Prediction of Launch?

I voted Q2, but I could see Q1. Not because its complete, mind you, but because they aren't bringing in additional money in the way they were before and will want to get it out the door. Each additional month could be costing them as much as $250,000 extra (I detailed where those numbers come from in a previous thread, its an estimate by an indie developer) and even if its half that, delays mean one thing, additional expenses. Couple that with the fact that I can't see them delaying and bringing in more dollars at launch, that is to say, I dont' see improvements to the point that it will drive up initial sales. They only brough in 361 pledges in July, lowest since September of 2013.

Obviously this is just a guess, but I think this pledge drive thing they've got going, the bonus 10% deal and the push to move people into higher pledge levels by a certain date, is to try to drive up numbers. Its been somewhat successful though. $188,000 last month despite the low new pledge numbers, which is almost twice as much as they brought in all of June, only $105,000.

I could see them announcing alpha for October. They have pre-alpha's lined up through September 25 and they keep hinting at gearing up towards alpha and beta. I'm sure they'll try to make a push when they move to alpha, "Join now and play a game that is still to be taken uncritically and with the understanding that it remains fundamentally broken for an unspecified period of time!"

Yap I was going to add Q1 but it won't be in a complete state at that time. They have long ways to go and they keep crossing off items on their lists from each release which has been a common theme. But hey they have 100 people that play on steam sounds pretty mmo ie to me lolz.

Because Starr redefined pre-alpha to mean "everything that isn't feature complete and two weeks before launch."

2017 if they're lucky

Thing is, it's not even in alpha even though technically it really is. It often takes a minimum of 6-9+ months of beta testing even for AAA games.

Just like UO, ESO has an ongoing public test server. So beta doesn't ever really stop once a game is released. This is how they should have handled POTs. Of course, I think POTs should never have been introduced the way they are, and the stretch goal is what should have been met first and foremost. Something more elaborate should have been considered after the game was released, not before.

Let's not forget that even after UO was released, everyone joked for years that it was still in beta.

They simply don't have time anymore. They are not making the money to keep this in development for much longer.

Assuming, however, they do have these exorbitant funds to do so, when will they release? In the middle of 2016, dead center of some of the most amazing and anticipated games, both single player and multi-player? Sure 2015 sucked for MMOs but for single player games and MMOs, end of 2015 and 2016 is going to be fucking phenomenal. I'm pumped.

SotA is already outdated by 2012 standards. Single-player-wise it will flop hard. MMO-wise it will be easily forgotten, if tried at all (that price tag will have to drop, for sure).

I have no idea on this one but I keep hearing them say it's going to be end of the year. I would think that they are hording a fuck ton of content, not releasing much, that's the only explanation for the beyond extremely slow development. We barely get an update every release, what we get is like a couple days work and that's being generous. Either they have a whole game pretty much built already, not showing us, or they are straight out just fucking us around with this game. As the hording concept explains the very slow progress that we see, what doesn't fit in with that concept is that Chris is basically starting over with some of his combat system. It doesn't make sense to do that if they have a game built behind the scenes. So I think either they either have a game pretty much developed already, which could lead to a release end of this year or they really have nothing at all and in that case, if all they have is what we see than it's most likely going to release Q3 Q4 next year. We haven't even entered into a phase where we are actually testing a game, they are still messing around with fundamental crap. Once they get that set in place, like the combat system, it's going to take months to balance it through testing. For this game to release this year, that needs to start now.

I'd love to see some mainstream reviewers actually have the balls to tell it how it is. No one seems to want to upset the savior RG, I'm guessing the reviewers could be paid off too.

I don't think RG holds much sway in gaming circles. I doubt very much he'd have opted for KS willingly and eschew major publishing dollars. I just don't think any publisher in their right mind would have funded the game on the vague promises he mare during the kickstarter. Researching that KS video makes me hate myself for ever backing. It's pretty evident they had done essentially 0 work on the game. They presented it as though things were done, combat, etc. It was over a year later (?) That the first combat was in game which essentially consisted of 'swing'. In the kickstarter video those fuckers are casting spells and whatnot. It's incredibly deceptive about the games progress at that point in time.

RG doesn't hold much ground with the average gamer now a days but mainstream reviewers is a different story. Pretty much every mainstream review that I've seen so far has been kissing ass. These aren't twitch wanna be gamers doing the mainstream reviews, not the ones that will tell the truth, it'll be some ass hat fanoldman that either get's paid off or is afraid to say something negative.

On the monthly patch size subject, the patch's are beyond small, for a fairly large team to be working on such a basic game, while paying for assets, code, music, pretty much everything, what have they been doing all this time if what we see is all there is? it doesn't make any sense that they only produced this much in that long of a time period granted all those things. There has to be content they are not giving us or else they are sitting in the office doing nothing the majority of the time. I've also seen them talk briefly about working on stuff that we have never seen. What we get each month for that size of a team is about a 3 day job, not weeks worth of work, weeks woorth of work and it's still full of bugs? yea right. Something is definitely is wrong here, they have to be working on other content with the rest of the month time.

With the game review thing, it is a typical don't bite the hand that feeds you. Not only that but now with today's internet, any asshole can write about a game.........

So you get people like old Red T over at MMORPG who are actually marketing people, writing shit about the game. Cronyism. Love it.

I love when those articles come out and you'll see a thread on the SotA forums like 'Fair and Honest Review' that link to them. It's literally right out of the Red Knight Marketing playbook. I'm sure that's all just happenstance. He just happens to be the CEO of a marketing firm that has a hobby of writing game release previews as a side job. Can't a guy have a hobby and part-time job!

I'd say it's the other way around; the gaming industry is extremely vile and cut-throat, because if you won't put up with the abuse there's a million others wanting to break into gaming who will, so people are terrified of standing up for themselves, and internalise the hatred and back stabbing as the way to stay in the industry.

Have a read of "Tales From The Trenches" for how shitty it is even at the Q&A level; and I can confirm working on UO was equally miserable. I've debated for a long time finding some way to whistle-blow on it, especially as much of what went wrong with EM events has nothing to do with the EMs... but who would you tell? Broadsword? It's one bloke with a lot of money. The press? They're not interested. And even if they were, the dev team is down to 2 full time staff, which is where all the trouble comes from, so it would implode the game that those still left do still love a little if they were forced out. The players won't thank you for taking their game away. And it would risk triggering a huge amount of personal vindictiveness and legal trouble, as the contracts signed are hellish. I talked to a lot of my own players openly after I resigned, so they'd understand and not be so hard on my returning replacement either. But how do you tackle something this big and corrupt at the industry level?

That was the issue Gamergate had too, before it got labelled as, and overtaken with misogyny and the endless click bait generating gender wars; there's a huge narcissistic and morally broken feudal system in the industry... one which increasingly sees it's own audience as irrelevant compared to progressing the careers of those who've got a foot in the door. Hence all the "Gamers are dead" articles which started the outcry; and what other industry would try and kill it's own support base? But if you don't stab them in the back when everyone else is doing so, you'll never work in this media again.

I don't know if Portalarium themselves are this hateful. I'd like to hope not, but who knows? Never meet your heroes, they always have feet of clay. But I'd wager any money on the fact that Joviex and all those who once supported the game and gave time and content are now so disillusioned because they've realised just how disposable and unvalued they really are with the actual behind the Shroud scenes. Just because a team produces nice things doesn't mean they're not assholes professionally. The funding system certainly has become dedicated to 1% sociopathy.

On kind of a different subject but is content related, do you feel like the novia map is already to congested? on top of what is already there and the endless POTS coming in, they've talked about how there will even be lots of spots to goto, points of interest all over the place, also barricades and all that stuff to block passes or whatever? seems like a lot of crap for such a small place that is already full. If Novia is basically going to stay how it is now with more crap added on top of it, I can honestly say this game is boring as fuck, I can't even find a place to go right now that interests me, it's all the same boring small instance after another, nothing to really explore.

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