I report in-game bugs a lot. Typically at least one a day, but, after a while, rarely the same bug again. That partly says a lot about how many bugs still remain, but it also says a lot about how many bugs have been fixed.

That said, the developers could do a lot to make it easier for players to report bugs. The current selections reflect the way a programmer thinks about bugs rather than the way players think about them. For example, I just now hit the comma button by accident and a LUA error appeared on my screen.

First, I go to /bug it and I get the choices Crash / Blocks Progress, Impairs Functionality, Cosmetic, Exploit! and Delays Progress. Well, out of those five, it actually satifies five of them. Which am I to choose. It's sort of a crash, but it's also cosmetic and, until I dismiss it, the functionality of my game is impaired. My progress is also delayed. You could quibble about "Well, by 'Delays progress.' it means X, Y and Z." Maybe so, but I am not thinking about anything other than the fact that there is a nasty window full of gibberish in the middle of my screen. Don't make me have to analyze this ***. Just give me an easy way to say, "Something is wrong! Handle it!" so I can get back to playing the game. The internal system should be recording enough information that the devs can extract what they need from context and the screen shot. If not, then they need to improve the metrics.

Second, once I have arbitrarily decided which of these five "impacts" this situation might be, I get various Categories beneath. Again, this is so obviously designed by a programmer for other programmers. You might as well ask players to report a mystical error number that mysteriously appeared on their screen. The process here is almost as inscrutible and is horrible interface design for non-computer-literate players. How are they to know whether that LUA error box was because of a problem with their Character or Text/localization or Game Systems or Quests? What if it had to do with multiple categores? No, they can only select one. Don't make them do that. You need to be recording enough "behind the scenes" information that none of these things are asked of the player.

Third, depending upon which category I choose, I get different options in the pop-up menu below. Sometimes, I have actually had to hunt and peck through different categories before the correct list came up in the menu, at which point I could successfully say, "Ah yes, this was a Crafting problem, which finally appeared when I selected the Game Systems category." Until then, nothing about crafting would show up. How the *hell* should a random non-computer-literate player hope to figure this out? They don't know "game systems" from "graphics & UI" from "Characters." This is all backwards and makes reporting bugs into much more of a chore than it should be. It makes me scratch my head and I've been programming for over 30 years. You should be an ally to the players helping you make the game better, not a hindrance.

Lastly, if the problem is about a quest, assuming that I am enough of a computer whiz to realize that is the nature of the problem at hand, I then have to remember to which of the 15 quests in my journal this applies. Okay. Now I am a bit lost because my quest tracker no longer appears on the screen (if I was using it), and God help me to remember the actual quest name. Nope. I have to cancel this whole damn process, go look up the quest in my journal, then write down the name, then start this whole process over again before I can actually explain to you by typing out a description what the nature of the problem is.

WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN:

1. I type /bug

2. I get a place where I can briefly explain the problem.

3. Since *NOTHING* was changed about my screen--my character, camera angle and UI overlay are EXACTLY how they were before I typed /bug--I can confidently attached a screenshot without having to carefully line up my camera so that, when I type /bug, it just happens to point in the right direction to catch what it was I wanted to show you.

4. I hit SUBMIT and all the pertinent metrics about my character's position, quest log, recent history of actions, as well as all the crap I typed and my screenshot are transmitted to you.

5. I can keep playing the game, thankful that I don't have to have a Masters Degree in Computer Science in order to divine the necessary technical details to report a bug in an MMO.