

A quick update for just the #DDO traffic today, thought people would like to see that. Working on something new

05-30 01:00:00

Heh, #DDO login screen says "UP", but they sure don't feel up. Good time to catch up on those most popular multiclass build options.

05-01 01:00:00

Good news and bad news. The Oracle continues to keep his watchful eye on all of #DDO, but guild renown data is no longer available.

04-21 01:02:25

It has begun! WAR has come to the worlds of #DDO! The Oracle has seen all, and laid judgement. [You may need to refresh the page]

War has been declared!

The Oracle has had to watch the puffing, primping and posturing for too long. Let the truth be known! For the first time, guilds across ALL worlds have been measured. You will see the truth of their worlds, the truth of their efforts, and the strength of their will, or lack thereof.

Most will be found wanting. But rejoice! For now the Eberron's truly greatest heroes will be clearly known.

04-15 22:42:24

The Active Update is now live! The DDOracle's biggest update ever is now online. #DDO

The Active Update is now live! Several billion bytes later, the Oracle adds a new way to look at the world, and made it the default.

With today's update, the Oracle now identifies active characters versus inactive. An active character is one that's logged in in the last 6 months. Half a year. Sadly, the Oracle has found that only about 2/5ths of DDO's characters are actually being played. Tracking who was actually being played was a ton of work.

That said, it's done. And so the Oracle's rankings have been completely regenerated with new ideas - "Active Characters" and "Active Guilds". An active character is one that's been played in the last 6 months, and an active guild is one that has at least 1 person still playing in it. That alone was enough to eliminate thousands of guilds. ;-(

Switching from tracking all characters to specifically active ones has created some major changes in the rankings! Monks, Warforged, Drow, Elven Rangers - these and more jumped up significantly in rankings of active characters.

This is especially interesting in how it highlights changes over time in what characters people actually play. There are many interesting changes, so many that instead of trying to cover them all, the Oracle now supports two different reports. By default you will now see Active statistics/rankings, but click up top and you can switch to All stats/rankings as you see fit. Colors have been changed to make it easier to know which you're looking at.

There's more to come. Click on your world and learn the truth. Enjoy.

04-14 05:51:13

If you want to see what the Valentine's Day Massacre looked like, best check the quarterly #DDO traffic graph before it scrolls off. ;-p

04-14 05:48:38

The Oracle has been updated. The data was on lockdown for a while new content was being added, but finally good to go. #DDO

04-07 02:06:58

Things will be a little quiet for a couple weeks as the Oracle works on things ahead of schedule before the api abandonment. #DDO

04-04 23:06:02

The elimination of MyDDO, leaderboard and API will have a major negative impact on the #DDO community. Not just to @DDoracle and @YourDDO

03-16 00:44:23

Many thanks

Diving through the vaguries of the data and figuring out what exactly respresents what is a serious chore. Time for a long overdue Thanks!(?) to many folks on Thelanis, and in particular the extended Starfleet family, for their help over the [seriously?] years.

A number of guild leaders have spent literally an hour or more, detailing their guild history and helping the Oracle track down how it's actually encoded. Take note, guildies. They do actually work for a living!

03-15 08:02:23

To tweet or not to tweet... that is the question.

The great thing about Twitter is the 140-character limit. Unfortunately, the worst thing about Twitter is the 140-character limit.

It's perfect for quick updates, but pretty limiting otherwise. Thus the Oracle's new blog, which blends tweets & posts to get the best of both worlds.

Twitter-icons indicate tweets, sometimes expanded on. Other posts are only available here on ddoracle.com

03-15 05:01:24

Today's DDOracle update seems straight up, but involved major changes behind the scenes to set the stage for new material. #DDO

Pretty much tore things down to the studs, but it was a structural necessity that allows for more content.

There's something on the wind. Something's coming. We must be ready.

03-08 17:45:15

Could have used a Cure Disease a couple weeks back in a bad way. Then a Cure Cove, or a Cove Anonymous medallion. #DDO

Unfortunately the plague hit just as the Oracle was making renovations, and delayed everything up until Cove hit.

02-07 14:24:32

Interesting how clearly today's quarterly update shows the small drop in #DDO players during the holidays. Looks like a smile.

01-31 23:14:25

The All-knowing Oracle exists on all the worlds of #DDO. Will take some time to be available on Kyber tonight and see how it goes.

01-31 02:28:37

The DDOracle is updated. The latest #DDO reports, plus new click-to-zoom detail graphs and a new quarterly load history. Enjoy!

01-24 01:22:18

A new load graph color scheme is up to make it easier to see. #DDO

01-23 18:30:20

Today's update includes a fix for the avg char level reporting too high. Some guilds moved around in the rankings. #DDO

01-21 23:22:59

The #DDO Overused Guild Name Words list filters out basics like "a", "the", etc. Until Wayfinder! Ze Oracle has since taken German lessons

01-19 02:05:28

Behold and spread the word! All the worlds of #DDO are now under the Oracle's watchful eye. Where there was conjecture, let there be truth!

01-18 23:03:31

RT @DDOUnlimited: The DDO Forums (and http://t.co/xRjyilRh ) are once again available. Thanks! #DDO < Fixed us too, thanks guys!

01-17 05:44:28

The All-knowing Oracle of #DDO is now watching YOU, Khyber! See your world laid bare http://t.co/3spTGWMp

01-11 02:26:31

The Oracle speaks! #DDO Epic levels are now integrated into the rankings

01-05 00:08:49

Not sure what's more interesting, the holidays impact on #DDO play, or lack thereof! See for yourself: http://t.co/qD06fE7B

01-05 00:07:04

Celebrating #DDO's New Year with a late gift from the Oracle - new Monthly traffic as well. Be good this year, the Oracle's watching!

01-03 01:25:24

Heh, love that 20+% load spike on New Years day. Holiday's are over, back to #DDO!

12-25 02:02:41

A little something from the Oracle for Festivult. Hunted down every remotely active #DDO guild on test, now tracking over 3,300+

12-21 03:30:59

Am I the only one who finds it odd that there's no #DDO ice festival on the shortest day of the year?

10-25 21:30:13

Word has it there's an interest in historical #DDO load values. I'll see what I can do.