CoV: Time between announcement and going live?

What was the time difference for CoV from when it was announced to when it went live?

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Depends what you mean by "announced" since IIRC, it was talked about before CoH even launched.

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Probably means "official announcement" and "officially going live."

"The One"

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Officially announced April 24 2004.

Went live October 31 2005.

I looked it up previously and can't be bothered re-linking.

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Officially announced April 24 2004.

Went live October 31 2005.

I looked it up previously and can't be bothered re-linking.

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Hopefully either:
1) it doesn't take that long this time
2) we get issues released between I15 and Going Rogue

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bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenth ur-
nuk!

you are thinking of going rogue's timeframe? my guess is i15 hits in early june, and rogue hits in november or october.

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Until we know more details on what new features to expect (there may be some that haven't been told), I don't know if we can really guess when. But if it is just what is announced, I'd say either late 2009 or early 2010.


EDIT: Just saying that because I'm assuming they wouldn't have announced those features unless they already got the technology somewhat underway.

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My guess (which means nothing) would be mid- or late-October.

1) This would position it for the on-shelf retail store Christmas season. Not too early so it still has a "new shiny" appeal, but early enough to have some word of mouth appeal.

2) This would position it for a HeroCon 2009 roll out. Assuming there's a HeroCon 2009 and its held roughly the same time period as last years.

-- Placholder
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Officially announced April 24 2004.

Went live October 31 2005.

I looked it up previously and can't be bothered re-linking.

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Hopefully either:
1) it doesn't take that long this time
2) we get issues released between I15 and Going Rogue

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I'm pretty sure it won't take as long as CoV did considering (as I've mentioned before):
<ul type="square">[*]The CoV announcement was barely after CoH had gone live, so they had likely done very little to no work on the game's assets. Going Rogue's mechanics and content are probably in the early to mid stages already.[*]5 new ATs with their own mechanics probably took a fair amount of the development time. Granted, we don't know if GR will have new ATs, but I personally don't expect another 5 entirely different ones.[*]The team was significantly smaller and less experienced throughout the dev cycle, with a lower budget. With NC's backing, Paragon Studios can put a lot more effort into reaching milestones faster.[*]CoV was in closed beta for several months. With GR only having an open beta phase (as far as I'm aware), bugs may get squashed a lot quicker, leading to a faster release.[/list]

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A few counter-points:

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5 new ATs with their own mechanics probably took a fair amount of the development time. Granted, we don't know if GR will have new ATs, but I personally don't expect another 5 entirely different ones.

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People (myself included) have been pleading for new ATs for YEARS, even before CoV came out. There is plenty of material to make new ones and still be able to reuse a majority of existing powersets, such as Defence/Assault, Summon/Control, Support/Melee, Melee/Control, Blast/Control and so on and so forth. To my eyes, NOT giving us a few more basic ATs to play with would be a tragic mistake.

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The team was significantly smaller and less experienced throughout the dev cycle, with a lower budget. With NC's backing, Paragon Studios can put a lot more effort into reaching milestones faster.

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According to things Jack, Positron and people at PlayNC have said, the team was drastically downsized by NCsoft down to 15 people at around I7, I believe, due to CoV not bringing in the revenue it was expected to. Before that, while we've no solid idea as to the size of the team, it was understood that it was a regular-sized professional team of developers. Growing to the ~50 people they have now may well be more akin to returning to old numbers, but in their own personal studio.

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CoV was in closed beta for several months. With GR only having an open beta phase (as far as I'm aware), bugs may get squashed a lot quicker, leading to a faster release.

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Open Betas tend to make catching bugs actually harder, as many people submit many ambiguous reports about the same thing. The reason they've been doing Closed Betas for some time is that a smaller, more focused group of testers working towards specific test objectives tend to be a lot more productive. What's more, during the time CoV was in Closed Beta (that I saw) it wasn't really about catching bugs. The game was literally unfinished, with significant, sweeping changes being made in real time. We were asked, for instance, to please delete our Ice/Ice Brutes because the powersets were being removed from the game.

One other thing one has to remember is that this is a full expansion. I don't believe it's realistic to expect it to take as much time as a really big Issue, because it's presumably a lot more than that. By my estimate, we're looking at a year, or at the very best case, the end of this year. I'll be glad to be wrong and see it sooner, but I very much doubt it.

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Things could be different this time around.

Note that a lot of new programmers have come on board. Now why would they do that considering the implied limitations of the first Cryptic Engine?

I sense a more fundamental change than just another post-process effect and a mix of old and a handful of new world objects. Something big is happening, and I would not be surprised if it took much longer, and changed the game to the point where the only thing left behind is the story and some textures and objects that dodged deprecation.

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My understanding is that GR has been worked on for quite a while
before the announcement. BABs and others have hinted that they
were working on something big in the months before, so apparently
they were slapped with a NDA clause themselves. So, if GR was
being worked on in the last year or so, it might be plausible that
the expansion will be released late fall, but we'll just have to wait
and see.

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Current project

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but we'll just have to wait
and see.

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QFT ... no one but the Devs know for sure...

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Just a spectator, not a speculator.

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[ QUOTE ]
A few counter-points:

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CoV was in closed beta for several months. With GR only having an open beta phase (as far as I'm aware), bugs may get squashed a lot quicker, leading to a faster release.

[/ QUOTE ]

Open Betas tend to make catching bugs actually harder, as many people submit many ambiguous reports about the same thing. The reason they've been doing Closed Betas for some time is that a smaller, more focused group of testers working towards specific test objectives tend to be a lot more productive. What's more, during the time CoV was in Closed Beta (that I saw) it wasn't really about catching bugs. The game was literally unfinished, with significant, sweeping changes being made in real time. We were asked, for instance, to please delete our Ice/Ice Brutes because the powersets were being removed from the game.

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I'm glad you qualified this statement with a "tend to." It is hard to argue that the closed beta process in place for the past several issues is any better than the open process we used to have.

If it were better, you would expect to be able to show that quantitatively, by pointing at either (1) shorter issues cycles due to better efficiency or (2) better issues releases in the form of fewer bugs due to better efficiency.

However, neither of these two things can be shown. The rate of new issues is roughly the same, and the past few releases have been as buggy as any before the closed beta process started.

IMO, with all the social networking tech this game has, the devs could still maintain a focused core group of dedicated testers via a private forum and private chat channels, yet allow the beta to be basically "open" to all comers for the sake of really ferreting out obscure bugs and methods to abuse/break the system.

Would it work in an incomplete alpha stage? Probably not. But it would certainly work for testing things in the state they have been historically placed on the public training room, be it for closed (I9 to present) or open (pre-I9) beta.

I really hope they dump their current closed beta model. If you can't point to a numerical advantage, it isn't worth the closed beta angst, the disruption of the PvP events, the disruption of personal use of the Test Server, and the perceived advantages (such as advatages on the Market) given to the current closed beta testers.

Edited to add: You might also expect to see shorter beta cycles (shorter time the issue is in beta before going live) - but you don't see that, either.

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There is plenty of material to make new ones and still be able to reuse a majority of existing powersets, such as Defence/Assault, Summon/Control, Support/Melee, Melee/Control, Blast/Control and so on and so forth.

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Come oooooooon, melee/debuff!

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