Bug Reporting Guidelines

[Chewett]

Please follow the ingame bug reporting guidelines when reporting bugs.
 
For convenience, they are posted here, but the ingame ones will always be the most up to date so we encourage you to check them.
 
-----

Step 1: Identify what type of bug it is

You need to look at what the bug is doing or lets you do and decide what action you need to take. A quick check-list is:
Is the bug abusive? - If you could gain significantly from using the bug, then it is not appropriate to post on the forum. These should be sent directly to bugs. See Step 4: Contacting bugs.
Has the bug only happened to me? - If the bug has only affected you, and you dont think it is going to affect anyone else you should follow Steps 2 and 4 but report it directly to bugs, instead of the forum.
Has it already been reported or announced? - You should also check the forum and ingame to see if there are any announcements about it. Its possible that someone has reported the bug and it is known, or there is an announcement about the bug.

Step 2: Wait and talk to others

A large number of bugs occur while we are working on the code of MD. This means that you will see errors appear randomly. But these will normally all disappear after work has finished. If the bug still occurs after half an hour of when it started then you should go to step 3.

During this period you should talk to others about the bug. This is to see if others are getting the same error. These players may know more about the bug or know that what you report isnt a bug but a feature. Sometimes things may be implemented that you dont know about, causing wrong bug reports. LHO's should be able to help with this. If the bug is abusive or private, you should not talk to others, and go straight to step 4.

Step 3: Post on the forum

If you have checked the recent threads and cant find any post of the bug, you should report it on the forum. This will let us see your post but also allow others to offer help. There are a lot of cases where the community can help you faster than we can. Providing information such as a screenshot and what you did to cause the bug is vital in fixing it and your account if there is any issue.

The Bug Forum is the place to check for bugs.

Step 4: Contact bugs

If there is an abusive bug or a private matter that you shouldnt post on the forum you should contact bugs directly. This can be done via the email address bugs@magicduel.com. When contacting them you should state your playername so that they know who they are talking to. Describing the issue fully and including helpful printscreens where appropriate is also required so that we can help resolve the issue.

Step 5: Contact an authority directly

This step should be used as a last resort, to resolve an issue that is urgent or needs attention very quickly. Examples of this are game breaking bugs that are stopping people being able to play MD.

Current list of those with authority who should be contacted in order of priority:
Chewett - via PM's, chat, email, or yahoo instant messenger
MD Council - email
Muratus del Mur - chat, email NOTE: he doesnt read pm's until much later so this isnt an urgent response, same goes for emails, he might never read them.

Muratus del Mur should only be contacted on features that he is working on or game breaking issues that have occurred and there is no one else to talk to.

I (chewett) get all bugs@ emails directly to my phone, so this is the quickest ways to resolve an issue (provided im not sleeping) and you should have already contacted bugs in step 4. If im on yahoo instant messenger and there is something urgent, do yim me, my yim is chewett@rocketmail.com (note: i do not check emails sent to this account, if you wish to email me use chewett@magicduel.com).