Now for a little something different...

I just finished beta testing (both closed and open) the upcoming MMO game, Champions Online. Now, I won't talk about the actual game, since this is my software/programming blog, and not my gaming blog. But this game had something that really tickled the code monkey inside of me: the absolutely best in-game bug reporting UI I have ever seen.

The workflow was straightforward:

1. Pick a bug category (e.g. Character, Missions (quests), UI, Graphics, Sound, etc.)


2. Use a context-sensitive drop-down to select the exact aspect or component that was buggy. For example, if you chose the Missions category, the drop-down would contain a list of your active missions and for convenience, it would also include a few of your most recently completed missions.


3. Alternatively, type some text in the text box.


4. Hit "Search." This would actually bring up existing bug reports that matched your criteria. I found this very useful, even if I did not have a bug to report — it let me see if I could expect any problems with what I was currently testing.


5. Clicking on an existing bug report would let you see the original description as well as a log of changes/responses. It was great for finding workarounds (to allow one to continue playing/testing).


6. If there was an existing report that matched your bug, you could add more info or simply "me too" the bug which would increment the number of users who have reported that bug (so developers can judge severity) and update the modification time. Conveniently, the bug would also be tracked as if it were your own, showing up when you viewed your own reports.


7. Lastly, if there are no existing bugs that match yours, you could open a new bug report. And here, I thought, was another neat addition: when you submitted the report, it would automatically gather and send your system info, and in addition to this it would take a screen shot of what you were seeing and attach it to the report. This made graphics and UI bugs quite painless to report.

Anyway, I was averaging a few bug reports a day, so I got a lot of experience with that interface. It was always a good feeling to see bugs that I had personally reported get fixed in subsequent builds. (Though the responses/handling became abysmally slow during open beta... understandable, I guess, since there were far more testers.) I hope future online games adopt something similar, especially the transparency (being able to view others' bug reports) and the convenience (automatic screen shots, etc.)