Reflection on the last week of activity here on the site

Update as of 9th Sept 2021 - This post is pretty old now, as you can see I actually went ahead and created the trade section in the end, and some of the ideas that were expressed here are postponed or eliminated from the plans. For the most up to date notes, see patch the patch notes for version 0.3 and for version 0.4

Hello everyone! Still recovering from my illness but I have had some time to collect my thoughts about the last week's activities, and to give you all a bit of a lookahead into what is planned for the patch 0.3 release following feedback and bug reports.
Since the reddit post the site itself received 2000 unique visits, with 25% of those visitors returning again at a later date.

I first of all want to acknowledge all of our new contributors who made the grade by sending in numerous new item descriptions, data contribs, comments, and written guides. I really wasn't expecting this amount of initiative and energy from you all, so thank you again for investing your time into the site and I hope that this continues as we go along.

Secondly I want to acknowledge everyone who took the time putting in feedback posts and bug reports. In total there are 126 new feature requests and bugs that are now planned for patch 0.3. I'd say that 75% were bugs that need to be fixed, and the other 25% are mini-features or modifications that would improve usage of the database in one way or another. I take these requests seriously and will endeavour to fulfil them the best of my ability, or at the least investigate their feasibility.
Where I was planning on introducing a whole new feature-set (Trade) in this upcoming patch, I have now decided to postpone that until 0.4. Why? Because it is clear that there is still a great deal of work to be done on the actual database and 'information' side of the site itself first. After all, that is the main purpose of diablo2.io - to inform.

Besides the 125 mini-requests/bugs, here are some of the 'bigger' changes that will come with patch 0.3:

• 'Notable' magical items with affixes will have their own database category and be listed as individual items, given their importance in the late game. The oversight/failure to include this in the original plans is due to my own inexperience with the game. I think they will definitely be useful as a searchable, filterable category of their own. This category will not however be an encyclopaedic coverage of all magical items and their affixes - only those 'of note' or real use to the player. A separate information page will be made up for the the actual affixes themselves.
• Crafted items will be added to the 'Misc' category once I have processed your contributions, and Recipes will (actually) be completed once I have processed your contributions. They will have more filter types (by more I mean have at least some, right now there are 0, besides the instant search).
• I will be opening up a 'Guides' section of the site, which will hold the long-format written guides we've been seeing popping up in the forums for a number of different areas of the game, which are best presented in this kind of manner. More formatting options and a more advanced editor will support this section in the future as more people add their Wisdom to it, and help keep things looking presentable and standardised.
• Lastly, before working on the trade section, I'd quite like to see Monsters/NPCs/Quests/Skills etc. filled up so that the database is complete before launch. To me this is the core feature of the site and I'd like that fully fleshed out and available before I start adding on the other bells and whistles promised. I'll need your help brainstorming the database structure for these types of entries, so some new topics will follow so that we can discuss that together as a group.

I will not be able to begin work on patch 0.3 until early September, which is when I return from my real life job as a navigator at sea. There's no real internet in the middle of the ocean and my dev environment is severely limited, plus I won't be wanting to code after my 12 hour shift every day! Please bear this in mind guys as the weeks pass - I can foresee that some of you may get the impression that the site isn't going anywhere - but have some patience I'll be back with a great update for you all eventually.

In the meantime I really would like to emphasise that work can continue in other ways - descriptions can be suggested, comments can be made, topics can be discussed here in the forums. The site can continue to grow without my direct supervision whilst I'm gone, it was designed for that!

One last thing - please bear in mind that development takes time, and it's really hard. It's just me here, working behind the scenes to bring features to you, and sometimes things that seem 'easy' to introduce really, really aren't.

Anyways. So excited to see all this Passion for the site, and all these new people. Cheers! (Yes, you'll have an option to disable auto-linking of words in posts lol).

Very passionate about this site and the energy behind it. I hope it will become the most popular website/forum once Diablo 2 Resurrected comes out.

Well done Teebs, your Passion for this project and Barrens.chat has been simply incredible. You have a great flair for creating meaningful information within a stylistic, dynamic and minimalistic format. Well done, and good luck moving forward with it!

Awesome work man, excited to see the site continue growing. Your day job sounds like quite the adventure!

Fellowship wrote: 3 years ago

Very passionate about this site and the energy behind it. I hope it will become the most popular website/forum once Diablo 2 Resurrected comes out.

Without a dout it will.

Take as much time as you need. The work put in so far is truly incredible and the site it self makes me feel like a kid again when I first discovered classic D2 many years ago. Stay cool.

Interesting to see that the sites main intention was to be an informational database, and trade was kinda considered as a side function. Now I imagine that at least %80 of user participation is trade.

Banjo wrote: 3 years ago

Interesting to see that the sites main intention was to be an informational database, and trade was kinda considered as a side function. Now I imagine that at least %80 of user participation is trade.

lol right? Probably closer to 90%+ . The trade section about to get a crazy upgrade too :O. Woot!

BillyMaysed wrote: 3 years ago

Banjo wrote: 3 years ago

Interesting to see that the sites main intention was to be an informational database, and trade was kinda considered as a side function. Now I imagine that at least %80 of user participation is trade.

Probably closer to 90%+ lol. The trade section about to get a crazy upgrade too :O. Woot!

That’s actually kinda what I thought but figured I’d shoot low and give me some wiggle room. And yeah I’m excited for the new patch, upgrade, whatever you call it. Some of the things teebling previewed looked pretty cool.

Banjo wrote: 3 years ago

That’s actually kinda what I thought but figured I’d shoot low and give me some wiggle room.

I'm also guessing, teebling would have to let us know exact numbers lol. But the database section is still incredible though! and with all the helpful comments on the entries from members makes it superior to most.

Oh yeah I love the database too, the way it’s structured, how easy it is to use, and the format. Usually when I’m playing, I’m lucky enough to have to monitors, I have D2.

Io on one monitor and d2r on the other, and can quickly get to a trade or look something up. The dark colors are actually really nice to cuz a big bright White screen can be distracting on a second monitor.

Definitely appreciate the site.