Pushed back for the 6..no 7th time? becoming vaporware?

Jenus1

As the crowds flock to games such as WAR, AOC's release date is pushed back yet again, making the number of times delayed a possible 6-7.



http://www.newsweb.no/newsweb/index.jsp?messageId=201101&lang=1







Feels like this game can't live up to the hype, or wants to, but just doesn't have the quality





/discuss

Kokushibyou

I'll take a delay over a bad launch anyday.  This is good news, it will give them time to fix some of the problems the game is having.

Hoobley_deleted

www.funcom.com/wsp/funcom/frontend.cgi

 

I will play this game one day...

eric_w66

It won't be vaporware, but as far as Vanguard 2.0, that remains to be seen.

As a developer/programmer, programs *always* take longer than you expect/plan for. And, of course, typically the schedules are made by people who AREN'T coders. "It should only take 5 weeks to do this whole thing!" etc.... that's like saying "It should only have taken Michealangelo 3 weeks to paint that ceiling!" hehe (it took him 4 years or so).

Besides coding issues, hardware issues (changing specs over such a long period of time), and personnel issues, you have wonderful issues such as gameplay design problems. A good example of this is what happened to "Hell" in AoC. They nixed it because it wasn't fun. It SOUNDED like a great thing, but alas, it was a great idea that didn't work. Concept != reality . So many great ideas have to be discarded because they simple don't work. And game design is rife with those kinds of things.

puma713

Lobotomist

6th push back ...

Do you really think 1 month pushback, will be enough if they didnt manage to fix it 1 year long pushback ?

gadunk

FunCom remembers all too well what happened with the Anarchy Online launch. It was pushed out way way way too early. I talked to Tommy Strand at the E3 event 1 month before release and told him we weren't ready (I was part of the alpha/beta and the starting group of ARK), and he pretty much said he had no choice and we had to be ready in 1 month. Well, the launch was a disaster.

I'm sure FunCom will do whatever they can to avoid that happening again.

singsofdeath

Heh, guess I'll have to swallow my earlier words. ^_^

 

But hey, 6th or 7th pushback? Wow, I sure have missed something. Anyway, I'm not really happy about the pushback (because damn, I wanna plaaaaaaaaaay), but I'm trying to hope that it's for the good of the game. Polish and all that.

urbanmonkey

Originally posted by puma713

Saddly that is exactly how I feel.

Selencia

My feeling is they're having major setbacks - possibly from a lackluster closed beta, or from overwhelmed programmers trying to keep up with a deadline. First removing 2 classes and the possibility of removing features from launch (prestige classes) and soon after, an 8 week delay. I can't imagine 8 weeks is going to make a huge different in how polished/finished the game is, we can expect to see AoC around Fall, I think.

eric_w66

 

Originally posted by Selencia


I can't imagine 8 weeks is going to make a huge different in how polished/finished the game is, we can expect to see AoC around Fall, I think.

 

It all depends on the real current state of the game. If most of the serious problems are fixed, you can fix 1000 small issues in the time it takes to fix/code one big issue. Sounds like they chopped out a few "big" things and pushed the date back so they can start work on all the little details they've had to neglect (and were giving them bad press in the leaks).

I know in my bug reporting/fixing of my programs (business apps), I can take care of lots of little things in no time, while some bug reports (or feature requests from my support staff or customers) make me want to commit suicide.

So Funcom severed some dying limbs, and now has some extra time to polish and heal the wounds so they won't leave huge scars on Conan's body .

dannis

You may be right, Selencia.

Well hopefully they can finish up adding content into the game and fixing all the bugs. I head that Mid to Late game stuff wasn't really that well developed (past level 20 pretty much). I think the game engine is coming along nicely as well as other parts of the game (sound, etc.) but there is not enough content in the game. Those beta-testing NDA violators were right, a lot of stuff isn't even in the game yet!

 

Maybe FC should hire more developers

eric_w66

Originally posted by dannis


Maybe FC should hire more developers

Too many cooks spoil the soup. You can pile on artists fairly easily, but programmers are harder to add and keep up returns. I managed a group of four (including myself) for a while and I couldn't have found a use for a 5th on the projects we had. If we had wanted to start a completely DIFFERENT project, I could have used them (and we did have multiple projects lined up). There was just "no room" in the code for any more programmers. I'd be in the core guts of the code (which means others couldn't be), and one guy would be doing the maintenance screens (easy job, given to the noobs usually), another guy would be working on slightly more difficult screens (my 2nd in command) and the poor 4th guy (the real noob) would get the extremely unfun task of working on the reports (laying reports out is a BISH in the software we had to write). A 5th programmer just wouldn't have fit inside that.

Too often in big projects, you get one guy who finishes his task,  and he can't move on till programmer B is done with his, and programmer B can't move on till programmer C finishes HIS.... it gets ugly.

ThomasN7

I like Funcom but they simply want to push too much out at one time and they can't fix anything on time either. It's like that old saying, you can't shove 10lbs of potatoes in a 5lb bag. I'm glad they didn't just go ahead with the release because they would have been disasterous. Though there is so many times you can keep waiting and waiting until you eventually just don't care anymore if this comes out or not. 

If they are having issues now just getting this to release I wonder what it is going to be like when the have issues during gameplay and how long it is going to take them to fix those too. It also makes me wonder how much they are going to charge for this game and monthly fees. The longer they keep pushing back the more money it takes to fix, the more they gonna charge people to make up the difference.

Dremac

Ermm...still coming out before WAR. And based on what I've seen of WAR gameplay I can't imagine many people flocking to it...just saying.

Xris375

Last time the stocks dropped 30% when they announced the push back. I am no way a a AoC fan, but I didn't imagine they would be stupid enough to push yet another time. Well, they did. Result, a 15-20% drop in stockvalue. There is at least two options;

Either Funcom has no internal control whatsoever but have integrity enough to take the hit

Or their game sucks so bad, they are stalling so that enough people buy the collector edition to reduce the losses.

It's bad either way

Jackcolt

Originally posted by Xris375


Last time the stocks dropped 30% when they announced the push back. I am no way a a AoC fan, but I didn't imagine they would be stupid enough to push yet another time. Well, they did. Result, a 15-20% drop in stockvalue. There is at least two options;
Either Funcom has no internal control whatsoever but have integrity enough to take the hit
Or their game sucks so bad, they are stalling so that enough people buy the collector edition to reduce the losses.
It's bad either way

Or they are making sure they get a succesful launch.



Funcom is experienced and I'm confident they learned a lot from the Anarchy Online launch. They are making sure that doesn't happen again, so rather than pushing out an unfinished product(like every other developer does), they delay the game.

So no. It's not bad either way.

Ephimero

Pity you can't play with hype, otherwise we would be having a blast. About time to stop with these stupid uber-concrete etas, they do nothing good for us.

Deathstrike2

Originally posted by Dremac


Ermm...still coming out before WAR. And based on what I've seen of WAR gameplay I can't imagine many people flocking to it...just saying.

heh, I'll take that bet.  I'm looking forward to AoC, but I am very skeptical of this new release date. 

Even though I plan on playing, I'm glad I decided to wait on getting the pre-order too.  I can't imagine having so much faith in a game that I pre-order it a half year or more before it's ready for release, especially if it's the $90 CE edition.  Caution for the win!

 

Xris375

Originally posted by Jackcolt


 
 
Or they are making sure they get a succesful launch.



Funcom is experienced and I'm confident they learned a lot from the Anarchy Online launch. They are making sure that doesn't happen again, so rather than pushing out an unfinished product(like every other developer does), they delay the game.


So no. It's not bad either way.

By strange coincidence the collection edition was announced a few days before they annouced the 7th delay. But not to worry, the devs took december off, so I guess there is nothing major wrong here. Just a little polishing. It's just 8 small weeks, plenty of time to preorder!!! Run and buy!

eric_w66

The delay was probably only known to the most senior people at Funcom and EIDOS and agreed upon (so they posted anyways) Saturday night.

Due to its impact on the financial side of things, the people who were saying that the march date was solid were probably not aware of any talks to extend it beyond rumors, or they had to keep stating what had already been officially announced. I suspect Norway has rules regarding insider trading like the US has. This is probably why it was announced to the stock exchange first because of the rules regarding such things.

Ruthgar

I would rather a company push back release 10 times than release the game before they feel it is ready.

I was in LOTRO beta and I was hoping they'd push it back another 2 months, but it still had a smooth launch.

 

malachidark

no March release? aww, so much for getting for my birthday present to myself

 

I just hope it doesn't get released the same month that WAR and Aion are released, because I want to play all of them at least one month each, and that's hard when they release at the same time.

Gishgeron

Anyone so dumb as to complain about delays in release deserve whatever piece of crap game they get as a result of NOT doing it.

 

Delay = Good in ANY fashion its presented as far as MMO's are concerned.  Everytime I see a crappy MMO...I just KNOW it is because they didn't spend enough time polishing it before release.  Remember, most players only EVER give an MMO one shot.  If that one shot is a crappy release...then that game just lost the vast majority of its potential playerbase.  It takes alot more than word of mouth to recover from that kind of blow.

 

Trust me, they know what they are doing on this matter.  I'd be more worried over the lack of Open Beta...but the leaked videos I've seen have been really impressive thus far.

bstripp

While I am not a fan of WoW, Blizzard did one thing really right... no release date.  You get it when you get it.  As soon as you put a date out there, all you can do is disapoint someone.  Either the folks who scream that your game must stink because you need more time, or the ones that think you didn't delay enough and shoveled it out the door.

I wish more producers never gave us dates.  It would cut down on the stupid flame fests that seem to broil up over any delay or actual release.

singsofdeath

Originally posted by bstripp


While I am not a fan of WoW, Blizzard did one thing really right... no release date.  You get it when you get it.  As soon as you put a date out there, all you can do is disapoint someone.  Either the folks who scream that your game must stink because you need more time, or the ones that think you didn't delay enough and shoveled it out the door.
I wish more producers never gave us dates.  It would cut down on the stupid flame fests that seem to broil up over any delay or actual release.

Sadly, I have to call a QFT on this one.

 

The "fans" being as they are these days, a company should just put out something like "Q2 200x" and let it remain at that until they -know- a release date. As it is, all that trying to pinpoint a release date and then realizing the game needs a bit more time does, is conjure up tons and tons of flame threads. *sigh*