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Friday with Means - May 22nd, 2009
burmese
Member Posts: 546
Early:
http://forums.anarchy-online.com/showthread.php?p=5519645
==========
Friday with Means - May 22nd, 2009
A little early this week as the team will be off for a long weekend this week...and I will be nowhere near an internet connection of any kind on the west coast of Sweden near Skredsvik...an unplugged weekend.
This has been a week of ups and downs.
The Engine
We have been working on the conversion to Ogre for quite some time now...and there have been good days...and bad days. The team has really done a great job and it has been amazing to watch AO slowly move towards a day where we could release the game "fresh" with the upgraded look the AO world deserves. The problem with this journey is a matter of time and the destination. While the Ogre engine is an excellent choice it is just not providing the full featureset that we originally hoped to would deliver...moreover to add those features seems to be a task with ever growing estimates....which is something our small team can not afford, nor expect our players to wait for. When the decision to go with Ogre was made the engine used for Conan was in its adolescence...it ran but it was gangly, awkward and had stability issues. After two years of constant work by a large and brilliant render team the engine used by Conan runs beautifully and stably and offers a great number of complete features that would require additional years of work in Ogre. With the delays due to difficulties associated with optimization of Ogre to work well with current AO and the estimated timelines for a full implementation of the Conan engine (Dreamworld Engine/Cheetah) being nearly identical we were faced with a difficult decision.
We chose to go with the Dreamworld Engine.
With time estimates being roughly the same..the more fully supported/featured engine was the obvious choice. The fact that Dreamworld is being used in both Conan and our other "Secret World" project means that it will receive the future love and care it needs as AO grows older and the AO world continues to grow. This future consideration was impossible to ignore.
This has not been an easy decision. Letting go of Ogre after so long is painfull and I feel for all those who put so much work into trying to bring it to completion. A great many evenings and weekends went voluntarily into it with the hopes and dreams of a brighter future for AO. It was purely for the future of Anarchy Online that we had to steo back let go of Ogre...and move forward with Dreamworld. Today felt exactly like saying goodbye to an old friend...however the facts and plans for the future make it impossible for me to think of it as the wrong decision.
We will get there!
What this means for us:
Within the Ogre timeline the sheer amount of unanticipated optimization of essential features had slipped to November this year. With additional resources from the larger technical team we hope to bring the Dreamworld engine to AO in 2009. I truly believe that Age of Conan is a visually stunning world and I look forward to seeing the same technology available to us in the near future.
Our Hosts:
Our monitoring of the new servers at IPSoft suggests that all is going well and we are ready to proceed. After months of work and preparation Anarchy Online will be moved from Savvis to our new IPSoft hosts on Tuesday this week (May 26th). Downtime will be about 6 hours...but we will be coming uip on new machines. We have wanted this for a very very long time...that day is finally here!
Spammers:
Our efforts to track down and eliminate the spam in AO is slowly paying off. Spam mesages are down to 9% of what they were three weeks ago. Last week we removed 41 Billion illicitly gained credits from the AO economy and banned well over 100 accounts. 9% is still too much...but we are still working on it and the automated systems and client chat filter on not even live yet...I'm hopefull and optimistic.
*ahem*
Take that you ******* spamming bastards!
As our tracking systems improve and continue to develop all transactions of this kind are going to be found and reversed. To the players who had credits removed this week: Shame on you!
We will always find these credits eventually and remove them. Shuffling the credits through many accounts/org banks/player shops/city controllers etc is not effective and is only annoying for the CS investigators....please don't make it more cost effective to ban you than remove the credits. Note: Anyone who lost credits can probably reverse the financial transaction through their Credit Card company.
Should you continue to feel like wasting your money you could always just deposit it in my account...I'll find a good use for it. My house needs painting and I don't have time to do it. CRedz plz! 11001001!!
The Database:
Macrosun has the problem I mentioned last week well in hand and we hope to bring a new build to the Test Server at some point next week that will include the new apartment, further balance tweaks based on player feedback, adjustments to instanced Pande and the instanced cities and new stuff for this years AO birthday.
8 years...hard to believe...but it is coming soon. I look forward to celebrating with you all.
Thanks to all who have taken the time this week to speak with me about constructive ways to address balance issues in current game mechanics.
Whoa...time for sleep. Have a great weekend all!
__________________
This "Means" Cake
Game Director
~\_/~\_O
Comments
So they just scrapped all their progress on the new engine? Man I cant wait till its done, I just wonder how well the game will perform with the new engine. The way AoC was they had copies of the areas you were in I hope they don't do that with AO.
Vaporware!
Can't really call it vaporware, it just sounds like they've decided to standardize all their MMOs on the same engine.
Which, TBH, bodes well for future upgrades and bugfixes since it gives them combined testive players and devs from three games to work on the same problems.
my concern now is this.
and the team shouldnt take this the wrong way either...
but funcom teams havent EVER met target deadlines. theres not a single title they have on. every expansion, every new title. all have been notoriously late and when they have released, theres been volumes and volumes of bugs.
so lets look at this realistically. this engine update might be done in 2011-2012.
and my question is. why bother? theres not going to be a playerbase then.
Games i'm playing right now...
"In short, I thought NGE was a very bad idea" - Raph Koster talking about NGE on his blog at raphkoster.com
No idea where '2011-2012' would come from. Name anything FC has put out that missed its' initial publicly stated release date by 2-3 years. All AO expansions/boosters have arrived on time or no more than 2 months after initial dates.
I expect that. with AoC engine in good shape now they can apply virtually that whole team of 20-odd people to the AO conversion process, instead of the 1-3 people who have worked on Ogre for the past 2 years.
~\_/~\_O
This is just a huge scam. All we ever saw of their work is a demo that is on youtube and one new head. Throwing away the work done with ogre is crap I think none of it was there to begin with. This is just another tactic to get players to stick around, an excuse to stall and buy time to keep people paying.
ok notum wars was on time i guess, but the game still had gamebreaker bugs in them at that point. i remember doing missions in 20k back in the day and we were still contending with falling thru the ground and mobs that shot thru mission wall from across the map then.
but shadowlands was like a year late, and i remember at launch what was it, only 3 zones were playable? if i remember correctly the remaining zones still werent populated at launch. this was about the time the whole mesiter scandal happened where he was taken on a press tour and bought a bunch of end game vendor nanos nobody else could get cause the zones werent unlocked yet.
lost eden was about 6 months late, possibly more, i cant remember but i know it was pushed back.
trust me im an old school ao guy that has spent many months logged into rubi ka. i think you get the wrong impression of what i was saying. i love the game, its always going to hold a place in my heart no other game will...
but with margins and losses being what they are at funcom now with as many projects as they have going between funcom china and funcom norway, i just dont see this happening at any point in time where doing it is actually relevent ya know?
by the time its finished, it just wont matter. nobody but exisiting players will care. i know that sounds harsh but its true.
Games i'm playing right now...
"In short, I thought NGE was a very bad idea" - Raph Koster talking about NGE on his blog at raphkoster.com
Oh dear, this seems like a nail in the coffin. Not that it needs it judging from my experience the last couple of days. AO seems to have died in the last year, no one in newbie areas, crap community and aging graphics. Shame because there aren't many games like AO. I really think it's finished though.
Someone needs to check his facts before posting.
I'll give you that SL was incomplete at release, but it was out less than one year after NW, not late at all. And only missing 1 or 2 zones (Pande and maybe inferno, although they were definitely available in December)
I remember NW release, and the only one of those gamebreaker bugs you talk about that I ever saw or heard of was the shooting through walls, and it's not like you described at all--basically you had to enter the same room as a mob (or stand across an open doorway) to get aggro, and once combat started the mob's attacks didn't check line of sight. You could still run out of range, though.
Seems shaky to me. After all of this anxious waiting, they are basically canning everything? It really makes me very skeptical. Naturally, I am disappointed too.
Ah well, the window for this making upgrade being a viable move is evaporating and I am doubting it will ever happen.
I'd be stunned if it came out before the end of 2010(despite what they are saying), and expect there will be other games to choose from that will make this entire upgrade obsolete.
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After almost 2 years of work, they suddenly decide their underfunded, underperforming, undertalented dev team can't figure out how to use Ogre; but they're going to integrate the "improved" Dreamworld engine from AoC flawlessly before the end of the year? Anyone who believes that has got rocks in their heads.
They're stringing you guys along, holding that "engine upgrade" carrot out there on an ever-lengthening stick, until finally they'll admit shit ain't comin. That'll be right before lights out.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
Someone needs to check his facts before posting.
I'll give you that SL was incomplete at release, but it was out less than one year after NW, not late at all. And only missing 1 or 2 zones (Pande and maybe inferno, although they were definitely available in December)
I remember NW release, and the only one of those gamebreaker bugs you talk about that I ever saw or heard of was the shooting through walls, and it's not like you described at all--basically you had to enter the same room as a mob (or stand across an open doorway) to get aggro, and once combat started the mob's attacks didn't check line of sight. You could still run out of range, though.
no trust me. for like a month in 20k back in the day, my regular group pre shadowlands i specifically remember us getting raped while buffing in the opening room from like 8 mobs at once on a regular basis. it was the running joke for us. 20k missions meant a constant runs from the insurance terminal while my buddy supersneak sat in the front room laughing at us cause he was the only guy untargetted.
most teams would have bugged out but we all kinda dug hanging out together so we kind of played into the whole "beating the unbeatable mission" thing back then. most of us ended up in pretty big guilds over the years. sneak i believe founded bob or was their 2nd pres. i ended up a general in starlight (MR's underguild), various others went onto being officers in MoK and Legion.
Games i'm playing right now...
"In short, I thought NGE was a very bad idea" - Raph Koster talking about NGE on his blog at raphkoster.com
on another note, im kinda temped to react my old account now lol
Games i'm playing right now...
"In short, I thought NGE was a very bad idea" - Raph Koster talking about NGE on his blog at raphkoster.com
I'll reactivate my old account when I see FC release this.
I would like to see a full on overhaul of the game, really. Maybe even a re-release with it. Rework and update not only the environment and character graphics, but the animations, the combat mechanics, the world, quests, etc.
Not so much turn it into WoW, I would like them to keep the mechanics pretty much in tact, but just...update it with the graphics. It's an old game, and it doesn't just show with the look of the game.
And a "re-release" might help the game. (Meaning along with the release of an overhaul patch, re-package the game and give it some publicity. This way, new people could be introduced to the game, while people who already have an account won't have to worry about buying anything new.)
But I think that's a little much to ask for. One can dream, though.
Groovy.