There is also updating the wiki manual and help pages. There should be starter material on Helpline Forum (here) threads and the in-game Mentoring Forum threads. I (and other devs) can answer further questions via the same forums.
This! There is so much out of date info - there was a great volunteer project years ago to bring in the semantic wiki, but another sweep is something anyone in the game could be involved in.
Announcements of different Island events on the respective Local board would pressure me to at least share that announcement via the BM twitter account.
Feedback on bugs on the bugtracker is always helpful. Reporting more bugs.
This was the point I was trying to make before - there are a limited number of programmers, so you want to keep them as close to 100% *programming* as you can. Look for ANYTHING like this someone else could help with.
The inverse is true - dev team members should be looking at their tasks and trying to eliminate EVERYTHING they possibly can. Are you *really* the only one who can do that?
Anything marketing/recruitment/advertising related.
This again!
Any Communications students here? Practice writing "press releases" and articles you can spread around about the game changes or interesting things that set it apart.
Start a blog about BM & see if you can make it popular.
Start a medieval RP contest "sponsored" by BM.
This is a real life laboratory where you can actually do the stuff we used to have to get internships for - go for it!
Other Tasks:
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- SURVEYS! The best marketing info comes from your existing customers. The dev team already has survey code that has never been implemented (according to earlier convos): get some questions to send to new players after a few days, a few weeks, a few months. Collect info from them if they quit, best you can.
Player retention is one of the most important tasks right now (and for the last 5 years or so), and absolutely nothing is being done about it.
- If you are the uber-organized type, I personally think the dev team could use a practicing Technical Writer who 1) works with them to help think of all the affects a new change might make, then ensures those things have been covered & play-tested 2) is the one who writes the Wiki page & announces to the game the parts everyone is allowed to know (vs. the "black box" stuff left to the dev team)
FYI - technical writers can make pretty good money. If you are a little bit technical & have good writing skills and good attention to detail, this is a great chance to try it out & see if you might like to do it more seriously.
- Collect notes of what differences there are among the different islands, and compile. I'm not sure what system of feature flags & branching they are using but I'm convinced a lot of stuff "being tested" has merely been forgotten about.
Some examples of what I mean - the Information page varies per island; Show Fame isn't on all the islands; East Island doesn't have the new looting or all the magic scroll stuff that is working elsewhere. These are things that are way past the need for testing; they need to be migrated.
It might be useful to have a list somewhere of what is currently being play-tested, and when that started, so that it can be migrated to the other islands when deemed ready.
- Collect notes on incomplete features - there really shouldn't be "TODOs" in the game, or only half-completed features, but at least we should know about them. I nearly had a death duel with a guy over takeover options, only to find out that only two of those options even work.