Lookin pretty much like everything has lost steam and about to peter out. The forums are dead. Noone is posting. Devs are pretty silent. I don't see people logging into test and quite frankly I've stopped as well. On live, I know PERSONALLY, in less than 2 weeks I have seen our raid numbers drop substantially AND we have also lost our guild leader, a raid leader, another is MIA and Dravid is pretty much a one man band runnin the show. Sadly I think ALL of the decisions mixed with poor communication and direction has finally come to a head where apathy has finally set in and we're all just waiting for the other shoe to drop. PLEASE give us some good news. I can't tell you the depths of my depression when thinking about what is happening here to one of the best PvE MMO's I have ever played.
Cave of Wonder's Wing 1 is ready for us to throw players at as soon as they finish converting character data as soon as they finish that we will be ready to throw players at it on Test. Soon as I fix any bugs we find it will get pushed live hopefully only a week after because I will focus on it exclusively. I don't have any eta except soon because we are waiting for the conversion to be finished. I know I want to give a solid date but I can't they are working on doing it and we got a good initial conversion done yesterday but it has taken much longer then we originally expected it would take.
thanks for the update, but as for the general malaise amongst players (some no longer playing) they are mostly waiting for answers to questions about what will happen to existing encounters, gear, and augs. there have been too many vague statements implying that encounters we know and love will be changed and get new COW focused mechanics and loot tables. or that augs will be unique per piece in "current" gear. There have been references to new clickie effects, but nothing said about existing ones. Some of us still play the game through all levels on a variety of characters. We want to know what the impact of COW changes will be on the game we are currently playing.
we have also seen our raid numbers cut in half and key players no longer logging in. we don't log in to test because making a new character each time with nothing to actually test is just a time sink. The lack of communication has been made even worse by poor word choices in dev posts that raise more questions than they answer. I still play and we had a good time doing short handed raiding the other night , but last night we didn't kill a single mob. Comments like "why bother, the stuff we get won't be of any use anyway" pretty much sum up where a lot of players are at the moment.
Wigin, the game is dying… if you want to save it you should start by disclosing as much information as you can… Post as much information about Special Augmentation as you can, talk about how are you going to handle the removed caps (it’s vital for your new gear system), disclose as much information about the changes on old mobs… it’s time for a full disclosure because if you wait any longer there will be no one left. CoW gear looks like it’s going to be a huge disappointment, players are worried because it seems that their current gear is going to be useless and that’s unacceptable and will cause a mass exodus. Players had high hopes for CoW, but so far your poorly timed reveals are doing a lot of damage, we need more information, so far we have only partial ideas, fragments that for an external observer looks like a poorly thought plan: Defiance making all our items obsolete, old augmentations are now useless, poorly thought augmentations to fill poorly thought items… In the end everything may work out but so far it seems like a HUGE disaster on the making. I know, you are busy working on the game, creating encounters, tweaking the new items, tweaking the augmentations… but at this rate there will be no one left to use that new content. If you care about the game post all the information that is missing: upgraded mobs, Special augmentations, removed caps, how to convert our old EEs into special augmentations, tell us about your plan for old augmentations (including imbued) and be prepared to scrap the whole idea if the general consensus is that it won’t work... and do it now because perhaps it's already too late...
CoW was something many were hanging their hats on as a vision of the future, new high end content, an actual raid dungeon, hopefully challenging content. A purpose for everything we've worked hard for over the past 5 years with no new high end content aside from a few spotty, buggy raid mobs. What we're getting from CoW, content people aren't testing because they don't test because it takes to long to get a character into CoW with appropriate abilities and gear to test. As well as itemization revamp that player feedback has been completely ignored (as expected with test server). Results, Vanguard is bleeding out players once again and SOE has learned nothing. This is all crazy because, Wigin is now posting that a wing is nearly ready to test when all of CoW was supposed to be released over a month ago. If they were reading the forums they would see people don't like the new vision and people won't be there to help test because people are irate because as per usual feedback is completely ignored (which appears to players as intended and spiteful due to the consistent hubris activity over at SOE). Developers if you want people to help, extend an olive branch. I personally would be brushing up the resume.
Basically, if the dev's are reading this, guilds won't even be able to muster a raid to even help test, because there won't even be enough players to play when it goes live. It will have to be a multi guild effort, which is only a reflection of what is happening on the live server, people are so upset guilds are having issues mustering up a full raid force. This content is nearly dead before release, please try and get on the same page as the players or Vanguard will suffer greatly. The gold membership cancellations I'm hearing about will start ringing bells somewhere because it all comes down to money. Think to yourselves, people are willing to wait, we've waited forever already. Don't put out content people will spit on and laugh there way on to the next game. While refusing to play a game that you work on in the future will not land you the next big thing, that resume won't look so good when SOE lets you go, and you know they will.
All these posts makes me want to start taking prozac... Its sad very sad that this is happening again to VG...
I'm certain that the game can still be saved, but the dev team has to react now, next week is critical, if they manage to explain everything and players are able to test CoW, players will return.
I know, but if CoW is good they will return, but in order to know if it's good players will have to be able to test.
Couldn't agree more. I've always been a staunch BELIEVER in this game from day one, not always a staunch SUPPORTER. I've always felt like the game was never in trouble in the past and that it would be around for players to enjoy. This time feels VERY different for me though. I have NEVER in all the years of playing this game experienced this universal apathy and feeling of pure defeat from my fellow players. It's not just my guild. I have a lot of friends that span all the guilds and also play my lowbies with newer players. Sorry to say but I think you guys actually sunk the ship on this last set of promises and direction changes. I can get behind, support, test and give feedback for quite a bit of changes but this new gear setup, the overwrite buff system, the massive delays of CoW, HOSS, Pankor Zhi, or whatever friggen dungeon you "plan on rolling out," the poor communication, the unfortunate layoffs, the information given at Fan Faire not matching what we're getting now.....I'm sorry but I've personally given up all hope and I think a vast majority of the rest of us have as well. These are the reasons why the forums are dead. These are the reasons subs are being canceled. These are the reasons people don't want to help test. These are the reasons we are....well...sad. The reasons we continue to log in and play this game? Quite simply, the relationships we've formed within this great community. You've failed us SOE and it's a sad day.
What i'm hearing is it takes time to be awesome. Rolling a new character and adventure buffing to max level does not make you awesome.
I guess the main reason for the sour atmosphere is that they forgot to communicate with the players yet again....
This COW thing doesn't need to be horrible from what I can see. I'm still not quite grasping why characters need to be nerfed, why it's impossible to make new content raid gear an improvement over what we have now, or why all of this is done because "We're removing stat caps", yet every attribute available through the testing augs all have caps. Sure the numbers go up, but the effect of the numbers stops at a predetermined capped amount. So what was all this for anyway? To release a new expansion that has a nifty "sliding scale of difficulty"? How does that require the aforementioned nerfs? And if it doesn't, then why throw away six years of your veterans time and dedication to the system by changing that system to something they need to start over with? I'm still completely baffled by what we've heard from the producers letter, what we've heard as initial reports about COW and BBO changes, and then to get smacked in the face with a big shovel. Our buffs no longer stack. Our gear is worthless in new content. The gear in the new content to replace it is at best unwearable in old content... and looks like it will take another handful of years to create anyway what with the mass guild exoduses. Exodi? Whatever.
We still need to remove those caps, as noted in the "Known Issues" thread. We'll be uncapping them in a test patch tomorrow.
Pleaaaaaaaaaaaaase explain how are you planning to do it in the boards at the same time you uncap them... uncapping the stats will be very important for CoW gear as it will allow a lot of customization and it will determine whether CoW gear fails or succeeds.
because the gear we have now is too powerful, as pota t3 was put in b/c vg was going to be put out to pasture. there's no way to build upon existing gear w/o a level expansion. and there arent enough resources for a level expansion unless you want to grind sod for another 5 levels. your current gear is not worthless as you will still need it to kill the bosses in cow
