Observation - tolerant people.

[miko2d]

It seems that WW2OL board is full of extremely tolerant people.

 They are ready to forgive CRS and the publisher outright lies, unfounded arrogance and incompetence.
 What surprises me is how intolerant they are to anyone not as tolerant as they.  
 Just a mention of low framerates or intention to return the game to the store till it's ready for play causes a flamefest of epic proportions. Of course you ahve to understand them - all the supporters of WW2OL in it's current state who cannot log in must have lot of time on their hands to post such flames.

 Speaking of WW2OL and CRS, the only reasonable explanation I've seen of their release fiasco was that they somehow determined non-viability of the product and decided to capitalize on the hype, sell the boxes to recoup the investments and declare bancrupcy before the real state of affairs becomes known.

 That would be a pity. The game seems to be a real gem in those parts that work and just in need of a few more months of development.
 Of course it may be that the bandwidth/server capacity required to support their claims is too expencive to make it profitable.
 Maybe the front-end requirements are insurmountable for the forseable future. It is silly to advertise a cheap $10/month game but require a 1+Ghz with 512MB memory and 64MB card. People who can afford such PCs now could easily pay $50/month and Mac with such capabilities would cost much more.
 Of course they could wait a year till such systems drop in price but that may not work out from the business point of view.

 So if they really had those problems and behaved rationally, that would be the thing to do - hype the product,  take pre-orders, clamp beta-testers mersilessly, cancel open beta, "delay" Mac release (how many Macs out there have power of a high end PC even if the code is as efficient), sell as many copies, then fold.
 The good news would be that the code would remain to be bought at the bancrupcy auction, maybe along with the development team.
 We will see the truth of it soon and I really hope it is not the case.

 I sincerely wish that they were not behaving rationally. That would just mean that the game may be viable and the release was just one of the worst f#@k-ups in history and could be salvaged

 That would mean that their investors/directors are stupid, their marketing out of touch with engineering, their support inexperienced/incompetent and their developers are liers.

 1. Directors had to be stupid to release such a buggy product if only a few weeks of testing would have improved it enormously and avoided lots of grief.
 2. The marketing was misrepresenting and making unfounded claims.
 3. The support people had no idea that their networking/hardware would not handle the traffic and did not care to actually test the systems.

 4. The developers are lying. That I can be sure of. From what is working, I do not doubt their competence. They must have known about the bugs when they claimed game so stable as to not need an open beta. They must have known realistic system requirements.
 I just hope they were lying in support of fumbled reliese rather then bancrupcy scheme.

 What does it imply for myself - not much. If WW2OL survives, I will definitely give it a try.
 I will wait until I see it perform as advertised and then buy it. My time is too valuable to be their tester right now and anyway, honestly testing buggy beta software is quite different from being tricked into buying it.
 Will I buy Gryf's and Mo's products in the future if they work? Sure. Will they have any credit with me? No way.
 They are most likely capable guys as programmers. I will just never trust them. Anything I buy with their name on it will have to be running for a while with lot's of reviews.

 We will have to wait and see and hope. I have always been interested in trying to figh t T34. I have lots of real-life experience with T-72.

 miko

[Toad]

Miko,

From what I have read it was either "publish or perish". The money men told them to put it out or fold the tent completely.

I feel certain they knew it was quite buggy and essentially unplayable. Some will judge them harshly for that, others will allow them a grace period because the game concept is highly desirable.

I do not think this is just a money-grab, however. They continue to work on it and it's already improved.

The question is whether or not they will be able to (1) continue to improve and (2) get it playable on an "average" machine.

I think they will continue to improve. I hope they "make it". Anybody doing WW2 games is doing good work, IMO.   The real question I guess is whether or not the market will allow them the time they need to get up to speed. Place your bets.  

I DO NOT think it will ever be playable on what we all would call an "average" machine at this moment. It's going to take the Gig+/512RAM/64MBVidCard machines to do it right, I think. Their "min specs" are laughable, the "recommended" are barely "min".

Are the Rats "bastiges?" No, I don't think so.

I think they are dreamers who had their dream born prematurely due to pressure from the Suits. I hope the dream survives.  

[Ripsnort]

Well, now you're talking human behavior, something I enjoy discussing after taking several Psych classes in college, and bartending during that time (certainly helped my tips!)..I think once someone has been praising, talking up a sim as this, then once its realized its somewhat 'not ready for primetime'...then to save face, one must continue to stay on their original context..its very hard on ones ego, especially men, to say "I was wrong".

[Westy MOL]

Here!  Here Miko2d.  Pretty good post and although I'm not sure about any bankruptcy, or thier folding, I do agree with the lot of it.

 I've book marked Spitboy and crews "Officers Club" due to the WWII Online (when they used to work) and the StratFirst web boards make me want to puke.
 This is the first time in online gaming that I've ever looked forward to participating in a game and it's community but I had to delete the bookmarks for the common community gathering boards first.  Good thing I never played UO or EQ, huh?  

 Thier boards now make me appreciate much more the old AW (Bigweek), WB's (AGW) and these AH boards.  Luckily, for WW2O, there are good alternatives, private as well as public.

 -Westy

[ 06-13-2001: Message edited by: Westy MOL ]

[MrRiplEy]

It's really a shame WW2OL doesn't have the option to become player supported like Falcon4 f.e.

Someone still has to run the server.. =/

I think the dedication of the core playerbase could be the salvation of the game. Seems like they'd die for it.

[NHFoxtro]

Hey Miko, that had to be the longest post I ever read in my life.

[10Bears]

I think Codemasters will get my money on Sept 12th.
10Bears

[Pongo]

You probably have some good points..
But if you are posting something like this

"Speaking of WW2OL and CRS, the only reasonable explanation I've seen of their release fiasco was that they somehow determined non-viability of the product and decided to capitalize on the hype, sell the boxes to recoup the investments and declare bancrupcy before the real state of affairs becomes known.

"
over there, it is pretty silly of you not to expect to get flamed.

Releasing it in a box makes it so that you have to be ready to ship a month or more befor the real release. The patch was what they have improved since.
I dont not play the game and only read about it here but it is an admirable and very ambitios project. Complaining that it is too ambitios when you are playing it because it is ambitios is like complaining when the .com you invest drops through the bucket. Any reasonable person could see that dogpuke.com could not be worth 200 dollars a share.
The general consensus from reasonable people here was that WW2OL was uber ambitios...
They were right.

But the game play is getting good reviews. And that impossible system will be worth 1000US in 6 months...
But will CRS be there to capitalize?
Fortune favours the bold...
But not on my money please  

[Nashwan]

I don't think the specs needed are as high as that. RAM is the key, if you've got 350 you can get away with a slower processor and graphics card.
Most of the "framerate" issues people complain about are ram related. If your hard disk is accessing like mad when your framerate drops, it's nothing to do with your graphics card, just a lack of memory.
The first time I played online I was hooked. I haven't been able to play since, but I hope they manage to hang on long enough to refine the game into a workable product.

[Gadfly]

You may be right about all the crap, but there is one overriding fact that you touch on, then gloss over:

I will put up with a lot, and I mean a whole lot, just because I WANT this game to exist.

Way back when, as you hardy souls blew major wads of cash and time to play what you must admit was a piece of crap*, I sat back and waited until the game, the price and the hardware was at a point that it became worth it to me personally.  I mean AW, of course, and then WB. I didn't play until 98, though I had know about it since 1995, because at that point(WB2.0), it was good enough for me.

So why am I not waiting?  Times have changed, and there is no way that an online company can make it without cash.  I supported AH without playing it for the same reason.  So, even if you KNOW that is not very good in it's current state, if you ever want to see the concept happen, you better pony up your dollars and your online support.  Not to cheerlead, per se, but simply to encourage the propagation of the game.

Lizking


*How much trouble did the game and servers give you, to say nothing of Genie? Be honest.

edit-Oh yeah, how many times have you upgraded JUST for this or another game?

[ 06-13-2001: Message edited by: Gadfly ]

[AKDejaVu]

At times like this, I am amazed that people saying "I told you so" are suprised by the reaction.

Most of the behavior, as rip pointed out, is defensive.  Of course, its hard not to be defensive when everybody wants to poke you with a stick.

Kinda think everyone needs to relax... those saying the game sucks and those insisting it is awesome.

AKDejaVu

[miko2d]

I do not post on WW2OL boards. I cannot even read them more then once a week - too much bile for my taste. The reasonable explanation about the bancrupcy is posted by someone else.

 CRS had and still have enormous amount of good will among the public. Many people would be willing to help them financially - through preorder. They would even wait a few months. Wouldn't you rather send a company $40 direct so that they get all of it and get no crap in return and a CD in the mail 6 month later with working code, then waste time buying a game for $40 in the store out of which the company gets $10-$20 that does not work?

 I would have gladly paid $50 now for the game to come out in 6 months if the company said they need the cash. I paid for WB for 6 months without playing it when my phone line went bad.
 My only condition would be a little bit more opennes in beta testing, more honesty from developers.

 That was clearly not the case. Gryf and other CRS people were boasting that they have everything under control and rock-stable and behaved extremely arrogant in general.
 The beta-testers were severely clamped down.
 There were quite a few "leaks" from beta testers indicating enormous system requirements that were immediately argued by company and other "beta testers".

 I was sure that CRS people were lying, not the beta testers warning about the problems. That is why I was not preordering anything.

 I am in software business myself and deal with bugs constantly. There is nothing wrong with reasonable amount of them if the programmers do not behave like arrogant prettythangholes.

 miko

[Nash]

I get a chuckle everytime I see someone blaming this on "the suits".

As far as "believing in the game", those suits shelled out a helluhvalot more money on WWIIOnline than yer average $40 spending "it's not CRS' fault!" fanatic.

You can bet that the suits are probably a little more pissed off at the state of things than the players are.

We know what unfulfilled promises were made to the gamers, but we can only wonder at the extent of the unfulfilled promises made to the investors.

As with the reality of CRS' pockets running only so deep, it is the same with the investors. To expect that they should have the means to tie up untold sums of their money for another year of development based on a promise of release that has probably *already* been significanty missed, is a bit nuts.

Look at it from another perspective... B17-2.

Many blame the suits for the developers having to yank multiplayer. I can just imagine how that meeting must have gone:

"What the #@%%$ do you MEAN yer now not able to offer multiplayer?! Are you seriously sitting here telling me that you want us to fund you guys for another damn year so that you can implement this thing that you @#$$# TOLD US would be in the game when we ponied up for this? Fer chrissakes yer ALREADY 6 months behind schedule!"

Really... if WWIIOnline goes tits up and CRS goes bankrupcy court, it wouldn't be a stretch to find out that the investors are the next ones on the docket.

[Spitboy]

Point of order, the Officers Club is datter's baby. I'm just pitching in helping folks with support issues.  

I gotta disagree with miko's suggestion about them pushing it out to recoup some cash before bankruptcy. Killer has said CRS gets under $10 per box, and I see no reason to disbelieve him. If you figure 50,000 box sales, which is pretty optimistic, that's only $500,000 for CRS. That ain't even a drop in the bucket compared to what they've shelled out over the past 2+ years. I'm guessing it's costing them well over a million a year in salaries alone. Then the BV engine on their website is at least half a million, all those 25 servers, 200 meg/sec pipe, etc., etc. I would not be suprised to see them in the hole for $6 million or more.

What seems more likely to me is they were simply outta money, due to the launch date slipping, and slipping, and slipping. And the investors/distributors/suits were out of patience. The decision was made to push it out because the estimated $250,000 to $500,000 CRS would recoup in box sales would be enough to push them through three or four more months of development, to get the game to a playable state, and then start recouping costs from subscriptions. Makes sense to me.

Unfortunately, the game was really a month or so from even that point.

Like Gadfly, I'm going to support them with my dollars right now, because I have a blast in game, and I can see the potential for an even greater game once it's all working. I think they have the right idea - they just need to push it across the finish line somehow. Hopefully that can be done in short order.

Spitboy -SW-

[Vulcan]

I don't think there is anyone who hangs out here doesn't want WW2OL to become a reality. I just think theres a lot of us who see past the cheerleading and hype and realize the cold truth that WW2OL falls way short of the expectations it built up, and may not survive long term.

There are more than just RAM problems with this game.

First, get past the server issues, the system requirements, and you'll see the graphics engine is not ground breaking - its reminiscent of a 3 year old Microprose engine with some extra bits tacked on.

The underlying skeleton of the game is there, however it is far from fleshed out. Look at all the loadout/skin/ammo options you can't use yet. This rings alarm bells to me.

Then take a look at the scoring system - or lack of it. System messages even. The cupboard is empty.

Then the strategy system, at the moment its basically the same old spawn->CTF stuff we usually see.

The FM is what feels like a very early stage. Its got issues like the drag modelling.

Lastly look at the weaponry, rifles and smgs, a couple of tanks, a couple of trucks, a couple of AT guns, a couple of aircraft - per side.

What you currently see is more like a demo than a release.

I think people will start to get very bored, and very frustrated once the initial "oohhh-ahhh" period wears off. Which is a pity, because I was really looking forward to WW2OL - or something like it.