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Quite impressive marketing..
inphi
Member Posts: 25
First, allow me to point out i been waiting for Dark And Light for roughly 2 years now so i am not some bitter WOW teenager who signed up in October when "Stress test soon" was announced.. 
Now, the Dark and Light journey is QUITE remarkable... I am soon 28, i own a c64, Amiga, PC and a litter of consoles and i have never in my life seen developers or marketing like this..
The developers have since day 1 released what feels like 2-3 screen shots every quarter and yet they never seem to inhance in quality exept PC hardware making it a tad flashier over time.
...we still sit there, waiting...
Videos? a handful.. We expect one or two every massive "OI INVESTORS CHECK US OUT! WE ARE GOING TO MAKE PLENTY DOLLARS, THROW SOME OUR WAY!" get-togheter ala E3. Seriusly, i can still remember when they hyped the clip of sledding on your shield down a mountain and people reacted like they invented the wheel...... and at the time it was already 1 over due, what..the..fuck..?
...we still sit there, waiting...
Release dates? God almighty... I found a webpage recently that was BADLY outdated and had it listed as Q4 of 2002... I couldnt even make myself laugh at how sad that is.. We are on the fourth 6-10 month push for the main game itself!
I was expecting it this time but i realized two months ahead that it wasnt going to happen seeing official polls like "Should light and dark be able to communicate with eachother?".. I thought to myself "4 years and you havent decided and coded this already...?"..
So it was pushed BUT it got even better...
Shortly after it was pushed marketing must have realized they were TOO obvius with giving the community AND the publishers/investors the finger. Something had to be done and it was, "Stress test in October!" was announced, weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
First word on open beta/stress test was "End of October"
Second word on open beta/stress test was "Beginning of November"
Third word was "In November"
Fourth word was "Hey, check this out, Settlers of Gnarananath, eh? not bad eh? a pre-game to the game!"
Fifth word was "SOG in december, but pre-order keys to DNL now before SOG!"
Sixth word was "SOG on the 8th"
Seventh word was "SOG actualy starts on the 13th"
Simply woaw, they cant even keep simple dates with their pre-game to the real game.....
...we still sit there, waiting...
The thing that bothers me the most is how SOG came out of nowhere and with a story at a timeline of "8881"... Very conveniently shortly after 8881 pre-order keys were sold for 550 000 US dollars.....
I dont wanna be the pessemist here but surely the realistic one, could it be DNL is dying after last push and they desperatly need funding to keep them afloat the last 5 months...?
If so, those of you who were "pioneers" should maybe think about returning it before you become "suckers"...
Info on development, problems and why there are MASSIVE 6-10 month delays for 2.5 years including open beta/stress test?
None.. zip.. nada.. nil..
The thing that really amuse me is i recall people shitting themselfs over Blizzard saying a date and being 2-3 months late on patches, this is 2-3 YEARS and people are still "Cooome ooooon, dont be like that, the developers works hard.. you are an idiot", ..really, i am the idiot here?
...we still sit there, waiting...
Community? Distubing a good word? Go through the forum and you will quickly realize 50% of the user database would kill themselfs if developers said it was for the greater cause of Dark and light or maaaybe a beta login...
I made a thread mid November saying "Might aswell delay it again..." and in it i hinted that SOG was heading same path as DNL with 0 info and broken time limits and i added a poll saying "Do you in this community feel overlooked and ignored by the developers?". It pended between 60-70% voting "YES" until the hush-down-the-angry-mob crew closed it saying something along the line of "Developers said November and a offical announcment will be given this weekend (this was on Thursday). Try give some positive input instead of negative and assuming it gets pushed"... within 24 hours the official announcment arrived, it was pushed throughout November into December and you are experiencing the latest ...snag? shall we call it...
...we still sit there, waiting...
So in conclusion, could this be the worst, the greediest, the most out of touch production ever? Oh yes.
Could this project be doomed to fade and die quickly due to non-existing patches, zero communications with people in charge? I would definatly say Oh yes.
Yet...we still sit there, waiting...like morons.
Comments
so you didnt get a key then?
_____________________
I am the flipside of the coin on which the troll and the fanboy are but one side.
Too many words-so I'll skip to the chase. Worst? Don't know yet. No game to play. Greediest? No, not even close. They've "earned" a total of 500k dollars over about 3-4 years. With the number of people involved, that comes to about 25k each per year, or 12 dollars an hour. Not to mention the costs of traveling to E3 from Reunion, the servers for at least beta, blah blah blah. Most out of touch? I'll give you this one. They are very inept at public relations. Doomed to fade and die? Quite possible. It's also still possible it will succeed. Hard to say. May die in the US and succeed in Asia. May die in Asia and succeed in the US. Who knows.
Not that it matters but yes, i got a key today.
That doesnt bribe/pay me off however after above mentioned treatment to a entire community along with this pre-game with pre-sold keys to real product to survive scam..
Am i the only one who finds that offensive aswell as this "open beta" scam which we all know will be limited to the point where alot of people who has waited patiently a long time still find themselfs locked out in the cold.
DnL has a cult following... DnL it is like no other game, the Devs like no other Devs... you can't just explain it away to fit in with what you are use too.
I honestly didn't read your whole post. I'm bored, but not that bored. I can imagine what you say though, having read it many times from others. I'll say this, their handling of the Pioneer keys sucked. Their delays suck. The free keys went smooth as silk. I do feel bad for the people who have been following the game for years and have failed to get a key. If there was some easy way to identify the true fans and supporters from the people who just want to play a free game, I'd be all for Farlan handing them keys through private emails. But many of the people who have been registered at DnL.com for a long time have since moved on, and many of the others may have registered once and never been back but now, hearing there is a free game, may claim to be long time fans. I don't know of a good, fair way to identify true fans from the passersby. So that is up to Farlan how to figure out how to make amends to their long-time fans. They'll probably screw it up, I'll give you that too.
However, none of this has much bearing on the game itself. I've seen leaks that were negative and I've seen leaks that were middle of the road, and I've seen leaks that were positive. More negative than anything, but that is easy to understand. People that didn't like the game would stop playing the beta and would not feel as bound to adhere to the NDA as people who liked it and stayed in it.
So what I'm saying is, they suck at public relations. They may or may not suck at making games. We'll have to wait and see. But none of this is a scam. It's poor management coupled with unknown game creation ability.
I agree with everything you said inphi. When I first found this game I was ecstatic. It seemed like it was going to be awesome - just what I was looking for. But as time passed and the graphics didn't improve (I still think the character models look ridiculous, especially compared to games like L2) and no new info was released, I started to get less excited. And I'm especially ticked off at the way the developers treat us, constantly lying to us, promising us info (or a release) by a certain date and then pushing it back, again and again. I really got mad about the whole SoG thing. It was supposed to come in November with info in early Nov., then they didn't give us any info till late Nov. and postponed the release till Dec. and now they've postponed it again. Not that I'm drooling with anticipation or anything, but if I can't trust them to keep their word then I'm not very optimistic about their ability to run/manage an MMO.
I did get a key to SoG and I plan on being very vocal and honest about it. If it sucks, I'll say that. If not, I'll say that too. I have a feeling I'll be tempted to erase it from my hard drive as soon as I log in because of sub-par graphics. (Normally if I log in and a game looks like it time-warped from the mid-90s, I immediately log out and erase the thing - ala Irth Online.) I will give it a chance though, simply because the features (that I first read about so long ago) appeal to me so much. I am really not optimistic about it though, at this point I pretty much expect it to suck - I would be surprised if it was good. That's so different than when I first heard about it and thought it was the MMO to end all MMOs.
"Yet...we still sit there, waiting...like morons."
_____________________________________
After following this game for over two years watching its horrid production schedule, I have accepted that it is going to be a fiasco.
But I can't seem to tear my eyes away from it, similar to watching the Hindenburg disaster from the old movie reels.
I do however look forward to reading the DnL boards on Dec. 13.
~ Ancient Membership ~
As a paying customer of Farlan/NPn00b I'm disappointed to say the least. Hey, I got home from work 5 hours after the scheduled release and got a page saying all free keys had gone. Being a Pioneer i.e. sucker that didn't worry me but there was ZERO info on the site about any kind of delay............and this was 5 hours after scheduled release.
Inept and incompentent at best, I've now go almost 0 expectation that this game will be anything better than Irth
<aref="http://www.enjin.com/"; alt="rift guild hosting"><img src="http://sigs.enjin.com/sig-rift/14060_d62c0a5a4ba0df2e.png"></a>;
*applauds*
Complete agreement from me! NP3 or Farlan, pick whichever you want, they're both the same anyway and AD are real good at stringing their community along without giving any useful info as to WHY they're delaying DnL/SoG so much. The reason for it is, the game is not ready for beta, it is an alpha state and the game is far away from what the people expect from DnL. Even in April 06, the game will not have improved much, since we know how slow NP3 are at improving their product. A change of color of an armor piece within a month is as good as it gets and even then, they're sure to add a couple bugs while changing the armor color. Server stability? Considering that DnL is a massive project, undertaken by a newbie company with no experience whatsoever, this is their major problem and might actually be the final reason why DnL fails or is cancelled.
Now I can say, December 13th will be the moment of truth - I think... maybe... possibly.... if they don't delay it again.
"Fire is never a gentle master..."
69.2% "YES" on the poll, so its even here on morpg.com as on DNL own forum..
Kinda disturbing that two thirds of the community have a grudge at some level before pre-game/stress test shows up when it comes to the future of the game survival wise etc..
I miss DAoC