Grumble

Please clarify and state that there is an error here. And, after watching some redone crap version of Return of the Jedi, I hope never to hear about George Lucas and Hayden Christensen ever again (but I know that I will be disappointed).

In other words, he has some specific criterium/criteria for teaming. Gee.

9.9

Paint Shop Pro 8 appears to be free for download from CNet Downloads, but I haven't looked at that much. It looks like that download does not include the Animation Studio, so I don't know if it will handle animated GIFs, but that would seem odd if it does not.

The devs have given us release dates in the past. They also stated that the release dates were always tentative, depending on whether the Issue was ready for release. I can't remember which Issue it was (it could have been Issue 5, as BigMoney states) but they wound up not releasing on the date they had given. Then, some of the players got irate and flamed the boards castigating the devs for breaking a promise--which the devs had not made; as I said, the release date was tentative.

So, they stopped giving projected release dates. Give some thanks to our fellow idiots (and i don't mean the devs).

I believe they did consider non-beta accounts accessing the Character Creator to be a bug. I stated this earlier in the thread:

I might be mis-remembering things, but I do believe the devs have stated that they have been wanting to lock out the log-in for a while, if not, always, but they didn't have the resources to work on it and it wasn't important enough to give it enough effort. Now, they have more staff.

That is significantly different from allowing access to the Character Creator during the closed phase. In this instance, they would be giving currently active subscribers (and whomever they let into their living room) access to preview the new and improved™ Character Creation process, not experience game-play. In the process, they would open up the game to a lot of "free" chatter and exposure and possibly displace other games from media prominence.

And it would not be much different than what they had exposed at Comic-Con, but on a larger scale.

I'm not against closing the access, though; I just think they did a real disservice to themselves by not giving a small announcement before they set up the closed beta that it might be a little more closed than it ever was. That would have gone a long way toward alleviating the OUTRAGE!!! from some of the players.

Did they not know that they wanted to lock out the log-in for this beta? Is this a little incidental bonus to the features? They would only do themselves good by stating if that is so.

I'm not familiar with that program but it looks like the version that most people would be able install easily to use on Windows is the first in the list here:

ImageMagick Windows, 16 bit version

I don't mean to complain so much, but they seem to forget a lot of things that seem to be too important to forget.

My understanding, as I posted earlier, is that they have wanted to lock out the log-in for a long time, if not, always. I have absolutely no problem with them wanting to do that.

However, once again, they made a simple failure that has only emotional, though significant, impact on a small part of the player base--only a small part, but the worst part of the player base to provoke: the overly-reactive.

Just a simple announcement like, "Hey, we're trying out a lot of new features and one of them is the log-in system, so this Beta might seem a little more closed than other tests. We're working hard, but have patience; we expect this to go quickly and smoothly," would have gone a very, very long way toward preventing a lot of angst. Probably. We would have seen it as the marketing B.S. it obviously is, but we would be able to point to something definite and be ameliorated. Maybe.

The worst part about it is that they failed to take such a simple, precautionary, pre-emptive step.

I appreciate the information and the "leak" of the new log-in technology, but this is still rather convoluted and a straight answer would also be appreciated.

Will only Beta Testers be able to access the Character Creator at all? Will non-beta accounts be able to get into the queue and eventually get to the Character Creator?

If non-beta will not be able to get to it at all, I strongly suggest changing that, unless, as I said before, there are some other secret, market-breaking features or that you are testing other features like the functionality of that new log-in system. With the other games in development, that would be a marketing boondoggle; you could get so much interest and "free" coverage and possibly displace the competition in the media.

(The saddest part of posting this is that I believe that there is a slim chance that the people at Paragon Studios might not have seriously considered the marketing value of allowing free access to the Character Creator.)

*Turns head sideways for a better look*

I'm...not sure...but I think that means they're going to fix it so that everyone can get to the Character Creator.

But I could be really, really wrong on that. If any devs are looking here, please reconsider if you are going to lock the Character Creator; it's a very bad marketing move unless there is some seriously secret, market-shattering stuff that's coming.