ORIGINAL: RFalvo69
Just to be clear, I did play the game in solo mode - because I do love WiF but hardly my gaming group could find the space to set it up. But now that I moved and I have my gaming room, I'm setting up the Deluxe version on a...
...BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG...
...table, and I'll play either solo or with my friends there. Meanwhile my PC gaming time is now devoted to WitP AE and HoI 3 + mods (the "finished" version, up to "Their Finest Hour" expansion; BTW, deriding HoI is futile, when you go against a grand strategy WWII game which works).
My point about a "Netplay First" strategy, as I mentioned, come from the fact that (if past experience taught me something) there is nothing like a lot of players who play the game competitively to have bugs jump out and eat your face like facehuggers. Sure, this would have led to a lot of broken games, restarts etc. But, again IMHO, maybe to one year of suffering; not three - and counting. Because, right now, I'm not seeing an end to this.
And this leads to my last question. I remember how excited I was when WiF finally appeared at Essen. Some people even bought the "Essen Version" personally signed by Harry Rowland. Every day I waited for the postman to ring the bell - something I didn't experience since when I started to buy things from Amazon in the 90s. And, yes, I was ready for bugs and the need of some patches - maybe for six months.
My question, since then, is: was Matrix aware of the state of their product when they launched it? And I will leave this at it.
Sorry for the rant but somehow the third anniversary since the Big Launch unlocked it inside me [:(]
Edit: @ brian brian: "Spilled milk under the bridge" is a quote from "Margin Call". It is really a great movie and I suggest it wholeheartedly [:)]
Ahh. So it is frustration which is the reason for this post. Well, consider this for a moment. I don't think there is anyone in the beta team who isn't frustrated with the amount of time that it takes to fix bugs. Even Steve sometimes ventilate things in the private forum about this. MWIF looks like a multiheaded monster. You chop of a head, and there grows another one. Very, very frustrating, not only to the players, but to the test team and Steve too.
And Netplay is available. The more testing of Netplay the better it is. We need more bug reports on that part of the game. Only: be prepared for a pretty rough ride and be patient when the game freezes. Simply put the bugs with both sides gamesaves in the Tech forum on Netplay bugs.
And on your question: "was Matrix aware of the state of the game", I can tell you that since the NDA I signed has expired some time ago: the answer is "yes and no". Yes, because they knew Netplay wasn't working. No, because we were all surprised by the huge number of bugs which happened in solitair play after release. That proved something, we didn't expect. That is that it is impossible to test all different situations in this game, due to all the different optional rules and tactics people are using in this game.