Hello guys, thanks for the mail, and I'm happy to give you an update on the situation here. Essentially the issue is this - the team that was responsible for the wardec system overhaul was never allowed the room in their sprint schedule for proper through on the wardec system following Inferno's release. They were assigned Bounty Hunting as the headline feature for Winter, and the pressure on them has been to finish and deliver Bounty Hunting first and foremost.

This leaves wardecs in a completely unacceptable state in the meantime, and this has been a major point of contention between the CSM and CCP, ever since they were given their assignments this fall. We've asked time and time again when this issue was going to be addressed, and basically told the same thing each time, priority was finishing the new items (Bounty Hunting, salvage drones, and microjumpdrives) before wardecs would be revisited. Obviously this is not the priority the CSM would have preferred, as it is a poor example of CCP following through on their commitment to iteration before new features. Not to mention many of us still think microjumpdrives are useless.

So in otherwords, for most of the summer and fall, there really hasn't been any news to report other than "We're aware of the issue and speaking to CCP about it". Is that the answer anyone wants to hear? Of course not, as reflected by your current email. But its the truth nonetheless, we've just been up against a resource allocation issue that was beyond our ability to control.

That is not to say in any way that the fight is over, recently Alekseyev Karrde successfully landed a 1 on 1 meeting with CCP Soniclover to review this situation and once again deliver the message that wardecs are in a completely unacceptable state and that the situation continues to worsen and threaten the usefulness of even having a wardec system in the first place. Aleks felt the session was productive, in terms of making sure that the development team understands exactly what needs to be done, but this doesnt resolve the short-term issue of lack of time being devoted to fixing this.

Since Retribution is about at the "hardening" phase where its all about polishing finished code, it's extremely unlikely this will be addressed in the Dec. 4 release. From the meeting with CCP Soniclover, Aleks was able to confirm that not only is wardecs #1 on the teams own backlog, but that they will attempt to work on this in point releases following Retribution's initial release. We'll keep you posted as things develop, but thats about all there is to share on the news front where wardecs are concerned.

I appreciate everyone's patience, this affects all of us (most of us on the CSM are involved in this through one war or another) and I know how frustrating it is to not have an end in sight. Just understand that we've been in the dark as much as you regarding when this will be addressed, and are continuing to hammer this as one of the most critical pieces of unfinished business from the last couple of expansions.

At the upcoming summit, we'll not only bring up this issue once again, but will also be emphasizing the importance of follow-through on broken systems in the future, as this is one of the low points in the road to iterative development when compared to say, Faction Warfare, where proper resources have been allocated to add the needed polish for the system to function properly.

Don't hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions, email is fastest as the Assembly Hall is essentially a redundant version of Features and Ideas discussion section of the forums, and we've been long lobbying for them to remove it completely and consolidate the two so players aren't posting in a relatively inactive part of the forum.

o7