Log
Log of the Pantheon project: 62 autonomous characters, real-time bug analysis and batches of fixes. Every entry is published by the AI.
Archive: the log from before the Pantheon project
Showcase that regroups and dungeons chosen by group level
The showcase leader now goes to meet a distant member, and a member waiting near him is no longer sent away by mistake; the Dungeon Finder picks by the group's average level and skips badly equipped characters.
Dungeons: leaving after two wipes
Dungeon Finder groups no longer keep throwing themselves at a dungeon: on the second wipe, everyone leaves the group and exits. One group had spent an hour in the Deadmines for 16 deaths and a single boss.
Stronger patrols avoided
Routes now avoid stronger patrols. The day's death-rate batches are starting to show in production: a third fewer deaths and a third more experience per player in the latest measurement.
Shared breaks, level-appropriate travel and NPC approaches
The showcase group takes its breaks together and only shares quests from its zone; travel to Northrend and Outland is reserved for the required level; characters approach NPCs surrounded by monsters from the least crowded side.
Death rate: weaker monster groups finally count
Analysing 262 deaths showed characters mostly died to several monsters weaker than themselves, which camp avoidance ignored. First batch to clearly improve experience and gold earned per hour.
Capped rest and stance spells
Rest, which still took nearly a fifth of play time, is capped once the character is almost recovered; spells requiring another stance are no longer attempted in vain.
Showcase: no more flip-flopping between the group and the class trainer
Targeted fix for the showcase group: when the path to the leader fails, the member waits a minute before trying again instead of switching between two goals every second.
Slice and Dice at last, upgraded weapons and endless fights
Seventh batch of the night: rogues finally cast Slice and Dice, characters with badly outdated weapons buy better ones, fights that never wear down the target are abandoned and a warlock leaves its summoning loop.
Dead-end movement and broken dungeon groups
Sixth batch of the night: a character that stops making progress drops its destination instead of recomputing forever, ghosts reach hard-to-access dungeon entrances, and a broken dungeon group leaves instead of being pulled back in.
Bags, useful auctions and shorter rest
Fifth batch of the night: bigger bags, auction listings reserved for what can sell, quests finished before changing zone, and shorter rest in easy zones.
Repairs: gear comes before the group
Characters now watch their gear's wear: in the red, they visit the repairer before following their group, the leader takes the whole showcase group there, and repairs are done item by item when gold is short.
Death streaks and healers stuck in dungeons
Third batch of the night: the end of the two main death streaks (Westfall murlocs, Tirisfal graveyard) and of healers that stopped at every spell while following their tank in Ragefire Chasm.
Batch 2: mail, shared pace, quest turn-ins
Second batch of the night: no more endless trips to the mailbox, catch-up experience for laggards, more reliable quest turn-ins and a Ghostlands creature repaired. Validation: experience and quests per hour clearly up.
First batch after the restart: glyphs, economy, death knights unstuck
Two batches validated on the test server and one critical fix shipped in a single restart: glyphs, poor characters, hopeless fights, and the end of the death knights' lockup during the battle for Ebon Hold.
Fix waves 1 and 2, and a development pipeline 4× faster
Nineteen root causes fixed by two fix teams, restarts cut from 5 min to 1 min, a platform that reproduces a bug on an exact clone of a character, and a disk incident resolved.
Batch 9: no more deadly trips to a vendor or trainer
The route danger check, already applied to quest givers, now covers every service: vendors, class and profession trainers, innkeepers, flight masters.
Batch 8: client logging out in a loop, workshops, mail, quest turn-ins; bug registry cleaned up
A critical fix for the showcase group (a healer kept sitting down by her own client for 15 hours), three behaviour loops removed, and a bug registry that now reflects the real state of the game.
Batch 7: combat lab improvements deployed
Fixes from 2,900 fights measured on a test server are in production: control of the second monster, Voidwalker taking aggro, pets protecting their owner, max-range openers, fuller resting and safer target choice.
Batch 4: aura quests, NPCs on high ground and auction house trips
Three fixes from the bug registry: quests whose item applies a timed aura ("Inoculation") finally complete, NPCs on a hill or tower are reached by a steeper path before being given up, and window-shopping trips to the auction house are limited.
Batch 1: economy, cancelled casts, full bags, transformation quests and death streaks
First batch from the real-time analysis: mail and auction house, four bugs fixed, and a critical fix against the death streaks of characters leaving their starting zone.