How an mmopg that has 18 players on one side during off peak server times bans anyone for other than cheating or subjects 50 people to 200 second spawn delay is beyond me.  When you ban players because they are vocal critics with those numbers it starts to look like that seen from hitlers bunker.

You should really pay the airfare for your last subscribers and serve some purple drank when the game does come down

Did someone say, PURPLE DRANK?

Yeah, it's disappointing.

So if China and RA haven't succeeded, then all those dev hours and all that time subscribers waited patiently was for nothing. Around late 2010 I remember subbing two accounts for one year, helping out with a facebook advertising fund, thinking that I was helping out a indie studio and now that the China wait was over they could get to improving the main product.

It's still amazing to me that CRS has done a complete 180 and they've kept a straight face. Not too long ago Rapid Assault had to succeed if you wanted to keep playing WW2online, everything was "one big bucket"

Suddenly we have these assurances that no money from the WW2online subscriptions are being used on Rapid Assault. I guess one of their builders/investors/chumps finally told them that linking their subscriber's money to a crappy WW2 shooter wasn't a good idea.

What takes the cake though is the fact that we were told "You don't know anything about running a business or coding a game, although you may think you do." by DOC many times over the years with his chorus chuckling in the forums, but now we're watching them with their failed Call of Duty 2 clone and them fumbling around with basic marketing and web design. It's total amateur hour.

At this point I would be more inclined to support the game if the IP was just bought up by a random group of players who would then run the server(s). I think they would at least be more open to volunteer assistance, wouldn't waste everyone's money on side projects and wouldn't routinely deride their customers.

As David06 said so well above.  

I would be more inclined to support the game if it were less likely to throw away money on random ventures that have very little to do with the original concept of the game.  

I can remember the China Deal back when it was first mentioned, and how it was puffed up to be the BIG THING to get CRS the funding to push the game another 10 years!  

Instead it has turned into a Chinese Poo-Poo Platter of fail.  

I am not saying that CRS has failed horribly on WWIIOL, no, they have done well, but not as well as they could have if they would have concentrated on the original product advertised and released back in 2001.   If only they had concentrated on that product improved it and shaped it with as much dedication as they did initially, the first 3 years.   They would have a REALLY great WWII sim game at this point.    Instead it has a little of everything and a lot of missing.  

Imagine if they would have completed the European Theater of Operations, the rest of Northern France, all the way to Paris and Southern England and northern Germany with Denmark.  That stayed in the Blitzkrieg timeframe 1940-41. 

Then openned the North Africa Theater, set in a later timeline, say 41-43.   

Then did the Eastern Front, 1943-44.

Finally Italian/Southern front 1944-45. 

In the 11 almost 12 years of this game we would DEFINATELY have two of those done if not 90% done at this point.   I mean if EVE, run by CCP, which came out a couple of years AFTER WWIIOL, can have not one but 18 major patch expansions over 9 nearly 10 years, is simply astounding.   

When you look at the two game companies you realise how much actually went wrong for CRS, as oppossed to CCP.   Both had great ideas, both had new games on a scale most major companies avoided like the plague.   Both had finacial problems and server issues on launch.   But one stuck to its guns and continued to produce the game they set out to make.   The other wavered and made excuses for internal failings.  

Originally posted by Hodo

As David06 said so well above.  

 

I would be more inclined to support the game if it were less likely to throw away money on random ventures that have very little to do with the original concept of the game.  

 

I can remember the China Deal back when it was first mentioned, and how it was puffed up to be the BIG THING to get CRS the funding to push the game another 10 years!  

 

Instead it has turned into a Chinese Poo-Poo Platter of fail.  

 

I am not saying that CRS has failed horribly on WWIIOL, no, they have done well, but not as well as they could have if they would have concentrated on the original product advertised and released back in 2001.   If only they had concentrated on that product improved it and shaped it with as much dedication as they did initially, the first 3 years.   They would have a REALLY great WWII sim game at this point.    Instead it has a little of everything and a lot of missing.  

 

Imagine if they would have completed the European Theater of Operations, the rest of Northern France, all the way to Paris and Southern England and northern Germany with Denmark.  That stayed in the Blitzkrieg timeframe 1940-41. 

Then openned the North Africa Theater, set in a later timeline, say 41-43.   

Then did the Eastern Front, 1943-44.

 

Finally Italian/Southern front 1944-45. 

 

In the 11 almost 12 years of this game we would DEFINATELY have two of those done if not 90% done at this point.   I mean if EVE, run by CCP, which came out a couple of years AFTER WWIIOL, can have not one but 18 major patch expansions over 9 nearly 10 years, is simply astounding.   

When you look at the two game companies you realise how much actually went wrong for CRS, as oppossed to CCP.   Both had great ideas, both had new games on a scale most major companies avoided like the plague.   Both had finacial problems and server issues on launch.   But one stuck to its guns and continued to produce the game they set out to make.   The other wavered and made excuses for internal failings.  

Problem is one game has someone called DOC and one didn't.  

No the difference between those 2 games is this:

WW2ol Released 2001: 2002-2006 12.500  subscribers

Eve 2003 released: no data till 2011 400.000 subs(after that steady 400-450) 

You can do a lot more with the numbers of subscribers eve had.

WW2ol was partially funded by doing stuff for the government(simulation stuff) but nowadays they don't a lot of that anymore, so they needed more funding which they wouldn't get from WW2ol since subs has been extremely stable. Therefore china/RA.

Now I see your argument, it's a valid one

But when a lone kid can do more impressive coding for a game than CRS have done in 12 years -You got to wonder...

Originally posted by david06

Yeah, it's disappointing.

So if China and RA haven't succeeded, then all those dev hours and all that time subscribers waited patiently was for nothing. Around late 2010 I remember subbing two accounts for one year, helping out with a facebook advertising fund, thinking that I was helping out a indie studio and now that the China wait was over they could get to improving the main product.

It's still amazing to me that CRS has done a complete 180 and they've kept a straight face. Not too long ago Rapid Assault had to succeed if you wanted to keep playing WW2online, everything was "one big bucket"

Suddenly we have these assurances that no money from the WW2online subscriptions are being used on Rapid Assault. I guess one of their builders/investors/chumps finally told them that linking their subscriber's money to a crappy WW2 shooter wasn't a good idea.

What takes the cake though is the fact that we were told "You don't know anything about running a business or coding a game, although you may think you do." by DOC many times over the years with his chorus chuckling in the forums, but now we're watching them with their failed Call of Duty 2 clone and them fumbling around with basic marketing and web design. It's total amateur hour.

At this point I would be more inclined to support the game if the IP was just bought up by a random group of players who would then run the server(s). I think they would at least be more open to volunteer assistance, wouldn't waste everyone's money on side projects and wouldn't routinely deride their customers.

Its amazing how each cash grab is promoted in the same manner.  And when their plans  fall through what does DOC do? Blames players and spews paragraph long "explanations" which are nothing more than condasending insults.

What kind of complaints were you expecting when the players finally have a place to speak somewhat freely about the game? Sure as heck isn't allowed on the game forums.

All that aside. 10 yrs rolled in and CRS made an "announcement". If you played RA around that time you'd understand how I feel they didn't have anything ready for the 10 yrs. It was like it snuck up on them, oh crap we have to do something. That was June 10,2011. Remember the giant front page announcement about it? Did it not give the impression that it had been in develeopment for yrs? Was it not put out there as the great game saver of WWIIONLINE, despite the feverish objections of the players? Then when its obviously crashing and burning it morphed into "we had to show we can still make stuff",DOC.

Sounds like you duped your customers while  tossing something together so your investors wouldn't bail.

There's many other examples of what was told, and what was actually done. And I don't need to explain, prove, that to anyone that wants to defend them. Its all out there in their statements.

Originally posted by BodkinBarber

I thought it would be neccessary to clarify that potentially apart from a few people that potentially have ulterior motives (either positive or negative) I would say that the majority of people who post negativity are not mindless haters as many of the CRS worshipers on here label them as. They are conveying their disapproval of decisions that CRS have made.

<snip>

CRS is like an alcoholic. You can be nice and keep giving them the alcohol, comfort them and tell them their ok as they slowly die OR you can step up, tell them to wise up, force them to stop their old ways and turn themselves around because they will only ever get better if they change their ways

I actually read the whole post, and this has to be one of the best constructive posts I have seen on the MMORPG forums in a LONG LONG LONG time.    If any post deserves a +1 it is this one, well said.

And with that said I have to agree with his post.   CRS made a lot of bad choices through the years, and then attempted to cover them up or just bulldoze their way through them.    The game is dieing not because of its lack of pretty and shiny, but because of the lack of direction in its development.   If you look at the history of the game, the game thrived not when it had the best and prettiest graphics on the market.   It was when the game had active development with well defined and communicated direction.   We knew that the 109F4 was coming out, and the Spitfire MkV, or the P40 Warhawk.   We knew they were fixing the lag issues, or the server crashes.   We knew that they were working on adding more depth to the TO&E system.  

It was a "golden" age for WWIIOL, not what you have now, where most of the players dont know what CRS is doing, or if the game will be around come November 2013.    So why the deviation from what worked in the past to what we have now.   This is what lead to the sudden hatred out of so many long time supporters of the game.   This is ultimately what is hurting the game itself.   Its not its decade old game play, or the occassional bug.   But the sudden lack of communication or just flat out lies to get money.  

Eve Online had a crappy launch and it had virtually no single player content in game and I would argue that Eve Online is more user un- friendly than WW2OL ever was/ is and that it has a steeper learning curve than WW2OL.    But CCP nurtured their player base and they were never top heavy with do nothing "producers" like CRS and so now they enjoy a subscriber base of ~400k and a staff of 70 or so people.    Like WW2OL, CCP was screwed by their publisher but they managed to turn their own disaster into a thriving success whereas CRS spent the past 10 years of living hand to mouth and along the way laying off important people like programmers and artists while retaining "producers" who spend their day jotting down ideas on a whiteboard.  

CCP managed to get Eve on Steam while Motormouth admitted her  emails and phonecalls to Valve were ignored   In the big bucket post, gophur stated "we've even had some interest from a large games distribution site about publishing it (RA) upon completion" but it's obvious now that "interest" is the Steam Greenlight program.     Notice how they're using a player made promotional video from 2008 on the Greenlight page?   

[quote]Originally posted by david06

What takes the cake though is the fact that we were told "You don't know anything about running a business or coding a game, although you may think you do." by DOC many times over the years with his chorus chuckling in the forums, but now we're watching them with their failed Call of Duty 2 clone and them fumbling around with basic marketing and web design. It's total amateur hour.[/quote]

Hah!  That always amused me when Doc would break out that line.   In order for a statement like that have any merrit, wouldn't you have to have a [b]successful[/b] business under your belt first?     By their own admission the game never made any money.  

Yeah that always gets me laughing, he talks the talk alright :-)

When I think of CRS and DOC in particular I always imagine a really stubborn fat kid going "but I am slim, you do not know if I am fat or not because you are not me"

How they can still maintain a straight face when they spew out most of their crap is beyond me TBH.

They are not a success, even with an idea that should have made them millionaires, and STILL they keep on with their "we are right, you are wrong" - they have been called out sooooo many times but alas....

---

Originally posted by depot12
DOC posted that 2008 was the highest numbers.  Yet on the "One Big Bucket" graphic, it says subscribers were declining since 2005.  

---

The 2008 statement comes when someone says that we had more players when it was just simply town supply, without the complicated brigade system and the efforts to remove squads from the game.

The "game has never been profitable" statements and the graphic came when they ran out of money for Rapid Assault and they were trying to get WW2online subscribers to pay additional money for Rapid Assault. People asked why don't they work on WW2online and their response was WW2online was never profitable.

I know that a person can go to just about any game forum and you will have players claiming that the developers lied, but in this case it's quite true and the evidence is still out there.

Funniest thing is that CRS said WW2online was a dead end and so they stopped working on it, but so far all of their other projects have been dead ends. I wouldn't care about DOC being an asshole and having extremely poor customer relations if he actually knew anything about running a business.

Why has CRS removed the 300 subs by 15th feb. graph from the front page?Xoom?Doc?

It was standing at 94.....

---

Originally posted by Abyssuss
Why has CRS removed the 300 subs by 15th feb. graph from the front page?Xoom?Doc?

It was standing at 94.....

---

The stagnant number was probably a contributing factor, but I think that someone from the community finally messaged Xoom about it's appearance on the web page.

I mean seriously, that thermometer-looking thing was ugly; they didn't even bother to remove the white background so you had this huge white box staring at you whenever you went to the main site.

Originally posted by david06

 

---

Originally posted by Abyssuss
Why has CRS removed the 300 subs by 15th feb. graph from the front page?Xoom?Doc?

 

It was standing at 94.....

---

 

The stagnant number was probably a contributing factor, but I think that someone from the community finally messaged Xoom about it's appearance on the web page.

I mean seriously, that thermometer-looking thing was ugly; they didn't even bother to remove the white background so you had this huge white box staring at you whenever you went to the main site.

I just hope they keep us informed about it and not just disappear off the radar, I'm interested if they will hit the big 300 by feb 15th

Originally posted by Abyssuss

Originally posted by david06

 

---

Originally posted by Abyssuss
Why has CRS removed the 300 subs by 15th feb. graph from the front page?Xoom?Doc?

 

It was standing at 94.....

---

 

The stagnant number was probably a contributing factor, but I think that someone from the community finally messaged Xoom about it's appearance on the web page.

I mean seriously, that thermometer-looking thing was ugly; they didn't even bother to remove the white background so you had this huge white box staring at you whenever you went to the main site.

I just hope they keep us informed about it and not just disappear off the radar, I'm interested if they will hit the big 300 by feb 15th

If by keeping you informed you mean a message from xoom stating how successful it was, probably.

This is where the problem is. They've blown smoke up peoples butts far too many times for many to even trust them anymore. Both DOC and XOOM.

It wouldn't surprise me in the least if it happened that way. Or the intent of that drive will be completely revamped, and touted off as a sucess. Zero trust in this companies business practices.............................................zero.

Originally posted by Abyssuss

Why has CRS removed the 300 subs by 15th feb. graph from the front page?Xoom?Doc?

It was standing at 94.....

Updating

Its not an auto upload.

Originally posted by CeTheGreat

Originally posted by Abyssuss

Why has CRS removed the 300 subs by 15th feb. graph from the front page?Xoom?Doc?

It was standing at 94.....

Updating

 

Its not an auto upload.

I know it's not, but the graph isn't even on the front page anymore and not talked much about on the forums, all I want is transparency from CRS, whether the mission fails or not. come on guys

It was mentioned in the Barracks yesterday.

Xoom updated it and said 96 Heroes as of 1/31/13

These numbers aren't counting people who switched to a Hero account that are still on a plan.

Once they take effect, it will reflect the new Heros.