Monthly Development Update: February 2012

[Khlin]

Well, guess what. That's exactly what FC has been asking us to do for over 5 years. "Stick around, the good stuff is coming! We swear!!"

No, they always said they are working on it. All promises were made under best efforts premises.

5 years... a tad exaggerated, but who's counting right?

Also, all companies say/will say "Stick around! The best stuff is yet to come!" and I still can count on the fingers of one hand those that rise to that kind of expectations. Probably, I'm one of the more jaded Interwebz dwellers and I never bank on "we promise you the second coming" promises. I'm usually happy they still take an interested in improving, and to be true, FC actually improved AO over the past 3-5 years no matter how much I would dislike some their less important decisions.

Those billboards had no problem running videos such as Air Force and Toyota commercials and ingame concerts ( that only half the players were allowed to see ), so there's no reason they can't run a video of the new engine. And it'd be nice for them to be used for something other than AOUniverse ads since fr00bs play entirely free now without having to see any real ads.

Probably would work fine if they played it like interlaced bink videos.

[Phixalicious]

No, they always said they are working on it. All promises were made under best efforts premises.

5 years... a tad exaggerated, but who's counting right?

Also, all companies say/will say "Stick around! The best stuff is yet to come!" and I still can count on the fingers of one hand those that rise to that kind of expectations. Probably, I'm one of the more jaded Interwebz dwellers and I never bank on "we promise you the second coming" promises. I'm usually happy they still take an interested in improving, and to be true, FC actually improved AO over the past 3-5 years no matter how much I would dislike some their less important decisions.

Engine was first announced in 2007 by Sil. Welcome to 2012. 5 years. Talk of "rebalance" has been around longer than that, but who's counting right?

[Khlin]

Engine was first announced in 2007 by Sil. Welcome to 2012. 5 years. Talk of "rebalance" has been around longer than that, but who's counting right?

Integrating the newer Dreamworld engine is rather recent. The rest were failed attempts and I'm taking them as such.

Would I have wanted the engine yesterday? Yes, I would. But I would rather they use something that would not create issues further along the road, aka the bigger picture.

I'm not an FC fanboi and at times I've been known to rage again FC and you could gather several tomes of moderation-worthy content I've spewed in the org chat. But that doesn't mean I can't be realistic about it.

So, FC's decision to implement their own Dreamworld engine in the game instead of some randomly chosen 3rd party sounds a lot better to me although it still annoys me it has taken this long. But, I do agree with their decision.

As for the rebalancing act, they did show some initiative regarding some profession abilities. Not a full scale, but they did.

As for FC still keeping the team together, improving hosting conditions and hiring more people, if that doesn't mean they still want this game as part of their portfolio, then I don't know what does.

FC has not put AO into conservation state which would simply mean keeping the servers up. They still roll updates considering how big the team is at this point.

And they must have realized that backing down on their GFX/rebalance/startup experience would mean a debacle as big as AoC's initial failure as far as gamers are concerned. Going back on their promise to update the game to this extent would hurt them quite a lot.

AO is still being remembered by quite a lot of people, granted with mixed feelings, but it is remembered. Some have bought into the bash-FC trend, others that they have played the game and it's a good experience as far as the meta-game is concerned. This is also shown by the fact that we lost the CMA contest by 3 votes since DAOC has better exposure than AO currently, but we still held our own.

In terms of software development, especially when working with a small team, you give expectations under best efforts and, unfortunately, the process is not always 100% transparent due to various reasons that are outside AO's team scope.

So, again, I concur with FC's move to further delay the engine release so they could have a solid integration of the Dreamworld engine instead of half-assing it with a 3rd party solution. I concur also because I do take a role in software development processes where I work and because I put my a$$ on the line for delaying product launches because I felt it wasn't the right time, even though I had to go up against sales or marketing department and, at times, the board and making them quite unhappy about it.

[Keldros]

Integrating the Dreamworld engine is rather recent. The rest were failed attempts and I'm taking them as such.

AO has been using the Dreamworld engine since 2001.

[Khlin]

AO has been using the Dreamworld engine since 2001.

Yes, I know. I meant about the newer version. I shall make the necessary amends, massah!

[Psikie]

No, they always said they are working on it. All promises were made under best efforts premises.

5 years... a tad exaggerated, but who's counting right?

Also, all companies say/will say "Stick around! The best stuff is yet to come!" and I still can count on the fingers of one hand those that rise to that kind of expectations. snip

1. Uhm just curious, is the game worth paying to play it as is now?

2. Would you keep playing AO if there was never to be a new engine/rebalance/start-up?

3. If the answer to those questions is no, do you realize how silly you look for complaining about having a subscription right now?

I suggest that you contact me in game to transfer all your creds and YESDROPS to one of my safe and secure froob banks. Then promptly cancel your subscription. Remember to do it in this specific order.

A> contact Psikie
B> transfer goodies
C> cancel subscription

You will then have more time to play farmville and facebook what you ate for breakfast to your 200 closest internet contacts. And you can rejoice in the fact that you no longer have anything to complain about in the world and watch your blood pressure drop. Remember always follow your ABC's.

[Otansaanpas]

Brilliant idea. Though how is quality affected in-world by the existing engine.. I"m kinda newbie on graphics and such.. can they show a high quality version of the new engine in the game that is running the org engine?

billboards are only displaying raster images. quality loss with streaming video in AOs billboards is almost as high as watching your favourite jpeg with a web browser.
in billboard there is only perspective and general brightness from environment that makes the video slightly different.
bigger issue would be FC using heavier compression on video to reduce file-size that needs to be downloaded.

[Otansaanpas]

Probably would work fine if they played it like interlaced bink videos.

why on earth you'd want interlaced anything?

[Khlin]

why on earth you'd want interlaced anything?

Just a reference on how crappy it would look to have the new engine streamed through the in-game billboard.

[Mastablasta]

Looking crappy perhaps, but still playing to show people who might not keep up with forums and other news on the game that stuff is going on. And there are quite a lot of those.

[Bombqueen]

+1 to streaming the new vid on the in-game billboards the moment it hits the gaming press.

[Cogline]

Is there any way for the billboards to display a message like: "GO TO THIS URL, LOG IN WITH FORUM NAME & PASSWORD TO SEE A ROUGH CUT OF NEW VID! Sh! Don't tell Marketing, they'll go mental about this." ? Just a way to show the the video in all its g(l)ory without nonplayers seeing it and ruining it for Marketing.

[MrMojoRisin]

The person above me must change their Avatar. IT'S MINE.

[lindelu]

Quick update: Doing some interviews this week for major gaming sites (related to the new video), will keep you posted. Peace out. ..I can't believe I said peace out.

[Tradeher]

first!

[ManUnitedFan]

Second and 2 weeks after really? And still no video peace out

[Gunforhire]

Drumroll please!!!!!

[Gunfytr]

Well, I think it should be pretty obvious this isn't what I'm saying.

The opportunity I'm talking about is an outcome of the three major features the team is working on -- the engine, the new player experience/tutorial, and the systems changes. Taken together, these three improvements will do a great deal for the game. Now as I said a number of times on this thread, we had a lot of positive internal feedback from the video and I made the decision to "do something with it" despite the fact this added a little bit of time to the process. We really wanted to get it out to as broad an audience of MMO players as possible, especially people who might not even know that we are doing an engine upgrade. Or have had AO fall off their radar entirely.

The fact is if we delay a video of the new engine by a few days or a few weeks from when it was originally intended I don't quite see how impacts your play experience. I do understand your disappointment, but please realize it's something we're doing because we think that is the best move for the game as a whole. And I apologize for any inconvenience it may cause.

You know...if I read that 3 or 4 years ago, I would have nodded and said "cool". Now?

Do you realize that ppl have completed high school waiting for this? That ppl have achieved college degrees, gotten married, advanced thier careers? Hell, kids that were BORN when this was first announced are STARTING SCHOOL now. This is not some 6 month runover. This is a string along of epic proportions.

I was a die hard fan boi for a long time. Watched my active, 25+ person org dwindle, til I was alone. Then I started to see what they saw. I havent logged in since the first part of Janruary.

[Notcrattey]

Still not as bad as blizzard taking 11 years, heh.

[Phixalicious]

Still not as bad as blizzard taking 11 years, heh.

Blizzard had no worries about whether there'd be anyone left to play it.