Issue 21 and Freedom's release date

I still have Sept 20.

Weekend? Probably Monday evening most likely.

It could also mean that the launch of Issue 21 to the Live servers is imminent. *shrugs*

Obviously whenever Issue 21 finally goes live they WILL update the Test server to it. I wasn't trying to imply that the Test server would NEVER be updated to Issue 21 to match all the other servers eventually.

Functionally speaking there is NO DIFFERENCE between the Beta server(s) and the Test server. The Test server is not any more "like" a live environment than the Beta server is. The notion that every Issue must take a spin on the Test server before it can be certified to go to the Live servers is just plain weird. Remember that the Devs had every intention to launch Issue 21 back on September 1st before it ever touched the Test server.

I'm expecting it to hit that week and have been since it was announced, mainly because I'll be almost continually busy and unable to log on from October 13-23.

I have my own idea of why this would be more or less the date of i21 going live, so bear with me.

They won't release a new issue during an event, and the Halloween event usually runs for about 10 days, give or take. With Halloween being on Monday this year, I could see the Halloween event starting up on the Thursday before, the 27th, and having it end on or around the 7th of November.

Figure they would want at least 2 weeks of live time for i21 to work out the bugs before the event starts up and that gives an approximate i21 launch date of October 13th. I say the 11th since that would be the closest Tuesday and the VIP head-start would probably be the weekend before that so with any luck, i21 will be on the live servers for us on or around the 7th of October.

Am I right? Time will tell, but if i21 isn't live by mid October, figure the next window would be early/mid November and I really doubt they want to push it THAT far off.

Since we already know (and had very good indicators beforehand) that they had every intention of launching Issue 21 last week I would think that if this delay drags on much past September 20th then it'd have to be considered a significant failure on their part.

The only way I could see any of these October predictions being reasonable is if you're willing to accept and/or account for the Devs making a gross miscalculation about their overall readiness to launch this Issue. At best that could only be a Pyrrhic victory for those who predicted such a late release.

I don't think that taking longer to make sure things are right isn't as significant a "failure" as I think you're making it out to be. There are still quite a few little snags, it seems to me, with i21 and Freedom in general, and I'd rather them make sure these are fixed then force it to live to make it seem like they have everything right when they don't, especially given the general lack of stability that we seem to be dealing with lately.

If that means an October release, so be it. There's nothing wrong with delaying a release. How many months was Going Rogue pushed back?

You're forgetting that this Issue isn't just like every other Issue. There are ramifications for the NCsoft store and the new Paragon Market microtransaction system. Unlike other Issues that had no direct financial connections to the real world this one has some very serious business repercussions. They made some critically timed plans and commitments related to budgets, marketing and other outside forces that have nothing with software development all set for last week which they had to scrap. I highly doubt they can just afford to tinker with it until they make it as perfect as they would like.

I agree that I would like the Devs to take all the reasonable time necessary to dust this Issue off and do what they can to get it out the door. But I simply can't see how they can let this drag on for multiple extra weeks taking everything else into account. *shrugs*

P.S. You mentioned the release of Going Rogue. Imagine what it would have been like if a few days before the retail boxes went on the shelves they had found some kind of game-breaking bug that caused them to change their plans and stop those boxes. This is effectively what just happened last week with Issue 21. The level of commitment they made to launching last week could not have been a trivial enough thing to just say "Whoops, we're kidding". Thankfully retail boxes were not involved this time, but the chaos of having to replan/reschedule everything is not something businesses can afford to do on a whim.

A win's a win.

If it actually ends up taking that long I'll try to make a mental note to come back here and congratulate you on your ability to predict just how badly the Devs had managed to screw up this situation. Let's just say up until now I had a bit more faith in their skills to plan for and mitigate these scenarios. *shrugs*

As in, "Once in a..."?

For once Arcanaville + numbers do not equal correct!

HOT DOG!!!!

Zwill, quick question - do our free character xfers stack? And if we bought the 6-pack of xfers, would they stack with the VIP ones?

Well, I had a response all typed out and ready to hit submit when I noticed a mistake I made. Being the somewhat OCD person I am, I reloaded the page after seeing said mistake and wanted to give the whole post another once over after correcting it and low and behold I see this post from Zwill.

Looks like my prediction was wrong, and I couldn't be happier!

Plenty of time to work out the bugs before Halloween! My favorite time of year (in CoH, not in RL) just got a jumpstart.

Yes

You're the man, thanks for the quick reply!

Not so fast Zoidbergilinger. That's the head start. Looks like head start will last at least until September 22. If that's the case, and launch happens the following week, then I'm still within the margin for error for launch which I predicted to be between the last week of September and the first week of October.

Well as fun as the "heavily fudged" rationalizations for these widely differing predictions have been I'll maintain a mature stance about all this and simply say I'm glad the Devs were able to organize a solution for the release of this long-awaited Issue that did -not- include having to wait all the way until October.

Liar!