Technical How can I help fix the bugs in the bugtracker?

[roller]

ssssssssssss

[Zelta]

Our source code is mostly private, and we are only accepting contributions from our developers.
You may apply as a developer next time there is a recruiting post on the forum.

[Obnoxious]

We're a business in the end of the day. All the modifications made for a core to maintain over 10000 simultaneous players on Wrath of the Lich King are no small deal, something for which we paid hired developers to accomplish. I don't think our Administration has any interest in making what we invested actual money into something available to anyone for free.

On top of that, and as a consequence of that, outside code will be made based on what's available out there as open source, not on our heavily modified code. Anything you provide might not even work with our core, or break more things than it fixes for not following our optimizations. Working on modifying such code to suit us would potentially be more work than simply having our developers eventually get to that issue themselves.

[Anyone0]

I'm not looking to join the payroll. Why has Warmane decided that private is more suitable than opensource? You could at least provide an open fork and maintain the official version privately while accepting source code contributions/suggestions from communal devs. I'm basically offering up services for free that I normally charge $100USD/hr for.

Making it open source would let any other private server use it. Warmane doesn't seem to want that because of all the work their developers have done on it. A fork that is different from the official version wouldn't really work. The real code would often be needed to find and fix specific bugs and test the fix the way it would work on Warmane servers. Another problem would be that developers would still have to check all the code submitted by others. Generally making it open source would improve Warmane servers and I would probably also try to contribute but they don't seem to be willing to take the risks associated with it.

[Obnoxious]

I'm talking about Cataclysm, not that this difference probably matters.

Yes, it doesn't matters. That was just an big and quite visible example, not the only place where it applies.

... is essentially irrelevant. Submitting individual file changes using a versioning system (thus allowing you to keep track of changes across the project) isn't complicated and I'm sure it's what the devs are currently using. It's not hard to have your in-house developers review all changes before accepting them into canon. And yes, it would be faster to accept outside help and simply have the dev team review changes. 95% of the effort in fixing software bugs is in trying to define exactly what is going wrong. Even if outside help could just provide comprehensive analysis on the bugs, that handles the majority of the work your devs have to do.

I'm not sure if you have worked very little/at all with coding or are just speaking in bad faith. One of the worst nightmares there is is to try to adapt code from someone else who doesn't knows what the core coding or the database are like, just going by "this is how I think it is." If you have no clue how our core and its functions have been customized, you have essentially a tiny chance of making code that applies perfectly, without the need for an official developer to step in, analyze, test and modify it to work with what we have - which goes back to what I said before and you dismiss. We don't do open sourcing of our code, so any outside code is coding for a locked black box.

Anyway, the major concern seems to be that you just don't want competition to steal your work. That's fair enough. However, it does still seem ironic considering Blizzard did all the heavy lifting already and private servers essentially do just that: steal the work. Just keep in mind that a product is only good enough to entice customers so long as the customer support and over all experience is worth it. This private server is set apart from the others in that it operates on a solid professionalism, in comparison. It takes much more than some dude in his basement simply copying your "valuable" code and making a private server successful with it. Opening up this stuff to the community offers vastly more benefits than problems. Wikipedia is a prime example of what the community can do. There will invariably be people who try to **** up a good thing but they get bored eventually and move on; their malice being overwhelmingly canceled out by the good.

This is just something to consider. I and many other players would jump at the opportunity to help out because quite frankly there are issues that still haven't been resolved. Some of the issues having existed for years now, although this is not to ignore the fantastic work done on this front so far.

You're not the first one to offer, you won't be the last one to be turned down. If you want to work blindly and send it to someone in the QA team or something like that, I'm not going to stop you. I have no idea if they will consider it, check it or anything at all, but they would be the closest thing to Developers you could contact without being in the Staff yourself.

In addition, it is clear to me that Cataclysm's population has been steadily declining over the last two years. I imagine it might have something to do with the bugs. I think the Cata population is less than that of other expansions so likewise I'd expect the developers to place less priority on Cata bugs. If the server's popularity is dwindling, why not offer a desperate last attempt for the community to save it itself?

I'll remind you that Kaer wanted to close Cataclysm. We only didn't and continued to have development resources be put in there because the community wanted to keep it, understanding it wouldn't be a focus.

[Obnoxious]

an outsider to study your code and learn those complexities

And this is the thing you seem to be, purposefully or not, unable to grasp: you won't have access to our code to study it. Only Staff in the Development team do. You were told so by three different people now, two being from the Staff. Your whole claim is based on something that isn't going to happen happening. Without access to our code, all I said isn't over-complication, nor implying that you're a "genius" - it's just the facts.

Lastly, if the fact we won't open access to our code is the deciding factor for your donations or even playing, so be it.

[Obnoxious]

Because you keep insisting despite being told no repeatedly