Some additional AE information...

[tocaff]

So WITP2 will have superior graphics for starters?  Eric I don't even have AE yet and you drop a hint that gets me to start thinking past it.  [;)]

[byron13]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

While it would be nice to release on a historic date, I think we would be shot by the community if we delayed release one day longer than necessary. [8D]

Noooo! I was so looking forward to having the release be on December 7. Still, I guess there's no reason I can't wait on my own until December 7 to download the game. I'll just lurk on the forum and watch everyone else have fun until December rolls around. [8|]

[stuman]

Very full explanation Erik. I appreciate it, and it seems quite logical. Not many businesses would take the time to explain like you do.

Thanks. And I agree [:)]

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: csatahajos

Shark7: I really don't want to take this too far here but what I complain about has nothing to do with the graphics quality, it's just plainly about a too small visible game area/map area in the age of huge, cheap monitors. I'm totally happy with the graphics otherwise (well a bit larger ship sides won't hurt but I can live with that ).


Erik: just for your info, TTDX patch was made by volunteers, the original game was not able to run on WinXP at all and could not scale resolution.
I accept what you say that this would require a lot of effort,still it's good to know that the dev team/Matrix thinks the same way.

Even though I'm playing on a 17" Widescreen at 1440 x 900 pixels it honestly doesn't bother me. Guess its no different than seeing movies on TV that haven't been edited to fit the normal screen...you end up with a nice black border around it. I've gotten used to it I guess.

Not arguing with you, but I still will take having a working game with great gameplay over having it fit my screen precisely....and that was my point. If they can give us better resolution that is great, but not at the expense of other gameplay related issues.

I guess I've just gotten really mellow about grahics over the years. [8D]

[Ramjet]

WITP has been the best value of any game I have purchased. It by far has the lowest cost per hour played than any piece of software or hardware I have ever purchased in my life. I don't even want to estimate the amount of hours I have spent playing, studying, scheming, stratigizing, or just making charts and notes. By the way, I was spending $60 for games for my C64 25 years ago. Based on the value of the product, the price is a bargan!

[Lützow]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

ORIGINAL: csatahajos

Even though I'm playing on a 17" Widescreen at 1440 x 900 pixels it honestly doesn't bother me. Guess its no different than seeing movies on TV that haven't been edited to fit the normal screen...you end up with a nice black border around it. I've gotten used to it I guess.

Borders don't matter to me, but higher resolution means less scrolling and more visible content. What makes it easier to keep the overview on large maps. Anyway, at least WitP can be played in a window. The one thing I really don't like is a distorted display.

[Zacktar]

ORIGINAL: rroberson

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

ORIGINAL: rroberson
Which one? As I believe I have had 3 separate ones of the years of purchasing games from Matrix. I am assuming I have to dig up the one I have for Vanilla WITP? (shudders)

Why in the world would you have created three separate accounts?

Over the years, I have had to switched email accounts as the spam would become to much in one or the other.

I'm in the same boat -- I don't suppose there's any way to use my serial number to recover the name/address of the account it's registered to, is there?

In any event, thanks for all the info Erik, I'm looking forward to buying AE!

[FOW]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
As with all our releases, pricing for the rest of the world will be set on the day of release, based on the exchange rates at that time. We have a warehouse in the UK, so shipping costs to Europe are quite reasonable as all orders for Europe are fulfilled from that warehouse rather than our US warehouse.

All our releases have a "Physical + Digital" option which allows you to download and play now while you wait for the boxed copy to arrive and AE will be no different. I think this is the best option personally.

Regards,

- Erik

Erik,
Can I get my physical copy delivered to :

The sad man in the sleeping bag (with wireless laptop)
Outside the main entrance
Matrix UK Warehouse
England


[&o] [&o] [&o]

[IKL]

ORIGINAL: Zacktar

ORIGINAL: rroberson

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins




Why in the world would you have created three separate accounts?

Over the years, I have had to switched email accounts as the spam would become to much in one or the other.

I'm in the same boat -- I don't suppose there's any way to use my serial number to recover the name/address of the account it's registered to, is there?

In any event, thanks for all the info Erik, I'm looking forward to buying AE!

That's my situation too - changed email address several times since WITP came out for various reasons, and WITP is registered to a long-gone account. Can I get the serial number freed up to reregister with my current account? I know what it is......

[dazoline II]

ORIGINAL: IKL

ORIGINAL: Zacktar

ORIGINAL: rroberson





Over the years, I have had to switched email accounts as the spam would become to much in one or the other.

I'm in the same boat -- I don't suppose there's any way to use my serial number to recover the name/address of the account it's registered to, is there?

In any event, thanks for all the info Erik, I'm looking forward to buying AE!

That's my situation too - changed email address several times since WITP came out for various reasons, and WITP is registered to a long-gone account. Can I get the serial number freed up to reregister with my current account? I know what it is......

I'm another one for a long lost WITP purchasing account. I'm sure theres a lot people more in the same boat.

[Durbik]

[deleted under concern of another ethnic exclusion from certain forum members (ok, ok, I'm kidding, viberpol)]

[NormS3]

Great news! Thanks for sharing Erik.

I also could not care less about the price. I used to manage a computer store and buy about a game a month, but since I found this forum and Witp, I haven't bought a game in almost 3 years and in fact left the retail world entirely for contract work and more free time to play Witp.[8D]

So thanks for a great game and a very reasonable price. And thanks in advance to the AE crew and Matrix for bringing out AE and the end of my social life outside of volleyball.[:D][&o][&o]

[Erik Rutins]

Everyone, the best way to fix a Members Club account that you've lost the login info for is to use our Help Desk at www.matrixgames.com/helpdesk. You should get a reply within 24 hours. Provide as much info as you can as far as your old account/e-mail, serial number, current account/e-mail, etc.

[Knavey]

ORIGINAL: Zebedee

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

AE will absolutely be supported after release. The team is already debating what will go in the first update.

Thanks Erik. Bit of a daft question really to ask about a Matrix supported game, but was niggling at me

I am thinking you don't have to worry about the Matrix track record of support games. It is better than most (if not all)!

[Aloid]

Okay so the way I figure things... being a gamer who has to work during the week... it is already mid July.
Mid July = exclude all Monday's thru Friday's (because I have to work) which leaves 8 days (Saturdays & Sundays) of which 4 have already been spent.
Thus it's mid July already!

Aloid

[Kwik E Mart]

...by my estimates, if you complete a campaign game with single day turns, you will be paying roughly 5 cents per turn...you guys playing two day turns are cheating yourselves...a dime a turn...either way, sounds like a bargain...

[Chet Guiles]

Can we pre-order AE? I am ready to do so...

[jimh009]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Re-posting this here from another thread:

Ok, I had a night to sleep on some of the feedback here. Let me try to approach this again, because we do most definitely care what you all think.

War in the Pacific is, in our opinion, a unique game. We looked at that game and made some unique decisions on how to proceed with developing, marketing and pricing AE. Unfortunately, these decisions don't fit neatly into one of the existing marketing "boxes" that you've seen before. I think the key misunderstanding in all this though is that from our point of view, everything we did was with existing owners of WITP in mind. New customers who did not own WITP were a secondary concern. This may seem strange, but again WITP is unique and for a number of reasons we feel this is the right way to go. The decisions we made were intended to make things as convenient and affordable as we could for existing owners of WITP.

First, having AE share files or not share files with WITP is a minor technical issue. We could easily have it share files or not. We decided early on to have it not share files so that customers could continue playing their modded or unmodded WITP games without any disruption. We didn't see how it would be a good thing to have AE share files and create possible issues for WITP game continuation. Having AE share files and having it not disrupt WITP in any way would be a bigger technical issue.

Every "expansion" you've ever bought could have been a stand-alone game, it's just a technical issue to do it one way or the other and not a particularly difficult one. For those of you who see it as a big difference ethically, I want you to understand that the reason we made the decision way back when to do it this way was specifically because we did not want to inconvenience existing WITP players.

Second, the pricing. We could have priced AE as a stand-alone game and not had it require WITP. This would have increased its price significantly and also required us to offer a discount to owners of WITP. The only way to offer a discount is to check serial numbers, create a discount coupon unique to each serial number (only one per serial number) and then have customers use that in the store. We've done this before, it's not a technical challenge.

However, in our experience it is definitely a hassle for some customers. This type of route creates many possible points of failure, from customers who can't find their old serial number, to customers who lose their coupon code (or don't receive it) to customers who use it and place the order incorrectly and then can't use it again, etc. We decided that rather than make existing WITP owners jump through these hoops, if we had AE require WITP then the purchase price could already be set at the discount level and all that existing WITP owners would have to do is buy the game as they would buy any other.

Third, new customers. I've been told that we are strong-arming them, thinking for them, etc. I suppose I can see how this can come across. The truth though is that AE was always for existing owners of WITP first. That's a pretty big crowd and we felt that it's also the group that would likely be responsible for 90% of the sales of AE. We did not see AE as having a lot of appeal to customers that had already decided, over the course of the five years it's been on the market, that WITP was not for them. Still, based on recent feedback we made the decision to discount WITP for a limited time to give folks who were having second thoughts about missing out on WITP now that AE was coming out a chance to test the waters.

I am also telling you our real thoughts and discussion when I say that we really feel that AE is not a game for someone to really jump into without any previous experience with WITP. We think that for WITP players, AE is a wonderful thing, but for people who have never played WITP, AE is not just "WITP 2.0". It has a much larger map, many more units and many more rules that are based on increasing realism but that a player who is not already steeped in the real history of the War in the Pacific may not understand. It also has fewer scenarios than WITP and fewer small scenarios. It has just enough of those to help WITP vets get their feet wet before jumping into the new grand campaign, basically.

Having AE released on its own and having people jump right into it without prior WITP experience would, in our opinion, have created a potential for a lot of misunderstanding and confusion and unhappy new customers. I think existing WITP players will be delighted with AE. Someone who has not played WITP might be lost at sea though.

Finally, it is to our benefit to have both WITP and AE on the market. First, while we love AE and believe it will do well, there is always risk. Taking WITP off the market, with its smaller scale and greater initial accessibility as well as increased scenario selection didn't make a lot of sense to us. Pricing AE at $100 or more stand-alone in this economy also seemed likely to provoke a knee jerk reaction (at this point, I think frankly we were going to take heat whatever we did). More importantly, WITP and AE both fund ongoing development - WITP primarily is a help to funding 2by3 and AE primarily will help fund ongoing development of the WITP series.

This was our thought process as far as why we made the decisions we made. We're well aware of what the economy is doing now. What I think some folks here don't realize is that we really do see existing WITP players as our market and the way we set things up was deliberately intended to make new players who don't have WITP think twice about whether they want to step all the way up to AE in one jump. I think this is surprising to a lot of folks, but we felt that our primary concern should be addressing the needs of the people we think will make up 90% of AE's sales and making sure that the pricing and procedures were set to make it as enjoyable as possible for them.

Regards,

- Erik

Eric...thanks for all the great information. This communication...along with the great warm games...is why Matrix Games is the best.

As a totally unrelated issue but which might effect some of your sales, beware that the last game I bought via your cart...my credit card (debit card, actually) was declined. When I called the bank, I was told that it was declined because it was an "offshore" purchase (I live in the USA). Thus, I had to pay via Pay Pal instead.

Not a big deal to me, but for others new to Matrix Games...having a CC declined is usually the "kiss of death" for an online sale.

Anyways, just something you might be interested in knowing.

[bradfordkay]

Jim, did you perchance mess up and click on a choice other than the US as your area?

While I haven't purchased a Matrix game (and almost any other game) since the new Carriers At War was released, I had no troubles with my debit card.

[jimh009]

Hi,

No...I got everything "right" during checkout. It's something Wells Fargo does...automatically blocks any/all foreign purchases when you use a debit card. What's funny is that not only was the transaction declined, but I got a call from the fraud department about the purchase! That's when I found out that Matrix processed the transaction "offshore." PayPal...being in the USA...doesn't have this problem.

I suspect not all banks do this, but if a big bank like Wells Fargo does...others probably do, too.