North American Training Room unavailability - Week of July 19th

While I sort of agree with how you feel, (as I posted above you) I also don't think jumping down the Dev/Community people's throats is warrented AT THIS POINT until we hear something else directly from them, which is possibly unlikely given past queries of this nature, (though this being so close to the end, maybe so). If you went into it, and only bought the time expecting that, I feel sort of sorry for you, and while I understand how you feel, I also feel that doing it purely for the CB access was probably an unwise idea.

Wasn't trying to jump down anyone's throat. But I do agree that overall I'm just very disappointed with the way things are going right now with beta. I do understand that the devs are very busy working the kinks out of GR for live release, but I had kept my account active for that amount of time "knowing" that this would be my for sure chance to get into GR closed beta to help test the sh*t out of it. Back in CoV beta, I was invited a week or 2 before it went live & back then it felt more like "look at the new shinys" instead of helping squash bugs because most (if not all) the bugs were squashed. I'm not gonna ragequit or move to another game because of all of this, I love it too much. Just very disappointing so far with absolutely no news regarding the rest of the beta invites, just speculation.

*Nod* That's pretty much exactly where I am then. Nice to see we're mostly all on the same page.

If these are true statements (and more importantly, if NCSoft believes these are true statements) then access to closed beta testing should never be SOLD. Linking access to loyalty programs or to pre-purchases is exactly that - selling closed beta access.

You might have a nice argument on the level of a purist, but NCSoft clearly doesn't believe it, and the customers who took them up on the offer certainly don't believe it.

We have to wait and see how things play out, of course, but things are setting up to play out badly IMO.

This is what's actually bothering me more than anything. :\

I'm an active paying subscriber, I've put in a lot of money to play this game (i.e. boosters, character slots, rename tokens, respecs even) and someone who's probably never heard of this game will get to play new content before I do.

I'm sure it'll really tick off 60+ month vets more than me.

I'm speculating/assuming/(making an *** out of u & me) that they're putting GR on both test servers now, and they're shutting them down for San Diego Comic-Con that's starting on the 22nd.

I'm also speculating/assuming/(making an *** out of u & me) that the update is the almost completed launch version of GR.

The GR testing has been happening on the European Test server.

Presumably, they've now put GR on the US test servers so there will be less lag when showing it at Comic Con this week.


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My French isn't perfect, but it looks like Avatea said: "Don't worry, The beta for loyalty program participants has not begun, but will happen fairly soon. An email will be sent to each participant and beta forum access will be activated at the same time."


So...

Soon(tm)

Your French is better than mine, as I can only ask where the bathroom is and make a double entendra about the size and colour of my pen. At any rate, your translation seems to be close to perfect between my own poor translation, livesearch's translation and my phone translator, I get basically the same thing.

Yes..yes it does. Quite a bit actually.

'


You forgot the TM after the 'soon'

I'm sure the french folks who are part of the loyalty program are quite happy with this.


Since it can't be bothered to be posted on the English forums, it makes me wonder.

Yeah...it bugs me. Granted SOME of those people will be CoH players, and I'm OK with that, but many will not. At this point, even if our access started in the next day or two, it would feel pretty "token" assuming GR is going to keep it's 08/17 release date (I'm starting to wonder, at this point). I probably won't mess with it, and just wait for launch. If they'd wanted it to mean a good deal, they'd have had to do it back in June or early July not less than a month before the game goes live, also the fact they mentioned it on the French forums and not ours is fairly telling...but then again, the Euros have always been getting information on features before it was ever posted to us...

I make no secret about my feelings for how the devs run things. Stuff like this is exactly why I feel the way I do. They've already got our money, so they focus on people who can possibly give them more money. They take money for preorders and then change out features at the last minute. They say one thing, and do another. They listen to players, but only the ones they want to hear. When challenged, they hide in their tower.

I agree, at this point it is token access. I think GR will hit its release; they'll continue dropping features until it does. Regarding French information posts, I don't think it's necessarily a US vs EU issue, but I do believe some players get treated better than others.


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On this, I do feel the need to disagree. You can't blame "the Devs" (i.e. the people who work on the game) for the actions that NCSoft and/or Marketing takes. This whole thing smells of Marketing and NCSoft Management to me. Blaming War Witch and/or Positron et. al. for anything of this nature is...well, stupid and childish. You can "blame" them for dropping features or what have you or "screwing up the game" but you can't blame them for what is probably clearly a marketing issue: i.e. the ComiCon decision, the release date, the dropping of features (this is debateable, as Positron clearly said they were dropping it (Alpha Incarnate Slot) to make it more of what it should be, and I believe that. However, by the same token, if trying to get it done NOW might mess up the already-decided release date, NC/Marketing will come to War Witch/Posi whomever and go "Well..you're probably not going to make the release date, you need to make it, so something has to go." That or they decided voluntarily that it needed to be dropped in order to make the release date, and thus make Incarnates better once it does come out. It is also important to remember that the game IS a business, and thus, it's supposed to take any chance it can to make more money, especially in this economy.

What I don't agree with is fall off favor with current players to this level to do so, though if that IS the case, that's squarely on the feet of NCSoft, not our developers. I never implied it was a US/EU issue, though in the past things have come out first on the EU forums before they became knowledge on the US forums, is mostly what I was alluding to.

I don't think they'll "continue dropping features" as they haven't (to my knowledge) dropped anything that was actually advertised on the box (as opposed to Cryptic who DID drop the Cathedral of Pain which AFAIK was advertised as part of CoV (not that I personally care, just putting it out there)).

As far as "taking money for preorders and changing features at the last minute" that happens to a LOT of games, and a pre-order does not guarantee the game will be in the same state at release as it is when that preorder is placed, it's just that most of the time, you're preordering a game that is new, and you've either beta'd it (or get that as part of your PO) or you know nothing about it, so you wouldn't know something changed, except later to talk to people who DID beta test the game (case in point: I beta tested Champions Online, and I can flat out tell you the massive amount of crap they changed/ignored/lied about. Comparitively our people at PS/NC are saints). That's why I always preorder at a store, if I have the option, as that can be cancelled before release, the NCSoft "prepurchase" cannot. Also, I want the gamestop items and the mouse surface.

I do agree that they have a select batch of players they tend to listen to more than others, though I think that happens by nature when some people contribute more than others, and have shown themselves to do so. The only point I agree fully on, and have always is that their communication system of relating info to the players is always lacking, thus giving the appearance of "hiding in their tower" as you put it, that's always been a problem, and still is. Frankly I suspect they got majorly overworked went into "oh crap" mode, especially once the release date was moved and finalized, and didn't have the people on communicating they should have, as those people were probably operating in CB. This is and has always been unacceptable. Get different people for handling CB issues versus open community communication, hire them if you have to, cut back somewhere else. Thankfully it's not as bad as it was in the Emmert Era, where he flat out said stuff wrong, made jokes, then later wondered why people were angry, but it's still not equal to a team like say Fallen Earth or I suspect, the people EA/Bioware will put on tOR.

I just felt the need to state my own position, and refute some of the blatently self-serving points of your post. They are not "out to get us" or "screw us over" if anything they just pewed the scrootch on this one, which is why I'm still disappointed, and still expected better.

I'm going to assume this is a joke..but internet sarcasm hardly works right, so just in case it's not:

1) What evidence do you have that the original release date was "arbitrary"?

2) How do you know "GR is nowhere near ready for public testing?" You either don't, or you'd have to violate the NDA to say so.

3) This has to be a joke, as you can't possibly believe they'd have time for 1-50 content in Praetoria, AND 10 levels of Incarnates, if you do, then you must expect the release date to be somewhere around Summer 2011.

4) I may have missed the Don King reference, but again..I assume this is a joke..but it's hard to tell around here sometimes...