16 replies to this topic

[Fides]

One of my guild posted this link to a release date, sounds Awesome!

http://www.polygon.c...ild-and-faction

(Post the article below, but got an error when I tried to post the picture as well)

MechWarrior Online leaves beta 'late summer,' adding guild and faction combat, 12v12 battles and new UI

By Christopher Grant on Mar 29, 2013 at 12:30p

"We do have a launch date, or at least a fairly defined launch window, and that is late summer," Piranha Games president and cofounder Russ Bullock told Polygon of his studio's free-to-play title, MechWarrior Online. The game is currently in an open beta, so the release of version 1.0 is as much a marketing milestone as a software milestone.
"Of course between here and late summer, we'll have countless updates to the game but there are three in particular that I want to talk about," he said.
The first is the match sizes. "Right now the game is 8 versus 8, so you have eight mechs per side," he said. "But in the next 60 days, roughly, we'll be going to 12 versus 12. So you'll have a full company of BattleMechs, which is BattleTech nerd talk for 12 mechs."
The second is what Piranha is calling "UI 2.0" — a "completely revamped" user interface designed to help new players get more from the game. "We'll be breadcrumbing you a little more into learning the nuances of MechWarrior, making sure you make it to your cadet bonus and earn your first achievements that let you get your first mech," he said. "Once someone plays MechWarrior for a few hours, most of the time they're hooked." The goal of UI 2.0 is to help make sure new players spend enough time to get hooked.
And lastly, what Bullock calls the "big daddy feature" is community warfare. "This is what [MechWarrior Online players] have been craving," he said. "The overarching metagame, the faction gameplay is community warfare."
"We've identified three kinds of players," Piranha Games creative director Bryan Ekman adds. There's the lone wolf, "the guy who doesn't care about role playing, being a part of any organzational structure whatsoever.
"Then we have factions, and factions are NPC factions. They belong to the universe, they're a part of the lore. These are the great houses of BattleTech.
"These guys participate in territory control in a more passive way. Their matches affect the universe, but indirectly.
"And then you have the Merc Corps. These are the guilds, these are the clans, these are the guys who come together, band together, fight together and play together and actually want to control as much territory as they can through their actions.
The lone wolf play style is what players currently have in the game today; the NPC factions will be free-to-play; the Merc Corps, on the other hand, will be monetized. "We're looking at possibly charging a one-time setup fee," Ekman said. "This is just to make sure there's not a flood of one-player corps.
"We really want people who participate in this to be as engaged as possible. And we'll probably require them to have a premium time account, as a kind of dedication level." That premium time account can be purchased in quantities ranging from daily to monthly to bi-annually, with the 30-day pack costing $10.
When asked to define what the cutoff for "late summer" was, both Ekman and Bullock said "September 21" in unison. So it sounds like they're leaving themselves as much room as possible to hit 1.0.

Edited by Fides, 30 March 2013 - 04:40 AM.

[TAW]

There are a couple of contradictions in that article as pointed out by our guild leader in our forums

http://taw.net/forum...6965.aspx#36965

[SirPaulMasters]

Marik Rule!

Very nice to see a release date at last, thanks PGI and good timing just in the easter holidays!

Edited by SirPaulMasters, 30 March 2013 - 04:29 AM.

[Happyweed]

Not everyone in TAW is in Marik, in fact we have a wide variety of different houses and factions, but from the sound of this article, that won't matter, because you can be in the faction you want within the Merc Corp, ie TAW

[DerSpecht]

Reading comprehension.. release window != release date. and a window can always be open wider.

Edited by DerSpecht, 30 March 2013 - 04:34 AM.

[Amare]

I like the idea of a premium pack, it will stop these guild hoppers playing multiple accounts in different guilds.

and it will also give even more money to PGI

and as a last, yes I think it will up the dedication to the game, so on the surface if they get the pricing right it will be a win win situation.

[Fides]

DerSpecht, on 30 March 2013 - 04:33 AM, said:

Reading comprehension.. release window != release date. and a window can always be open wider.

At least it gives a general idea of the release date, they have been pretty consistent so far, I think the release date from closed into open beta, was only a week late.

[Devil Fox]

Fides, on 30 March 2013 - 04:43 AM, said:

At least it gives a general idea of the release date, they have been pretty consistent so far, I think the release date from closed into open beta, was only a week late.

Actually they increased it... I believe they dumped a patch 3 weeks before hand that screwed the game up so they delayed open beta. Then they dumped ANOTHER broken patch the week of open beta in which they had to push it back to fix the overall patch prior to release. And I think it was actually delayed further by issues with production, coding, patching and a heap of other factors that meant it wasn't pushed a month earlier as hinted at during CBT.

[DerSpecht]

You never know what happens when developing....

[Joseph Mallan]

Sept is a long way off. I will wait to be excited.

[sj mausgmr]

Excuse me? I have to pay premium time, to play the game, with my clan mates?

Wtf did I just read?

[PoLaR]

Guess we have a ton of 'Mechs to hold us over until September...

[Fides]

sj mausgmr, on 30 March 2013 - 05:49 AM, said:

Excuse me? I have to pay premium time, to play the game, with my clan mates?

Wtf did I just read?

I have to admit that was my initial reaction too, how much money can they squeeze out of us and will this go to the publisher or will it go to the developers to help development.

It's also not clear whether you can use MC to pay for this or whether it will cost you additional dollars or even whether you have to keep paying, since in the first breath they say its a one of payment and in the next breath they says its a daily, monthly cost.

Guess we will have to wait and see, before making a decision.

[Deathlike]

At this rate, we either won't make it to that date (forums rage overwhelming) or the game is delayed due to the massive number of bugs that we have to deal with... that doesn't even address MGs being useless and plenty of other things.

More likely that this game would be done on Halloween or Christmas.. because they need to get the fundamentals done right (like, the massive HUD bugs that have been happening for a while now) before they can do the other stuff that they want to do.

[Bagheera]

Buddahcjcc, on 30 March 2013 - 07:07 PM, said:

Where the hell are the PGI defenders to relay this info; why am I the only one who gets stuck pointing this out when I dont even believe them lol

Not sure on that, but now I kinda hate you a little for my having just read through a couple of pages of Twitter. j/k Not your fault, I'm an adult, I can take responsibility for that I suppose.

[SirPaulMasters]

Keeping the positive note, however at least we have a vague release date and some more details about community warfare.

The thing that saddens me though is the number of responses to articles like this, when the game was new and in closed and then open beta, the community was thriving, now, its like shriveling up on itself.

Not to gripe or anything, but the other thing I wanted to mention is after each patch the game gets a little bit more unstable, like when they do these MC patches, or add new cosmetics etc. then all these new bugs surface, it won't be long before they release a massive fix to all the bugs again, or will it?

Edited by SirPaulMasters, 20 April 2013 - 06:48 AM.

[Amare]

SirPaulMasters, on 30 March 2013 - 11:20 PM, said:

Keeping the positive note, however at least we have a vague release date and some more details about community warfare.

The thing that saddens me though is the number of responses to articles like this, when the game was new and in closer and then open beta, the community was thriving, now, its like shriveling up on itself.

Not to gripe or anything, but the other thing I wanted to mention is after patch the game gets a little bit more unstable, like when they do these MC patches, or add new cosmetics etc. then all these new bugs surface, it won't be long before they release a massive fix to all the bugs again, or will it?

True that, each new patch does make it a little bit more unstable, especially the money patches, I remember when the game came out of closed beta and was stable and then how it grew more and more unstable with each new content patch up until December 2012, when people had just about had enough, and then they finally release a new patch that fixed 95% of all the bugs overnight and the community started to grow again.

Now its reaching that point again, the number of different bugs just on targeting, rainbow colours for the radar, no radar at all or not being able to tell friend from foe are starting to become overwhelming and the client feels like its unravelling again.

I wonder with all this talk of a release date and speculation about stability etc. let alone delivery within the 21 September timezone, when the next patch to fix all the stability issues is coming out?