I agree, but only to a point.
Poor communication and website problems exacerbated the alpha rollout. People still don’t know how to get codes and are expecting emails. The 22nd hit with no updates until late in the day (actually it was the 23rd I think in Prague). They could have/should have communicated better over the last two days.
But that’s the only fault I have, lack of comms. The delay of a few hours irked you? REALLY?!?!?
Buddy you might want to rethink this ‘alpha testing’ thing if that is something that truly irritates you. I can assure you that MOST deadlines will be missed by a few days. ALL Alpha and Beta release dates are tentative. Frankly, it should be assumed on our part. This is alpha 0.1, first release ever… and it came out late on the 22nd instead of early and you are pissy about it. Chill out. This is going to happen often. No, that does not reflect badly on Warhorse… look at any of the other games trying do something similar with development… Star Citizen… Elite… all of them miss more deadlines than they hit. When I first heard the 22nd, my mind adjusted to ‘Sometime on the 22nd or the week after’
But I really can’t emphasize enough, the only release date they really are obligated to hit… is the final retail version… a year or so from now.
This is a work in progress, and, well, shit happens… especially with software rollouts.
While you are grousing, I bet the folks at Warhorse are pulling some serious overtime. Probably folks there that haven’t slept for days to roll this out.
And you are angry it was hours later than you expected.
I will say Warhorse could be communicating better through this… I hope they learn from it and take the lesson to heart going forward… a lot of easily avoided confusion with better comms.
But I think the bigger issue here is not Warhorse’s delays or communication… but you having unrealistic expectations for a version 0.1 alpha. Please remember, you are testing an early release to kill bugs so the players of the final version will have a better experience. You are NOT playing the game the early for some ‘reward’ for backing. Essentially we are unpaid QA testers for Warhorse.
I didn’t want to make this too personal or sound like an attack (a lot of ‘you this’ and ‘you that’)… but I sincerely mean well… for early testing of software like this, you need to adjust your expectation DOWN, and take all announced release dates with a grain of salt. If you come into it with an expectation of a buggy mess, and enjoy the sound of deadlines whizzing past your ears… you will have fun with the alpha. If you are expecting to be ‘playing’ a more or less complete game, and have a ‘you promised me on 10/22’ attitude… you are just going to be profoundly disappointed. In fact, if you aren’t too keen on the bug hunting, and really just want to play it? My advice is wait. Wait for a much later Alpha release or even the Beta, you will enjoy yourself more if that is the case.
Again, not meant as an attack, as an attempt to help. I’ve been through similar processes on similar games, I am actually impressed Warhorse did, in fact, get it to me by the 22nd. I really didn’t expect them to hit it… I assumed it would be a few days late.
So while you had a negative experience that left a bad taste in your mouth, I had a positive one and am enjoying the game… bugs, crashes and all. My god the graphics are gorgeous…
The only difference between us was the expectation going in. Adjust your mindset a bit to what ‘alpha testing’ means, and I sincerely think you will enjoy this more.