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WWII Online - A victim of mismanagement?
While I could believe in the role of freinds and relationships in a Game Development Team that is extremely small like WWII Online is it such things that keep a game of such potential from succeeding? The core group left the Kesmai WARBIRDs team when it moved to Virginia , staying in Texas this small dev team developed what no game has achieved. Yet is suffers today from the lack of development staff that can program or maintain its servers code.
A huge single room environment with no warping portals to new servers. You can fly from Norway down to the Alps and see players and buildings there have people walking around in them while you pass over. It is truely amazing the scope though I am sure the small room enthusiasts misses the intense graphics afforded by such games the does not offer such grand movement.
The concept for a WWII wargame simulation is so novel that no other game has achieved even a sixth of the map size and number of players in one big continent fight. It was executed in a not so glorious disaster of a launch because the investors wanted some payback. Soon after launch the group declared bankruptcy to get out of some not so lucrative contracts and debts. However, for over 11 years this game has survived because of what it offers.
But from day one you could see the problems. Missing was a constant theme of combat. It was just a big room with only 30 towns or so to fight over. Not much of a World War. It had all kinds of comments on dreams of the Russian, African and Pacific Fronts being developed. None were ever developed though the African camapaign map appeared in a dev team video showing the kasserine pass in wonderful new detailed map but never appeared.
There was no real navy at lauch even though the box said there was one when you bought it. It took a lawsuit to force the devs to quickly force a British Fairmille in the game and they gave it to all sides . The naval game could have been the most interesting with hundreds miles and coastline to defend but developed only when management was on vacation and the programmers and coders then on staff decided to take a holiday themselves and produce the Destroyers.
The brief flourish in the naval game came with the Troop transport being developed and this allowed naval logistics in flank attacks and attacks, attacks on the islands in the Zeelands even the invasion of Great Britain and re-invasion of Europe Normandy style. Unfortunately the dev team did not think through the naval logistical requirements and invasion became tedious and many hour time consuming. Soon they developed paratroops and under the table supply killed the naval game alltogether.
Now Free to Play the game is all but broken. Still very much fun and playable with a great wargame environment No other game offers such realistic combat at all levels of infantry, armor or air. However, years ago to get a boost the devs management launched a Builder marketing scheme where you payed them $1000 dollars and got lifetime play. Unfortunately for the Devs the players won this bet and many now play for free dimishing revenues. The dev team had more producers and incedental staff such as game manamers than programmers and the true developement slowed to a trickle.
They invested heavily in developing a version for the Chinese market. They spent hundreds if not thousands of hours on Chinese regulatory hooks and program requirements. The promise was it would provide more for the basic game. It apears to just have been a drain now.
Now there is no coders on staff and the game developement has halted. The game has developed many serious bugs and has an upgrade version as recent as 9 months in beta has stopped. They have hit the community with a new Builder program with a twist. They want them to pay 45% higher premium subscription fee to get a HERO tag in game. They recently announced as good news if the community comes up wtih just 300 HERO accounts they can subsidize a coder and provide for basic game fixes but no developement. I mean where do these guys come up with these marketing schemes? Now they have 160 or so new HEROs but the numbers have stopped moving.
You would think that this company would think about what it is offering as a product and staff for the core needs. But I know freindships and relationships go deep in the game coding field. Still you would think that the managment would think of the future like any other company and not offer nothing and promises of bug fixes for 45% increase in fees.
Comments
Hey angriff!
No coder?
What happened to KFS1?
Man... I gotta get back in game. :-(
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
I remembered back in the day when they showed off their Unity 2 alfa engine, I think it was some footage of the Africa theatre.
I still miss when the Squads had the power not some 14 year old armchair general, anyone remembered the breakfast club?
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
That was back during the sector campaign map control. It was before brigade spawning was put in the game to allow for unit movements and a more realistic wargame scenario. That was put in and even today Heroes and Generals attempts to emulate this aspect (to be commented on separately) pioneered in WWII Online.
The brigade movement was really a great innovation but it was hampered by resources in its implementation and control was put in the HC. CRS could learn from Heroes and Generals and give squads to chance to buy or rent units of spawn resources. CRS incorrectly thinks that the sudden arrival of a Squad unit would imbalance gameplay but the fact remains that the HC can move units in out out of an attacked town and many Squad Players are in the HC and move units for their players into a squad attack.
My understanding is KSF1 took a coding job with one of the major game developers. Of course CRS could not afford him since it appears CRS is spending money for freinds/long term relationship employees that are not talented in coding.
The interesting thing is now CRS has launched an attack on long term players discussing things of advancement and the usual intersquad of who is best debating in their forums. They think they are not hurting the community but they are with the so called THRANCE rules. I was going to switch my account from $9.99 to $27.99 / month Hero builder until this guy decides I cannot call another squad out on their tactics of insults in their forums. I wont do that now.
I realize it wont break them the 20 per month but it shows you the type of mismanagement that cost them more money than they know or are willing to admit. It is just they are changing the game into just another sim and not allowing for the WARGAME aspect. They have fast lost the WARGAME and there are plenty of WWII Sims for free.
I suggested to CRS years ago now that they could use the squads in a productive way to help introduce meaningful rank (something I felt the game needed from the day I started playing).
But I seem to recall that CRS didn't want the squads to have any sort of real power besides a name floating above the Avatar.
There were / are a lot of missed opportunities in that game I feel.
I do think they released 'early' though... as they said... the game was designed for on board graphics - now everyone uses a card with capabilities far beyond what was possible and thought to be likely?
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
Well the Rats campaign against the community that supports them has turned into reality as they have for 3 months now been putting a massive push to get 300 so called Hero Builders to save the game. They have slowed to a crawl at 252 (with only 4 in the last week) of people willing to pay an extra 12 dollars a month subscription for CRS to hire a coder to keep the game running.
I guess it works if you sucker your clients to send you money that you just pocket until some goal that is just out of reach. I gave to the advertisement fund that was supposed to spend money on advertising the game but instead they put their programmers working on gameplay timers required by the Chinese government for the ill fated Chinese version of the game ( Why anyone in China would play a game about war in Europe is beyond me but it seems to have died there too)
Over the past year CRS has lost all its coders and is left with just a cadre of friends who own the game or are some sort of close relationship that they stay. The game now has nobody that can fix things. They lost the ability to maintain their servers which is visible by the loss of game-player kill death and capture statistics. Though it is meaningless to most war gamers these features are in the game as sort of ladder of who is best shooter or least shot down pilot. They were put in at the cost of development of other aspects of the game such as Naval objectives and have proven a total disaster for the community making a cesspool of better than you type gamers that apparently find the time to send pizza to CRS in the middle of the night to get the game fixed when it goes down.
The Management at CRS cannot seem to figure out what it takes to be successful. It could be that it is not possible with that concept or maybe those huge companies, that steal their programmers with the lure of steady paycheck and benefits for their families away, don't seem to think is worthwhile business model game to pursue.
I really love the game as you can just jump in if you have 5 minutes or 4 hours and have some fun.
Did the mods here take it down from the MMO list?
This game has been around as long as the Original EQ, and all the clones that followed.