My body is ready. But I thought they said that they are planning release in early 2015...at least, that is what the kickstarter video stated.
Goblin Squad Member
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12 originally planned, but it seems more realistic that it'll take 18 months. Firefall has been in beta for about that time, I think and is shortly coming out of ""closed beta"" and into "open beta/soft launch" for comparison at least on duration and it's still not traditionally hard launch as they eg will be adding open-world pvp, fixing around with prices et al.
Soft launches come with a certain risk -- Neverwinter suffered a crushing exploit that resulted in rollbacks and a wave of player complaints not long after its soft launch. Has the Firefall team taken any lessons from other open betas and soft launched titles?
We don't believe that Firefall's open beta is comparable to any other MMO on the market today. We're not rolling out a near-final product; Firefall will have a multi-staged open beta where we plan to make massive changes and improvements. This will be a true beta test; players testing the game will see their feedback implemented throughout each open beta stage. We expect bugs and exploits because that's common in a true beta. As long as players understand where we're at in development, we can overcome those issues.
One lesson we've taken from other open beta launches is to thoroughly prepare and test the servers. While it's almost impossible to predict the increase in server-load, there are a lot of things that we can do to mitigate risk. For example, we've steadily scaled up our playerbase using a controlled invite system, and we ran multiple public stress-test weekends to reveal early issues. Also, Firefall is one of the first (only?) MMOs to use Amazon's AWS cloud platform, which gives us great scalability.
Edit: @keovar: I'd guess GW want/need to monetize asap, so they'd have a very realistic target for EE start and if anything that version will be very basic, and it's more likely they'd add months to EE than delay it to get to a more complex build before OE. On that rationale, I'm confident EE will be 2014 Q4.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Open enrollment is supposed to be a year after that.
From the blog Big Things Have Small Beginnings:
"Our team is on schedule to begin Early Enrollment in the 3rd quarter of 2014. Between now and then we're focused on getting to that initial playable game for Early Enrollment. Early Enrollment itself is expected to run for about 18 months. We should be ready to begin unrestricted territorial warfare in the first quarter of 2016."
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Goblin Squad Member
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Edit: @keovar: I'd guess GW want/need to monetize asap, so they'd have a very realistic target for EE start and if anything that version will be very basic, and it's more likely they'd add months to EE than delay it to get to a more...
Yeah, I really hope they are thinking this way. As long as steady income that covers costs is coming in from the early adopters they really should wait until "it's ready" before open enrollment. To me that's the whole point of us paying for this "beta", giving GW the breathing room to wait until it's ready.
I will be very disappointed if this game is released to the public with key features missing or a crap character creator/character options. Those are unnecessary game killers that PFO is not supposed to be forced to expose itself to.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The majors features have to be in for Open Enrollment is what i am saying. You can't be like Age of Conan where it's major feature: PvP seiges, was a mess at launch, sending the game back to the Hyborean age for a good 2 years (hardy har).
I think they know that territorial warfare has to be in and ready for OE. My worry is they think they can launch with a crap character creator/race options(its been hinted). Nothing gets you ridiculed faster across the interwebs than the bad first impression that causes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...Big Things Have Small Beginnings...
To me, that blog seemed to be mostly about managing expectations; I'm just managing my own expectations around 6 months further, and a few notches lower, than it was when I pledged.
They're not looking at the possibility of magical flight as a consideration in initial design, which means it's unlikely to become feasible later. Assuming that 2-dimensional movement limits should provide significant challenges means the game has to stay relatively flat. I guess that's good if you want to rob everyone at dagger-point or pwn dudez with your greatsword, but for me, that's depressing since I tend to max out the 'explorer' part of the EASK Bartle test.