No, really, I'm asking this in all seriousness. So far, the devs have been rather forthcoming with the information, both good and bad. Now I'm wondering what happened with this launch.
It seemed to me that most of the game mechanics that were in prior to the re-launch haven't changed. A couple extra tribe features, don't seem to constitute a major change to the game. Now, we're experiencing server crashes (rollbacks?) and lag just like we had weeks prior to the relaunch.
These are issues I (and I'm willing to bet, most of us on here) thought were fixed. Terra-forming worked, with only occasional lag spikes and homestead/tribal totems worked without any bugs. Now, even with features disabled, the lag is through the roof and the server is unstable.
It feels like we've regressed once again to the state the game was in before this launch... and quite honestly, I'm having a hell of a time convincing people out there to spend the time & money to try this game out.
You don't have the budget Sony, Mythic or Blizzard had to screw the pooch like they did with their launches. You don't have the publishers with the marketing power they did either. This game needed to have smooth re-launch in order to stand a chance at attracting people since many features on the list aren't complete yet; it would have been the one draw for people - "Yeah, I know Xsyon isn't quite finished, but they're a small developer. Give them a chance. I mean, look how smooth and stable the game is!"
I'm only saying these things because I'm worried for this game. I want it to be a success, but I'm not going to be blind to reality either. Niche games that come along like this already have a minimal player base. Screw up a launch royally and people just leave without looking back. Take the original World War II Online's launch as a classic example of what not to do. It was a total cluster**** they never fully recovered from and even led to a lawsuit.
My guess is that they mistyped a variable or constant in the tribe formula and didn't notice until it was too late.
Oh, as far as your last paragraph: They also have the experiences of Darkfall and Mortal Online to follow. I hope the devs take some time to read up on the history of Eve-Online, because that game started off pretty much like all these other indie MMOs, learned a few lessons and then fixed what wasn't working so well. It seems the latest batch of indie MMOs are just trying to reinvent the wheel but keep coming up with triangles.
03-12-2011, 05:24 AM
jumpshot
Seems to me what happened is exactly what they thought would happen, and what they told us would happen.
