Monthly Development Update -- January 25th 2013

[Dafie]

new engine would have sold all problem (population, new player,) and it's the one who gets the more delayed...go figure

like balancing would be a preocupation for most ppl, they all making lvl 200 toon to kill greeny at batle station imo like mmo were meant to be balanced anyway.

New player from steam or anywhere els wont stay anyway(am not even speaking of subscription just play for free is out of dunno how to say like "arretez de delirer" 17.19 euro a month ? i can pay me yeah i love ao it's an old addiction but a new player wont pay that or so few specialy when it come to your mind that from an obscure reason US player will pay less), and a new noob island wont help...

Merge is good, but city, name, towerz, bot point... lots of drama is coming i beleiv, hard to say if that's not gonna make more ppl leave than come back (not even mentioning server rivality).

to bad AO is unique it has a great potential, it made me buy great game like Dreamfall, but the way it's going since 2008-2009 made me simply boycott any product from FC.

kind regards

[Psikie]

Not too bad. Timeline seems to be updated. From what I gather...

Merge within 60 days after a few more soft patches on test.

NPE probably late summer testserver, along with partial rebalance. Which will probably get about 4-6 patches to get it right. Those 2 seem to be linked logistically.

Engine will be delayed until after rebalance sometime from what i'm understanding. Most likely from reverse engineering the graphics to work on lower video settings?

[Endymion]

Originally Posted by Lazy that's what kickstarter is for

And someone with a Unreal 3 engine license *cough* and the ability to start adding to that code base....

*googles antonyms for Anarchy*


Order Online coming soon with Unreal 3 Engine....

You heard it here first :-p

[equilibrium]

Well , Funcom Admin Leaders doing what they do best .... ruin things .... nothing new.

[Philty]

The news look very bad. Disruption caused by transferring of activities brings just more delay in the moment when achievements are needed to not loose last bits of population of dedicated players.
I would be very surprised if AO will survive end of this year when I see how FC disintegrates slowly.
And such brilliant game it is...

[Gralmuph]

http://www.break.com/pictures/most-b...tional-2409738
... well yeah :P

[cbus97]

Originally Posted by Esssch So FC is trying to be like Valve.

Bwhahaha did you just use Funcom and Valve in the same sentence?

[Rikaria]

for a limited time the first part of the NPE was on test, when it was first there it was spammy as hell but that got fixed and it was alot better but then over night it got removed.

the NPE will also need the new ICC to be put in game as it leads to that so till it is back on test with the new ICC we will have to wait.

[Lazy]

Originally Posted by Psikie Engine will be delayed until after rebalance sometime from what i'm understanding. Most likely from reverse engineering the graphics to work on lower video settings?

rofl.

[Ilaliya]

Originally Posted by Esssch So FC is trying to be like Valve, where the developers choose what project they'd like to work on, or what?

Part of the restructuring is to address some long-standing bureaucratic inefficiencies within the company, especially pertaining to cross-team communication. If I didn't have to be conscious of PR and the fact anything I say now might make the gaming press who are trying to read (into) the tea-leaves, I could use the word "Byzantine."

Whether or not the restructuring actually alleviates these issues isn't up to me, but it's at least encouraging the existing structure is recognized as being non-optimal.

[Esssch]

Originally Posted by cbus97 Bwhahaha did you just use Funcom and Valve in the same sentence?

Yes. If you had any sort of reading comprehension, you'd understand why I did so.

[Misat0]

On that note Ilaliya: Is the plan that Producers / Game Directors will decide how to share the time of the combined team by themselves or will this be mandated from "above"?

[Lazy]

Originally Posted by Ilaliya If I didn't have to be conscious of PR

why do you have to be conscious of PR?

[Toyhazard]

Monthly Development Update - April 2013

No progress has been made on AO this month.

kthnxbye

[haxi]

Originally Posted by Misat0 On that note Ilaliya: Is the plan that Producers / Game Directors will decide how to share the time of the combined team by themselves or will this be mandated from "above"?

I doubt it is a given that FC will even have a dedicated Producer for each game when the dust settles.

[Ilaliya]

Originally Posted by Deathsrow Monthly Development Update - April 2013 No progress has been made on AO this month. kthnxbye

There has been a ton of progress on the server merge and the new player experience, and the engine until we learned about the restructuring internally. After we got the information, we had to shuffle priorities. Because you want every feature to be at a good "pausing point" so it can be picked up again with minimal hassle after the move.

For us, this means we need to push hard on the server merge so it happens before the move, and we need to get the NPE to testlive because moving studios is always disruptive to production and the NPE is going to need to be on testlive for awhile, because there is so much content there. Meanwhile, the engine is already playable internally (like, actually playable), and we're not going to have time to reach the next "pausing point" (external beta) before the move anyway. All the move did was increase the internal priority of the NPE vs the engine.

[sveisvei]

I hope this will work out great for AO. If not, I as well wont be renewing my 12-month-sub again (not playing - been paying for alot of months to support engineupgrade) in hope for the engine to come live.

Hoping for the best, and hope the team can stay on somehow. A legacy codebase isnt easy to navigate, and stuff/code/services in AO is certainly hacky to my knowledge, as patching a game from sub 2000.

[Ilaliya]

Originally Posted by Lazy why do you have to be conscious of PR?

It's part of my job.

[Notcrattey]

This could either turn out really bad or really good. Oh well I'm still having fun so I will keep playing regardless.

[Lazy]

Originally Posted by Ilaliya It's part of my job.

does that mean you're moving to NC?