Well last night a sat down to type up a career long discription of my accounts with wwiiol, how I got introduced into the game, and how I got addicted to it.

 

I was about halfway done when I popped back over here to see what depot12 had to say and well, I found you guys all experiencing the things that made me go absolutely bonkers with CRS, its forums gestapo, and its Devs.

 

I alt-tab'd back to WORD and simply deleted it.  It just doesn't matter anymore.

 

I hear words coming from CRS labeled people about giving money and more time.  No.

 

There is nothing left.  The one CRS member hadn't been on these forums for almost 4 weeks (because he got his arse handed to him just like happens in "his" controlled forums when someone speaks up) until the "support" crew started to show up again.....posting false positives over this game.  Why?  Another email in my box begging for returning subscribers and that they were running a "special" again with lower pricing was the reason.

 

This is why the employee was here trolling along the banks.  That's why there was a crs bulletin that went out for clearing the posts here so the sub drive could be seeded on a clean field.

 

However, another terrible crs action has pizzed off everyone again.  Doesn't even matter why, it just is a recurring theme.

 

The other part is long time players with community presence that even get banned and spanked when they speak up.  This is why I am so bitter and want a front row seat to the end of CRS.  They could have been less control freaks and allowed myself and others such as those of you now that have things to say to do just that.  Let people say their peace and vent and then things may have blew over.  You gag people and even worse, slap them and poke them in their eyes before banning them just makes a disgruntled person that will go out and spread all the bad news they can so people do not get burned and treated as we did.

 

I've never been treated so bad by a business that in no other terms cost me about $4000 worth of sub prices and computer upgrades since 2001.  I begged for lower sub pricing.  I asked why I had to pay $17 when others paid $10.  I was told to shut up and pay it or leave.  I left, came back and ultimately was banned for putting a few more logs on the fire that THEY started a long long time ago and because a person had a PERSONAL issue with me.

 

S! to the guys that were not afraid to come over here and express concerns and post issues you've had with the game and its managers.  It is to bad that one even has to fear about talking about issues and problems and getting perma banned by some soft soled crs employee reading it here and finding you in game and taking years of work and time leveling up away.

 

So I post one last time, this:

 

http://youtu.be/TubHXvBDt0w

World of Tanks has been a lot of fun. 

 

Anyone playing WoT this weekend?

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Originally posted by axishatr
World of Tanks has been a lot of fun.

Anyone playing WoT this weekend?

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I'm thinking about it. It's definitely a bit arcade but if there's some basic concepts like armor and penetration, as well as good teamplay then it should be worthwhile.

Right now I'm playing a lot of Mount & Blade: Napoleonic Wars. There's less variety than the standard game but it's still heavily skill-based, probably more so. Random public games can get really frustrating(cannons are important and idiots will hog them) but scheduled regiment battles are awesome.

Stug: 19th century America. Focus on slavery and foreign relations.

Originally posted by argel
Stug: 19th century America. Focus on slavery and foreign relations.

Ah not my period totally, but I'll try to be in touch.

Logged in.  Saw one enemy aircraft over P1 target.  Saw three friendly aircraft chase him.  Someone fired 2 shots at them all with an anti aircraft gun.

 

2 enemy infantry tried to attack our defensive mission target.  Then we sat and told stories for an hour.

 

Rats were on trying to pull strings and make a fight in a smaller area so any new guys logging in would get the feel of things "really happening".

 

Logged off and played Planetside2.  Found more people in the initial log in area then any fight I was in last night in wwiiol.

 

But keep shoveling money into the crs/playnet furnace because it's getting cold on their servers and quiet in their offices.

Originally posted by axishatr

Logged in.  Saw one enemy aircraft over P1 target.  Saw three friendly aircraft chase him.  Someone fired 2 shots at them all with an anti aircraft gun.

 

2 enemy infantry tried to attack our defensive mission target.  Then we sat and told stories for an hour.

 

Rats were on trying to pull strings and make a fight in a smaller area so any new guys logging in would get the feel of things "really happening".

 

Logged off and played Planetside2.  Found more people in the initial log in area then any fight I was in last night in wwiiol.

 

But keep shoveling money into the crs/playnet furnace because it's getting cold on their servers and quiet in their offices.

That and PS2 runs better on my rig than WWIIOL does, and thats just sad.  

Planetside2 was rockin last night. 

 

World of tanks has TONS of people logging in.  I wish they had bigger maps and allowed for a more tactic play.  Eliminate the "heres the enemy" tags....

 

 

Originally posted by axishatr

Planetside2 was rockin last night. 

 

World of tanks has TONS of people logging in.  I wish they had bigger maps and allowed for a more tactic play.  Eliminate the "heres the enemy" tags....

 

 

I took a break from PS2 until the big update comes out on the 30th.  But I play WOT every night.  I poo pooed the game when it first came out but it's fun and addictive.

I guess that they need 300 builders ($30 a month subscribers) by February 15th just to keep the lights on, at least that's what's being implied on the forums now.

I'm really wondering what their cost structure is. If KFS1 was the only guy who knew the code then what was everyone else on the payroll for? They had something like 3-4 producers at one point.

Originally posted by axishatr

Planetside2 was rockin last night. 

 

World of tanks has TONS of people logging in.  I wish they had bigger maps and allowed for a more tactic play.  Eliminate the "heres the enemy" tags....

 

 

Yeah the server was packed, so intense having thousands of players fighting in Planetside 2, and its truly is a free to play game,makes me wonder why I sub to wwiionline when I cant find hardly any battles going on in my TZ.

makes me wonder why CRS needs 300 heros by mid feb.

 

CRS  (Doc specifically) has a history of making posts with  ominous undertones but nothing drastic has ever materialized.  As usual they're doing the stick and carrot dance again.   I doubt anything will happen when Doc's "ultimatum" comes to pass.   I believe the game, as it stands now, exists solely to supplement Doc’s, Killer's, and Maypol's income from whatever else they do outside of CRS.     They know realistically that there's a snowballs chance in hell of this game ever moving forward developmentally (new theaters, new toys, new engine, etc.) and short of one of the Rats winning the Powerball, the game will persist in a vegetative state of maintenance-only.  Just sit back with a Starbucks and browse Reddit all day and reboot the server as needed.  I don't think the game will ever die in the sense of shutting down the servers forever and letting the office lease expire but, rather, it will march onwards as B-list niche MMOG that caters to a few hundred subscribers.  

Towards the latter half of the last decade I came to accept that CRS was largely full of it when it came to developmental roadmaps like Unity II and North Afrika.  I made peace with the fact that the game will never live up to its original premise but I maintained my 2 subscriptions anyway because I loved the game dearly, warts and all.  I had RL and in game friends who played and I had no intention of ever abandoning them.    Throughout the years, every time I built a new machine, WW2OL would be the very first game to be installed after I got Windows and my drivers up and running.   I eagerly pasted my joystick and keyboard config files into their respective folders and fired up the game to make sure it ran well.  Every other game in my inventory would be placed on the back burner while I tested my new rig.  To hell with Prime95, I fired up WW2OL instead.  If my machine didn’t BSOD, lock up, or randomly reset after a marathon gaming session of WW2OL, then I knew I had a kickass machine.   But when 1.34 went live I threw in the towel and never looked back.   I canceled both of my accounts but I would occasionally check back in with a freebie to see how things were doing.  Exasperated sigh is how I would describe those times logging in with a free rifle account.   I couldn’t believe my eyes when I did a player count.  We're literally talking 50vs50 logged into this "massively" multiplayer game.      Sometimes Xoom would post on Facebook proclaiming 4 AO's GET IN GAME NOW!!! but in reality those 4 AO’s have just a sprinkling of a few dozen players here and there.   

That's not the WW2OL I once knew and loved.  

I was a huge fan for  years and have very fond memories of what this game once was and I have yet to find anything close to that.  But there's the rub... the game has changed.

A few years ago, in an effort to expand, CRS switched game engines to update the graphics and lure in more players. Unfortunately, nobody at CRS seemed to understand their core-player base nor even their own product from a technical architecture standpoint. Among many other issues (such as known bugs going years without a fix *cough* Navy! *cough*), this was their fatal flaw imho.

While the new engine did support more modern-ish graphics, it simply could not handle the amount of data-flow needed to each client.  This had the effect of dramatically decreasing the number of visible players.  In a futile effort to force a square peg into a round hole, CRS took a shotgun approach to how the game renders other visible players.  In doing so, they managed to destroy what was once a thinking man's game and turn it into a run & gun shooter-sim full of bugs that are simply unfixable without changing the current architecture.

This game was never about shiney graphics, it was about using better tactics and teamwork than your enemy, working together - sometimes with hundreds of other players in large battles (Antwerp anyone?). It was about strategy and forming relationships with others to get something done. It was about helping out another squad because they answered your call for help last week. For me it was about epic naval cat & mouse games in the zeelands. Working with other leaders to coordinate air, land & sea assets to arrive in the right place and time so that we could move the entire front-line into the enemy's flank is something I will never forget.  
 
*sigh*  
 
Many of us (Including those of us that work on large enterprise applications) tried to warn them of what was coming. If the game could be as it was 5 years ago, I would still be playing it. DOC and CRS drove it over a cliff.  
 
I still check their bug-report forum just in the hope that things have changed (and that DOC has been fired)... but they have more bugs pop up every week. http://forums.battlegroundeurope.com/forumdisplay.php?f=34  
 
S! to my brothers and sisters around the world. I miss you all.
Viking76
Formerly of 2.MID & 1.ZF

The strangest thing about the graphical improvements is that they apparently spent a lot of time on them and managed to not bring anything at all to the game. I think CRS' s reason given for all the graphical work was that new players would have a better experience if the infantry models were better. Most of the negative impressions of new players, however, are due to them getting bored, confused, and not being able to find a big battle so it was a strange solution for a gameplay issue.

-radial clutter
-ragdoll physics
-new infantry models
-that one big flat cloud layer

None of these addressed the problem of starting a fight or finding a fight. Players turn radial clutter to minimum (and it looks awful), turn off ragdoll, no one really notices the infantry anymore and even in their improved state WW2online's infantry still look quite dated. I would argue that we actually lost content with the patch updates because we no longer have distinctive high command or mission leader models and no emotes.

Heh, radial clutter and ragdoll physics.  What a waste of precious dev resources that turned out to be.    The Rats said they wanted to put those in game to entice the Joe Sixpack’s to the game but when your engine looks like it’s lagging 7 years behind the industry, I don’t think ragdoll and sprites of weeds is going to do a bloody thing to entice the casuals who like shiny things.     Something with RA.   

That RA kickstarter they did was one of the most pitiful “woe is me” things I’ve seen in quite some time.  I think Gophur used the word iconic over 10 times.  Heh, radial clutter and ragdoll physics.  What a waste of precious dev resources that turned out to be.    The Rats said they wanted to put those in game to entice the Joe Sixpack’s to the game but when your engine looks like it’s lagging 7 years behind the industry, I don’t think ragdoll and sprites of weeds is going to do a bloody thing to entice the casuals who like shiny things.     Something with RA.   

  

The game still delivers great action. Nobody's gonna deny the potential hasn't been realised fully. But there's something really addictive in this game, it can be completely absorbing

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Originally posted by Zanzibar1138
The game still delivers great action. Nobody's gonna deny the potential hasn't been realised fully. But there's something really addictive in this game, it can be completely absorbing

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Yes there is, the sheer idea of the game - but as many points out DOC and CRS really have no understanding of what exactly they have done and where they went wrong.

If you try to point it out to them/warn them etc.. all you get is a "you do not know the full picture" or "saying it is so does not make it a fact" (and that one he really really should try to invert on himself lol)

All that is keeping the game alive is the idea behind the game, everything else has really gone down the drain...

More about their F2P option...I just discovered that free to play accounts don't even get binoculars.

We can't spawn trucks so we can't transport or rearm people. We can't make missions either. We can't spawn engineers so we can't help blow forward bases.

So when there's a situation on the server, say only 30-35 people on an entire team(like right now on Axis), F2P players cannot really do anything but spawn where there's an existing battle. If there isn't a battle on the server(like right now) then F2P people have nothing to do.

So whatever the company's goal is with F2P it's certainly not to get some critical mass in there, some veterans maybe to come back and help keep fights going. I guess that I'll have to pay $9.99/month to have the privilege of running FRUs and trucks...or maybe not.

They need to really stop calling it "free to play", it's an unlimited trial and if players enter the game thinking they'll get access to 50% of content, or all content with reduced XP or a level cap that will just add to the shock of not finding anyone to fight on the sever.

Originally posted by Szyporyn

 

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Originally posted by Zanzibar1138
The game still delivers great action. Nobody's gonna deny the potential hasn't been realised fully. But there's something really addictive in this game, it can be completely absorbing

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Yes there is, the sheer idea of the game - but as many points out DOC and CRS really have no understanding of what exactly they have done and where they went wrong.

If you try to point it out to them/warn them etc.. all you get is a "you do not know the full picture" or "saying it is so does not make it a fact" (and that one he really really should try to invert on himself lol)

All that is keeping the game alive is the idea behind the game, everything else has really gone down the drain...

Weird. The way DOC "addresses" players on the issues you'd think we're all just a bunch of stinking idiots. Yet here's multiple threads specifically stating DOC as one of the main problems. How many people need to say DOC before the cheerleaders realize its not a personal venedetta afterall? We're pointing out something pretty obvious. And he shouldn't be in charge of anything over there.

Everyone around him,left.............

Originally posted by david06

More about their F2P option...I just discovered that free to play accounts don't even get binoculars.

 

Incorrect, we do get binos.  We can't cap though.  So when everyone is rushing in to cap, I stand there kicking the dirt, looking sheepish.