Let's talk numbers.

Usually, statistics about how many issues / tickets (aka bugs, typos, etc.)
are submitted and possibly also sometimes resolved are not particularly
exciting or interesting. But since large part of the work that I have done
during last year and a half has been that kind of quiet "behind the scenes"
grind, which does not get the same level of attention as things announced
on 'tunes'-channel or in newsposts, perhaps some talk about it is in order.


As of writing, we have about 5300 "open" tickets in the "Batzilla" aka our
bugtracker. During the last year (365 days), over 1500 tickets in have been
closed (vast majority by yours truly). If counting last 1.5 years, the
amount goes up to around 2200 closed.

In contrast to that, on average, 1.5 new tickets have been created each day
during that last year (554 tickets during last 365 days). The rate of new
tickets has, by my accounts, been around that for years .. with some amount
of fluctuation.

At this moment we have:

 - 3706 open "bug" tickets (down from 4612 year ago)
 - 1210 "idea" tickets (1297 year ago)
 - 435 "typo" tickets (748)
 - There is also a "misc" category with 11 tickets.

Those are rather big numbers, despite the huge amounts being closed
during last 1.5 years. In total, 23460 tickets have been closed in the
history of our bug tracker.

The numbers might give some impression of the scale, though just the
numbers themselves mean very little - not all tickets are created equal,
of course. But each of them, from the tiniest typo reports to complicated
bugs or ideas or balancing or .. each of them means that IF we want to
address any of them, someone will have to spend time looking and judging
what, if anything, to do. Each means time and effort spent, even just
checking if the issue is worth working on.

(As a sidenote to the number of "closed" tickets: not everything is
equal in that regard. Some tickets, of course, are closed due to being
fixed. Some may require no action, e.g. they have been previously fixed
or are unreproducible etc.)

Considering the resources we have, it is usually the case that tickets
accumulate MUCH faster than they are resolved. We have plenty of issues
that are years, or over decade old. Oldest open tickets are from the
early 2000's transferred from the previous bug handling system.


And this brings us to perhaps the point I want to make: there are so many
issues, not just bugs, typos, etc, but also wishes, hopes and dreams of
players and developers alike .. and so little time and people to actually
do anything about them.

As it is, our very few active wizards and archwizards mostly concentrate
on whatever they personally see interesting and/or important. We are a
voluntary community and nobody here is paid to work on this game. As such,
any kind of "directing" of developer resources is practically impossible
unless voluntary agreements are somehow found and met.


Most players probably already knew all this, but sometimes, when reading
the channels and newsposts it starts to feel as if there is some kind of
disconnect between the reality and what some people seem to think to be
possible - e.g. new content, fixing the old, or making major revisions -
all those big projects.

And it feels frustrating. Not that I'm saying that people should not "wish"
for things, but perhaps at least try to realize the reality - most of the
fantasies thrown around on "ideas" channel won't be implemented.

.. and if you ever feel like complaining about how things are not getting
done, perhaps contemplate these things a bit before moaning about it.


Anyway .. end of rant, for now. While this post was about one topic, just
fixing things and wrangling tickets hasn't been all that I've been working
on. As usual, many things are cooking at the same time. Perhaps another
post on those things later, if I have the energy.