DBM Status Update (Updated Mar 1st, 21)

[MysticalOS]

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After much discussion with mother, despite the 25k cost for lower implants, they were done yesterday, October 3rd.

We convinced him to up the number of them from 6 to 7, and he even grafted some bone he found that had cracked. He said I may need gum/tissue grafting still depending on healing but said he'd do that if it's needed at no additional cost.

This procedure should provide excellent long term stability and bone support to avoid additional bone shrinking down the line, with 7, the bone should be able to well retained even long term.

I was not ideal to pay so much, but at same time, didn't have luck with other dentists and most research I had done showed he pretty much was providing me with the best options. He even managed to use 3mm diameter implants which is more than I could have hoped for considering he could have minis that were 2-2.25mm . That was another of my big concerns. the 4-5mm ones would have still be far more ideal but that would have added significant cost and more surgery to basically bone transplant a large bone graft to rebuild my ridge. He was very confident the 7 implants that are 3mm diameter 8mm length would be sturdy enough.

Is it as robust as perfect solution I originally wanted and feel I should have gotten for the same money 6 months ago, no. However, the the mistakes of first doctor and delays thereafter trying to fix the damage he had done, I'm confident in all my research (and trust me i did a lot), that this is best that could be done and the best guy that could do it anywhere close to me. This makes me a bit happier. I hopefully no longer have to worry about 15 years from now having implant failures from only having 4-6 placed in middle and still having bone atrophy on the outer edges of jaw or super thin minis that would fail/break under x amount of hours of chewing load. 7 will be able to really cover things I hope.

There is currently nothing loaded on the implants yet and i'm on a strict liquid diet for 2 weeks right now. Tons of medication too.

Costs for uppers and sinus stuff still up in air, but at least I wont look terrible with facial collapse by the time i'm 50. Still hoping that this story, beginning to end can reach the doctors helping me and they can work with me with what budget I have left for rest of work that still needs doing. Give this coder just a little more hope.

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On DBM end:
I had a classic wow side project to put the Hud to good use, which is nearly done. The cool stuff I did with Hud should be remarkable too.

As for remaining classic dungeons, I elected to put them on hold for now. 8.3 is very soon and I'll need to put my time there.

DBM-Classic is more than good enough for the raids (best there is at the moment) and you should defintely use and enjoy it. I also really hope to get the hud stuff into peoples hands soon. Something that'll probably be more popular for leveling players than the dungeon mods were. :)

[MysticalOS]

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Late post, but been dealing with lots of unexpected things AND tons of DBM work.

Sinus issues turned out to be false alarm. That's good news. What could have been expensive ended up only a 150 dollar appointment that said "false alarm, no major issues there preventing upper dental surgery".

Upper surgery not scheduled yet but we'll probably talk about that wed oct 23rd at my next appointment when we do 3rd follow up of my surgury on lower jaw. I'm also going to see if he can work with me on price again, since I got some other very bad news in last two weeks. I'm not going to trouble you guys with details since I couldn't possibly ask anything more from wow community. I'm going to continue using money you already gave me to finish the dental work I started and that's that. I'll figure something else out for the other stuff.

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On DBM end:
8.3 PTR raid testing has been very fast paced from blizzard. Out of 12 boss raid, 5 have been tested and COMPLETED already, 4 more have been drycoded and I plan to have 5th ready in next couple days between multiple doctors appointments. I'll have another dbm release out before this weeks testing even happens, with mods already supporting all bosses being tested, as I have the previous weeks of testing.

On another note, I'm probably going to be shifting from posting here and more posting toward discord from now on (probably in the supporters channel). I have no idea how long this website will even be up, considering it's being kept up for free by someone I can't expect to keep it up forever. As such, I want to become less reliant on site going forward.

[MysticalOS]

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Figured I'd post one final dental/medical update here on forums. I still post more regularly on discord btw for those who'll join and come hang out. you can engage with me any day during most hours of the day.

Upper surgery happened November 15th. At this point all costs are paid for. I do not yet have teeth because i'm still healing and letting the implants fuse with the bones. I have actually uploaded full medical costs online to show where all that support went here: (https://imgur.com/a/lx2TIc5)

If that weren't enough, my dog Max had a bad year too (https://imgur.com/a/nyVeFqx). This was already beyond what I could afford, but you don't tell your fury baby no. You find a way to make it work, and I did. Fortunately I've always been one that's good with money and scraping by when needing to. I never did get to actually hire any help with DBM though. Doctors saw to that!

So at the end of the day, no golden chairs or mattresses stuffed full of 100 dollar bills, at least for me. The doctors I paid over the last year got that. It is what it is though, as I said many times in this thread, I never expected that dental journey to be over a year long and that price gouged. But in the US, that's the state of healthcare system. 2nd 3rd, 20th medical opinions be damned, because they stick together when it comes to pricing (because believe me I tried them all, diff doctors online, offline, hell even reddit). 63k in dental costs and 12k in vet costs was never what I imagined for 2018-2019. However, it needed to be done regardless. Thanks to all of you, that was possible. I may be broke now, but I'm healthy, my dog is healthy, my mother is doing well, and although DBM support has wavered considerably, it's still doing alright for now too.

Now, I finally feel like I am near the end of this medical journey. I'm probably mere weeks from finally biting into a piece of food that isn't soft, for the first time in over a year. Honestly, I can't wait. Ironically, I have even gained a little weight NOT being able to eat food, because when you only eat soft foods for so long your diet is REALLY crappy and full of processed foods and lacking in quality. Once teeth are finally in, I can't wait to eat a little healthier and get a little belly fat off :D.

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As for DBM currently and for future.

Both DBM for retail and DBM for classic are doing really well.

Work on 8.3 content patch is going fantastically and quite near completion, merely awaiting bits and pieces that simply aren't available yet (such as mythic N'zoth) and more LFR and normal data for bosses not yet testedin those mods.

Work on Classic is touch ups here and there since it's basically a content gap at moment. Although blizzard has thrown a few curveballs that caused me to go back and fix things a few times (like nerfing combat log range). However, I'm always on top of things and never let DBM be affected by things for long.

I even continue to future proof anything I work on with future considerations like BC and Wrath in mind. In fact, when I ported DBM to classic, I ensured that DBM-Classic basically has all the code for BC and Wrath ready to go in most situations. DBM-Classic as a project should have no problem moving forward, if classic does.

DBM-PvP mods are still not quite 100% yet and it shows mostly in classic since AV basically has 0 support still. This is still something i'd like to fix but may take some more time since I was never actually able to expand the DBM team beyond one person since the medical bills were so high and Patreon declined too fast. Fortunately the pvp mods are getting a little volunteer help here and there but that'll take a bit more time. Hopefully within next week or two.

[MysticalOS]

I've been holding off on making this post for months now, however I really need to rebuild support. It’s declined so much this year. From Covid, from people leaving wow, plus in general me HATING talking about/asking for DBM support because I always feel guilty for it even though It’s sorely needed.

I'm not the type of person that asks for development support every month to refill people who have left when in reality I should be if I ever want to maintain a flat line. That's just not me. I try to just make great mods and let word of mouth and great work be enough. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be working, likely mainly do to fact that even now and even after surge from 2 years ago, most just remain completely unaware 1 person works on DBM full time and relies on that crowdfunding support to create all these mods. Addon authors are in a tough spot because unlike other forms of content creation (such as youtubers, streamers, etc), we're not constantly in your face, and there are no sub reminders or sub goals to look at all the time. We're very much out of sight out of mind in that regard.

While 2 years ago you all helped me massively recover from an unhealthy situation, many did not stick around after that to continue supporting the full time work that goes into DBM. A lot of that support was short term given by people rallying to help me personally (for which I'll be forever grateful for) but not nearly as many people actually supporting the work itself, DBM. Basically, support for DBM has been in free fall since that surge and obviously the state of world and WoW during BfA certainly didn't help any either.

Now, I'm not asking for people go crazy again like last time, as I didn't even ask for that last time (but again, thank you for that). However, DBM's development requires enough support to at least be able to make a living doing it without stressing over it. I have been stressing about where the graphs are trending and although I'm getting by right now, that becomes more cloudy months from now. People continue to drop support with not much new support coming in.

What I want is people who use and believe in the work to commit to longer term support (even just 1 dollar a month helps or you can even do once per year now of just 10 dollars if you wanted). While I appreciate those that do give larger short term support, it brings volatility to long term support. DBM as a project needs long term supporters supporting the work, not just me or my immediate needs. People sticking around with DBM for years to come so I can make great mods and hopefully one day truly can expand the team beyond myself and occasional unpaid volunteer help that I constantly feel guilty about not being able to pay.

Currently patreon sits at around 1300 supporters, with about 800 of them being 1 dollar pledges (and believe me those are most reliable ones, those are the ones that tend not to cancel after 1 2 or 3 months). DBM receives hundreds of thousands of downloads, monthly, so there are still MANY users out there, likely uninformed that they can help with so little effort. Again, I don't want to rely on a handful of bigger supporters picking up the slack in short term that eventually fall off later, when there is potential to have MANY more smaller supporters make a difference without ever feeling like they are missing what they are giving.

Ways you can support and more info can be found here:
https://github.com/DeadlyBossMods/Deadl ... efits-Info

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Also, seeing last post from this thread is pretty old. I'll at least state what's going on with DBM so far.

• PVP mods were pretty much fully restored to former glory and even improved upon. They are a big success in retail and classic wow.
• Shadowlands content mods are going very well, both in thanks to many many MANY hours I put in but also from a still ongoing partnership with Limit to provide raid testing data that only further bolsters DBM up. DBM is going to go into shadowlands very strong.
• Classic mods are also going very well. There is hardly a classic stream i don't open up that isn't not only using DBM, but appreciating just how much DBM stepped up to support classic community.
• There has even been some prep for TBC. Any free time away from shadowlands, retail, and classic, I've thrown into reviewing and improving TBC mods, which will eventually be reverse ported to TBC Classic if and when that happens. I will not simply dump mods written over a decade ago into TBC classic without modernizing them with 2020 level of quality and features modern DBM users expect.
• A ton of improvements to core and gui have even been made thanks to some paid help I was able too commission for a lot of that work and they've even thrown in a lot of volunteer help when I was no longer able to pay them. I'd love to commission even more work, many more hours of help to continue that work too which is one of reasons I make this post. I can always use more help and being able to afford it is a huge relief of burden of my shoulders. Peoples time is valuable and being able to compensate it is very good feeling.

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"But wait whatever did happen with health, I don't want to read through 3 pages of updates".

After going to wrong specialist first, poorly done extractions, going to right guy after but so many things to fix and tons of months (years now?) of visits and 62k+ later, Gums are healthy, implants are in, but actually still no teeth yet. Covid shutdown combined with fact of massive overbookings do to shortages of good doctors has lead to massive delays. I should finally have teeth, for first time in over 2 years, in coming months but it's still in progress. Everything is paid for and now it's just process of continued impressions and fittings and try ins before finalized hybrid denture/teeth are put on the implants.

[MysticalOS]

While 2 years ago you all helped me massively recover from an unhealthy situation, many did not stick around after that to continue supporting the full time work that goes into DBM. A lot of that support was short term given by people rallying to help me personally (for which I'll be forever grateful for) but not nearly as many people actually supporting the work itself, DBM. Basically, support for DBM has been in free fall since that surge and obviously the state of world and WoW during BfA certainly didn't help any either.

Now, I'm not asking for people go crazy again like last time, as I didn't even ask for that last time (but again, thank you for that). However, DBM's development requires enough support to at least be able to make a living doing it without stressing over it. I have been stressing about where the graphs are trending and although I'm getting by right now, that becomes more cloudy months from now. People continue to drop support with not much new support coming in.

What I want is people who use and believe in the work to commit to longer term support (even just 1 dollar a month helps or you can even do once per year now of just 10 dollars if you wanted). While I appreciate those that do give larger short term support, it brings volatility to long term support. DBM as a project needs long term supporters supporting the work, not just me or my immediate needs. People sticking around with DBM for years to come so I can make great mods and hopefully one day truly can expand the team beyond myself and occasional unpaid volunteer help that I constantly feel guilty about not being able to pay.

Currently patreon sits at around 1300 supporters, with about 800 of them being 1 dollar pledges (and believe me those are most reliable ones, those are the ones that tend not to cancel after 1 2 or 3 months). DBM receives hundreds of thousands of downloads, monthly, so there are still MANY users out there, likely uninformed that they can help with so little effort. Again, I don't want to rely on a handful of bigger supporters picking up the slack in short term that eventually fall off later, when there is potential to have MANY more smaller supporters make a difference without ever feeling like they are missing what they are giving.

^ This is still accurate, and it's been a few more months. Cloudy is starting to arrive.

2020 was rough on us all. I certainly don't fault anyone removing a pledge they could no longer afford. This goes back to what I keep saying though. Relying on people giving a lot is extremely volatile. I'd rathor many users (DBM literally has hundreds of thousnds of them) giving 1-3 dollars a month or even as little as 10 dollars a year that they'd literally not even miss. People giving 10, 25, 50 etc for a few short months then dropping out is appreciated, but also extremely volatile if no one fills that void when that support eventually ends. That's what makes support look like this \, which is exactly how support has looked literally since 2018 surge. Tons of short term support and long term support still entirely unreliable.

I got out of a bad place, and still out of that bad place, but I don't ever want to be there again. All I've ever wanted was to flatten line and be able to have a reliable month to month/year to year I can count on not being less than previous month/year. A place that lets me not worry about having enough saved up for taxes because well pump, dishwasher, and washing machine all broke down same month (yes that happened). Something that gives me buffer to deal with those things and pay taxes and bring in developer help as much as I need to provide best service I can to DBM. It's why I set the goals at reasonable and fair levels that showed exactly amounts I need to meet those goals. Unfortunately, DBM has been below some of those support goals for nearly a good year now. I'm already feeling stretched

I wish there was way to reward you all for your support better than discord perks but hands are tied with premium addon services nor do I ever want to do that anyways. I basically just need more people to believe in work enough to support it and that's it.

I've thought about things like dropping classic mod maintenance and not supporting TBC when it's launched, but it's not in my nature to hold back stretch goals even when they aren't met. I'm the kind of person that'll just overwork myself to meet extra goals by myself than make my users suffer. Take all that burden on. In an ideal world though, help would be greatly appreciated.

Every time I've tweeted about this last few months, it gets lots of likes and replies, but not gaining any traction of actual supporters. Last tweet was 30 likes and 13 retweets last I looked and it earned 2 new supporters, that replaced 8 that dropped. -6 better than -8, but I want to stop being in negative. I don't even care if I get no growth but I need the decline (\) to stop. Help me flatten that line.

As for a small DBM update. Just kinda working on bug reports/fixes for classic and retail and waiting for TBC beta and 9.1 PTR. Both of these things will have me extremely busy since I will have to do them both probably at same time the best I can. I might even stream some of this now that internet is a bit better. Teeth update, not really much to report, same boat as last report.

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TL/DR:
1. DBM support continues to decline beyond what I'm comfortable with. I could really use more stability in support from more users (vs active users trying to stretch themselves thinner, I don't want that). Help is appreciated but not required. I just hope more that can give a little get involved so weight of this project is carried by many more (and thus becomes lighter on everyone).
2. DBM has been well below additional help goals quite some time and it's leaving me shoulder more of work alone. There is volenteer help but it's limited because you can only expect so much time from volenteers that in all honesty deserve pay.
3. DBM is in bugfix mode short term awaiting a big storm of work that's going to make march and beyond extremely extremely busy (especially one person).
4. Despite heavy decline, I still put forth my best effort to support all WoW versions while staying on top of retail and upcoming retail ptrs. However, If 9.1 ptr and TBC Beta overlap though (and I expect that they will) i'll be stretched thin. I may have to reduce amount of work that goes into TBC mods if 9.1 needs excessive attention. If you want that to change, and me to be able to have more help/resources, help push those DBM support goals back up. Otherwise, I'll do the best that I can, but am at blizzards scheduling mercy