...That the "playtesters" spent all their time looking for graphics bugs? Post your gripes here.

Yeah, there's whole groups of people who seem to like nothing better than spot and report bugs. I wonder if they all work in the garbage disposal industry as well. :D

Ouch! [img]smile.gif[/img]

Working in Quality Assurance myself I can say that QA is often overlooked by most industries not just the gaming and often its cut out altogether due to pressures of sales and marketing departments applying stress tactics.

For the past few years now I have been employed by a company who focuses in on intrusion detection and response systems for all types of transportation departments (air, water, road and rail) even holding military contracts for some countries in the middle east. With that said we have a whopping two man crew to do total system and integrations testing on a system that makes Oblivion pale by comparison in complexity.

Personally speaking the only way a company now a days can release rock solid software is to control all aspects of hardware. Secondly you need management who actually knows how QA works with competent QA staff to create and actaully execute real test cases and lastly the marketing and sales pigs need to be hog tied! ;)

Well I have noticed a few blips with dialogue - people (esp. beggars) changing voices for different dialogue options, people's names being pronounced incorrectly, a couple of typos. But fairly minor, I'd say. Things that probably should have been noticed (as they are quite obvious), though.

While reading books look for the word "the" mis-spelled
hte. I've seen it in 4 books so far about 6 total
miss-spelled "are" as rae, "that" spelled taht and
twice I've seen "when" spelled hwen. somebody got rushed.
LOL :D

not that I'm a great speller but nobody ever paid me money
to write.

[ 04-09-2006, 05:40 PM: Message edited by: TheCrimsomBlade ]

I don't think the beggar dialogues is a blip. As you may know, most beggars are contacts for the thieves guild, but only a select group of people are supposed to be aware of this. That's why they talk like "thank ye kind sir" in public, but sound more like intelligent folks once they know you are trustworthy. If you are not an associate of the thieves, than they will probably always be just beggars to you.

[img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img] You never know...

But i know that Beth were recieving so many offers of beta testing that they were beating them back with a stick. Given that there're so many complaints about shortcomings in the game, maybe it was a bad move?

Typos and sometimes even bad grammar i can live with. The things that get me are little errors that make it hard to complete quests.

Minor MQ and vampire spoilers
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In the "Aid for Bruma" MQ quest, you're required to seek aid from each of the count(esses). It's a very tedius quest (given that there's at least 5 gates to shut down) and it's made even more tedius by a misplaced quest marker in the imperial city. It starts at the white tower but as soon as you enter the tower, it shifts to the arboretum district and then the sewers, does a useless loop in the sewers and then buggers off. Only to reappear back at the white tower once you've made progress in one of the other cities. At first i thought i was supposed to be looking for Ocato (in the sewers?.. [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img] ) ) but i went down there twice and it's apparently pointless. Stuff like that should be picked up.

Trying to cure vampirism (the worst designed quest i've seen) involves seeing a hermit witch out in the sticks. She stays in her home from what i gather and you can't enter her home without trespassing. Which basically means you can talk to her (she's very friendly) but if you hang around for 5 seconds longer she'll attack you! And if you complete the quest the way Beth designed it, it requires visiting her shack several times. Again, stuff like that should be picked up. There are many other examples in the vampire cure quest. It's so user unfriendly that i get the impression it was a rush job. Either that or they're trying to emphasise the point that vampirism is supposed to be a PITA to cure.

[ 04-11-2006, 05:58 AM: Message edited by: Sever ]

True, that quest is a long one, but you don't actually ahve to get help from all the cities, it just helps by providing more troops to protect Martin ;)