Have you hugged your mod writer today?
by Elizabeth Harper 
May 1st 2007 at 5:01PM
This week's issue of the Escapist has an excellent article by Greg Tito discussing the difficulties of being a mod writer in World of Warcraft. And we're not just talking about learning LUA or fixing bugs after Blizzard has released a major patch, but about the community itself. You've all read the official forums, so you know the community isn't always friendly. And when a mod you've written goes from being something you coded for yourself (and uploaded on a whim) to something used by thousands of people (each of them asking -- or demanding -- different bug fixes and improvements), I'd say things stop being fun. Mod-writer Gello explains some of the stress of the situation when he tried to help his users out by writing a German localization:
I had spent a couple very intense months working on the localization of Recap. It got so I could understand combat logs in German.... It was just causing way too much stress and time for something I would never see or use.
And when French players began requesting a French localization of mage water-summoning mod WaterBoy, Gello refused, suggesting that native speakers could make a localization themselves. And then, as Gello says, the flames began:
When I stood by my position (probably not in the nicest terms), they continued in earnest. I got an email with an attachment I thought was safe and apparently it wasn't.... I basically abandoned the email address, formatted my pc, ditched the mod and didn't look back.
Really, people: go give your favorite mod writer a hug. It can be an immense amount of work to maintain a good mod and most of it is thankless.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Add-Ons
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Aaron May 1st 2007 5:39PM
What retards. Making him have to reformat >
James May 1st 2007 5:50PM
Well, they are French...
Rich May 1st 2007 6:08PM
What do you expect from people used to getting everything handed to them by their government? "Do eet ourselfes? Oo do you zink we are?"
Stephen May 1st 2007 6:17PM
Here's a shout-out to StrifeCUK for his amazing mod: Healbot.
Savok May 1st 2007 6:19PM
Ungrateful sacks of shit.
This is why I never bothered making mods, not only are these are assholes on one end, but you've got Blizzard rewriting the entire system every patch breaking everything you've already done.
RogueJedi86 May 1st 2007 6:28PM
@#5/Savok
And how about when Blizzard makes your addon useless by building it into the game? Like next patch, they'll be adding tooltip item comparisons when you hit ctrl(or something), nullifying the use of the EquipCompare addon. Both a curse and blessing for AddOn makers right?
Freak May 1st 2007 6:31PM
Love the overt racism. USA #111one!eleven!
Carl May 1st 2007 7:04PM
I agree with number 7. Im not a huge fan of france, but please keep your racism/hate/intelorance for yourself.
kthxbye
Rich May 1st 2007 6:57PM
"Love the overt racism."
Because "French" is a race.
Freak May 1st 2007 7:09PM
@8: Define race for me then, smart guy. Is it a skin color? Call it Anti-France-ism if you want. I'll just go on calling it what it is: ignorance.
Carl May 1st 2007 7:12PM
Rich,
Prejudice against another culture is, imo, racism. But if the words are more important than the ideas, to you... Take you francophobia elsewhere http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francophobia
wowinsider.qsh May 1st 2007 7:18PM
I found that when I stopped caring about users my life got a lot happier. I fully understand the pains of localization, I don't blame Gello one bit for refusing. I'll gladly pull my strings into a table and try to write with a language-independant design, but I absolutly will not support my addons in any language but engrish. I'll gladly accept localizations from other users (koKRean is the commonest request I've seen, oddly enough), but it's entirely up to that user to make the translations and ensure that the addon works in their language.
And yea, damn french! Nothing good ever came out of France! *snicker*
Guernia May 1st 2007 7:21PM
Anyone know any really really good tutorials on making mods/user interface components? I've tried researching it (okay, a couple hours on Google on a Saturday morning) but haven't come up with anything really useful or robust.
Oh, and French Metric > British Imperial (aka U.S. customary units). Metric FTW!
Catfoot May 1st 2007 7:23PM
I don't come from a WoW mod developer background, but was part of a group that developed a popular Half-Life mod (Day of Defeat). It's a real love hate relationship you get with your fan base. On one hand they are who make you what you are - they are your advertisers, your testers, your marketing and the source of some of your ideas. The pain comes when you grow so big that your fans begin to split into different camps - some saying it should be "This Way" and the other saying make it "That Way". That's when things get hairy, because you'll never be able to win that battle.
But what you CAN do (and what I think this mod author failed to do) is cultivate the idea that you are happy to have and encourage others to "mod your mod". Design it such that your community can add to it and grow it. Encourage them to do so, and do it by doing what you can to a) let them know you really appreciate their work, and b) let the rest of the world know about this cool thing some people did for the mod.
And the absolute last thing you want to do is get in a fight with your fan base. That guy lost the moment he did that.
wowinsider.qsh May 1st 2007 7:25PM
@ #5... Actually Blizzard doesn't undermine addons as badly as you think. Slouken is very supportive of the community, he's a great point of contact... he listens, helps out, and he IMPLEMENTS GOOD IDEAS. Yes, there was the whole "2.0 addon sundering," but we were well aware for a LOOOONG time beforehand that Blizzard didn't like combat-decision-making addons and was trying to find a way to stop them. Though the new system is restrictive, it's still got a ton of freedom and power in combat, and is virtually unrestricted out of combat.
All in all, addon authors learn how to write for the constant flux of the API, and good addons are rarely broken by API changes. More often than not if an addon is broken it is either very out of date or doing something Blizzard doesn't want it to, and is intentionally breaking this functionality.
@ #6... Hot damn I _LOVE_ when they do that. I asked slouken to enhance the compare API a tad so that I could make tekKompare a bit cleaner. He implements it and then goes a step further and adds this directly into the default UI. One less addon for me to maintain!
Boonie May 1st 2007 7:30PM
Firstly I love how a call to thank mod-makers has degenerated into a racial/nationalistic pride-fest... I would like to say that Elizabeth has made a great point and as people we don't thank others as much as we should and that I too have been part of the problem... something I just fixed by sending a thankyou email to the makers of the mod that I use (those that had email links).
So Elizabeth, you are making some headway...
And to the rest of you... you're all jealous you're not an Aussie anyway... (sorry, but had to be done! )
Freehugz May 1st 2007 7:44PM
#14!!!!! I loved that game!!!!! It's still the best fps ever!
Freehugz May 1st 2007 7:45PM
p.s. such a shame that WoW killed DoD.... oh well
Catfoot May 1st 2007 8:10PM
@Freehugz - Hehe. I quit working on DoD before I took up WoW myself, I swear! I'm still seeking for the mysterious "Tabard of Hiding" that makes you look like you're wearing a red and white stripped shirt and essentially invisible in crowds. Vital for Rogues trying to sneak into busy towns! They say some guy named Waldo sells it and he's sometimes seen in the town squares around major cities.
Seriously though, working with any community is a huge challenge, and the challenges of working with a community that gets your game (or mod) for free is even more tricky. At some point your product becomes bigger than you and takes on a life of it's own. In some ways, you don't "own" it anymore, your community does.
haust May 1st 2007 8:12PM
Ok I'm French and I think that what the French players did to Gello was STUPID, I repeat, it was STUPID.
But saying "Well, they are French..." just show how STUPID you are too. I would prefer something like "Well, they are idiots...". Sorry I don't intend to start some flame war but I couldn't let this one without saying something :p
On the subject of localization, I think that if someone from a country is happy with an addon then he/she should help localizing it. It just that simple :)
People should not have demands but requests so that the addons they use get better. WoW addons are not commercial products, therefore users have no rights to demand anything.