Goblin Squad Member
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Ladies, Gentlemen, and Developers,
There has been a lot of talk about the last patch it added some significant and interesting updates. They were mostly well received, and really sparked an up tick in participation and increased numbers to take a look at the game. Meaningful PvP is great and can keep a lot occupied.
Now, why I ask for the Two Week delay (starting around the 13th or 14th), is because of a list of several major and minor things:
First, BUGS, we have 3 major ones that need to be fixed, such as random teleporting, falling through the earth into the sky/getting trapped in the sky, and finally the oh so dreaded crash with the unintentional rollback. All 3 of these are extremely annoying, and they can be demoralizing, and demoralizing is bad, bad, bad for business.
Second, tweak/UI updates, we need company and settlement UI Icons, as well as ways to actually accept someone applying without manual commands. Companies need to be able to added with GW help, and settlement leaders need a few tweaks so that we can actually set holding times. Also, there needs to be away that we can set friendly settlements, at the very least.
Last, content, we still need encumbrance, player looting, critical hits, ammo consumables, camp consumables, stamina drain for encumbrance, Arcane Spell Failure(or what ever penalty) for Armor, repair ability for items, salvage, Node Gushers(and all that entails with Monsters and kits), and major tweaks to combat.
We are almost there folks, almost there, MVP is just around the corner.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would agree that the major bugs should be fixed before Early Enrollment starts. I have not been able to travel without falling through the ground, desyncing or teleporting across the map. In the group I was with, a couple people just gave up as they could not get to where they intended to go. In my opinion, these must be fixed whether they are fixed by the 30th, or if it takes 2 weeks or even a month or more.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As much as I love to begin gaining XP for something that will stay, now when they nerfed the crafting/harvesting (Bye bye Forestry 7), I really concure with the first paragraph bugs.
These can't, I mean really can't be present in EE if someone is eoxpected to pay for it IMO.
The second part is, together with a general upgrade of the UI neccessary to be able to attract people and have them to stay. Cluncky UIs are not rad these days, I guess (but back in the old days we would be happy to have etc etc).
As for the third paragraph it would be really nessesary to be introduced early and continously during EE because several is affecting the player driven economy and of course general playing experience and immersion (I specifically think of the encumbrance).
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Goblin Squad Member
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i wholeheartedly agree with the bug-fix part and the company part as well.
The missing features(or contend) would be nice to have sooner, but it wouldn´t be dealbreaking for me to wait a bit longer for them.
I hope though that GW will share a roadmap regarding updates with us.
As in; -In the next 3 month we plan to add a, b, and c to the game.
please don´t give us exact dates for new features. just a general timeframe.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree with Cheatle and the rest. That being said. We as a community need to find a way to support GoblinWorks during the delay. deaying would be a good decision for the game but the financial considerations are large. I offered to Ryan some ideas for player purchased items but we need to find a way to get the GoblinWorks folks a paycheck. I am willing to pledge my money to invest in the game's future, are you? I know many of us have already put up considerable money but can we all think about prepaying for future months or similar purchases? We need to be creative.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I agree with Cheatle and the rest. That being said. We as a community need to find a way to support GoblinWorks during the delay. deaying would be a good decision for the game but the financial considerations are large. I offered to Ryan some ideas for player purchased items but we need to find a way to get the GoblinWorks folks a paycheck. I am willing to pledge my money to invest in the game's future, are you? I know many of us have already put up considerable money but can we all think about prepaying for future months or similar purchases? We need to be creative.
2 millions $ ain't enough ?
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Goblin Squad Member
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EE has already been postponed 2 months now. I'm sure the pizza money they'd get from the first couple months of EE isn't a priority for them.
I do agree EE needs to be postponed yet again. I think the next 5 weeks should be dedicated to the war of towers, and the continual working out of current bugs. We don't need EE for this.
I do see EE being postponed until November 30th, but that is only my assumption and not fact. So we shall see
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'll leave it up to GW to determine when the game is ready for MVP. I expect every patch we ever get will have some people saying that it needs to slide another two weeks.
The random teleport bugs are big and bad. Anything that kills or temporarily removes players from the game, triggered in a way that the developers and the players don't understand, is bad. When it is common it is really bad. I expect GW understands this already.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I also agree with all of you; PFO's not yet ready for even its most ardent fans.
Ahem... I've been ready for quite a while, actually, but have mostly deferred to others with regard to the community's readiness, and have avoided trying to sway anyone else to my position.
That said, I very strongly agree with Cheatle that the bugs revealed in the Stress Test (falling through the sky, teleporting, dopplegangers, character rollbacks) very much need to be fixed before going into Early Enrollment.
I also fairly strongly agree that the Company and Settlement Management screens need to be working without assistance from Goblinworks.
However, I disagree with this list:
Last, content, we still need encumbrance, player looting, critical hits, ammo consumables, camp consumables, stamina drain for encumbrance, Arcane Spell Failure(or what ever penalty) for Armor, repair ability for items, salvage, Node Gushers(and all that entails with Monsters and kits), and major tweaks to combat.
I don't think there's anything in that list that's actually MVP and required to start Early Enrollment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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However, I disagree with this list:Last, content, we still need encumbrance, player looting, critical hits, ammo consumables, camp consumables, stamina drain for encumbrance, Arcane Spell Failure(or what ever penalty) for Armor, repair ability for items, salvage, Node Gushers(and all that entails with Monsters and kits), and major tweaks to combat.I don't think there's anything in that list that's actually MVP and required to start Early Enrollment.
Hmm, player looting is definitely MVP in my opinion, isn't that what this game is all about? Risk vs. reward? It's not fair for us Early Enrolees to have pretty much no risk (when dying) if EE is indeed a permanent gameplay experience.
This is just my opinion~
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Goblin Squad Member
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However, I disagree with this list:
Last, content, we still need encumbrance, player looting, critical hits, ammo consumables, camp consumables, stamina drain for encumbrance, Arcane Spell Failure(or what ever penalty) for Armor, repair ability for items, salvage, Node Gushers(and all that entails with Monsters and kits), and major tweaks to combat.I don't think there's anything in that list that's actually MVP and required to start Early Enrollment.
Agreed. And for Pharasma's sake, I hope that GW will test those future changes on a test server first. Rolling out non-functional or even non-intuitive "improvements" is not the way to gamers' hearts.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That is why I was suggesting a Two Week delay.
Looting and Combat are both MVP, looting is a part of the PvP and Risk vs Reward, hell they already have the pseudo-threading system working. Combat in my opinion, as well as many others isn't MVP ready.
There needs to tweaks, ammo needs to be added, power consumables need to function, buffs need changing, stun effects aren't healing correctly, ranged rooting is still in...the combat system we will have after all of that is fixed and more will look different than what we have now.
Repairing, Salvage, Gushers, Stamina drain on travel, Arcane penalties, and encumbrance might not be MVP.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That is why I was suggesting a Two Week delay.
Looting and Combat are both MVP, looting is a part of the PvP and Risk vs Reward, hell they already have the pseudo-threading system working. Combat in my opinion, as well as many others isn't MVP ready.
There needs to tweaks, ammo needs to be added, power consumables need to function, buffs need changing, stun effects aren't healing correctly, ranged rooting is still in...the combat system we will have after all of that is fixed and more will look different than what we have now.
Repairing, Salvage, Gushers, Stamina drain on travel, Arcane penalties, and encumbrance might not be MVP.
Agreed.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Cheatle,
respectfully disagree--Nihimon has it right. Play-session breaking stuff needs to be fixed before EE, but not game features. My criteria is: "Over two weeks, is this going to break my game involvement?"
If I run across the map and get teleported back to where I started, if I spend hours collecting stuff and suddenly lose it, if I keep falling through the shy and have to kill myself, etc. that's the kind of thing where I'm going to turn off the client and walk away for days, maybe forever.
Ammo? Consumables? I'm going stop playing if everyone using range weapons has to stand still during the attack? Are any of those things going to make a meaningful difference if they get changed today o two weeks from now?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'll throw in a dissenting opinion.
A few weeks ago I pondered if it mattered, to me, if the majority of players felt the game would be 'ready' for them when EE starts.
I came to the conclusion that it didn't personally matter. My primary concern going into EE at the time was wasting points on training that would be radically changed. After rereading the older blog posts and some soul searching I've realized that no matter what the state of the game is in at EE, my first character is going to inevitably train in options that will be modified or obsolete. My cleric Haagen now has armor feats I chose for the Alpha 9 constitution gates that he doesn't need anymore in Alpha 10. I'm ok with this now. No amount of preparation in Alpha is going to help me cope.
I don't care about paying for beta. Others might but I also don't care about that either. Even if the diehard majority, let alone the rest of the gaming community at large, vehemently complain it doesn't really change my playstyle as long as people in my company and settlement are still playing and providing support.
The bugs, the rollbacks, etc aren't showstoppers for me. I've had a few, but nothing that will prevent me from climbing right back onto a horse I'd like to ride for 10+ years.
Towers are new, but so was the auction house last month. There will always be new things to iron out, so it doesn't bother me if the state of the game needs significant tweaks from now until 2016.
I'm ready for the game to be more meaningful. I'd like to feel like any progress, even if it's sometimes rolled back, will have long term weight in the game. I want to collect achievements, gather resources, craft items and build my settlement without the feeling that everything will be destroyed soon. I don't need two weeks or any changes to make that switch right now.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree with the bug fixes. I can live without the rest.
The one thing that does need fixing is the camera angle. You should be able to fix it and have it the way you set it when you last logged out. It shouldn't be moving when you drag and drop or move UI windows.
And 1 tiny thing to implement: I haven't played an MMO for a couple of years, but I continually hit / expecting it to take me to the chat window with a / already there, so I guess this has been a common feature of every MMO I have played.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Before this last update I would have agreed they were not ready for EE. The additions made with release 10.0 make me feel more comfortable with jumping in on the 30th of this month. It seems 10.0 brought some instability what with teleports and other bugs, if those are fixed I would be happy to play that bare bones iteration of the game. Im sure there will be other things to annoy me as they incorporate new features into the game but that's okay during EE as long as there is persistence.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We have 11 days until EE starts.
In those 11 days we need to have those major bugs gone, the same major bugs that have been there for the last month. We have 1 more scheduled patch before EE starts. On top of this WoT isn't properly functioning, nor is all Settlement leadership. Currently if you claimed a hex, all you have to do is show up and you auto reclaim the hex the next day. Some settlements can not set their PvP window, and all settlements can not accept companies to join them.
Next, a few things a lot of people are debating whether is MVP or not: Player Looting, do you know what happens without player looting? A group of people can constantly attack your settlement, and when their gear is finished they can just use the extra gear they have on them, because their dead bodies aren't dropping husks. This is a major exploit I am sure they don't want in the live game. Besides that, Looting is a major risk vs reward situation for a lot of people, and something a lot expect as part of MVP. MVP needs to be able to cater, at least a little, to most play styles, including killing for loot.
Encumbrance, a lot of you can say you can deal without this, it isn't a big deal. When you have your nearby hexes strip mined, because the reputation system is still out of whack and you can't kill anyone, because instead of being able to hold 50-100 of something, they can hold infinite amounts......You will have wished Encumbrance was part of the game. Not only this, but groups, such as TEO has a compounded advantage against other groups in pure man power which essentially can be exploited through no encumbrance. Yes, I realize I am a part TEO, but what I say is the truth.
This brings me to the Reputation System, which I think just about most people agree needs to be tweaked and changed. When we get to EE, all of you that have had the lovely experience of regaining your Reputation in the matter of Hours will find the game not so forgiving. Oh, and targeting is still off, needs to be fixed so that we aren't jumping around killing our clerics/wizards, and tanking our rep to the point we are unable to visit town for weeks.
There are going to be moments where a lot of people think, "I wish this very very basic content/feature would have been in the game from the start."
There are plenty of bugs, exploits, and tweaks that need to be fixed/implemented, and then tested before EE. There are going to be plenty more people playing the game then us diehard fans, and they aren't going to be so forgiving, hurting GWs bottom line.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Next, a few things a lot of people are debating whether is MVP or not: Player Looting, do you know what happens without player looting? A group of people can constantly attack your settlement, and when their gear is finished they can just use the extra gear they have on them, because their dead bodies aren't dropping husks. This is a major exploit I am sure they don't want in the live game. Besides that, Looting is a major risk vs reward situation for a lot of people, and something a lot expect as part of MVP. MVP needs to be able to cater, at least a little, to most play styles, including killing for loot.
So exactly what does such an attacker gain from constantly attacking a settlement, if they can't do anything to the settlement and they can't loot the crafters? Sounds like the definition of meaningless PvP.
Player looting doesn't need toshouldn't be in before companies, Influence, and the feud mechanic.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Have to agree that some of those features can be done without for the start of EE. Weren't we still expecting them to be missing for EE a few months ago? Why do we have to have them now?
Get the client and server stable and persistant. Fix the current problems and get this ship underway. We will build the rest at sea (as someone said somewhere). :)
More features mean more bugs. Fix this first. Let's see what play looks like October 29th.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What does an attacker gain from attacking a settlement? Demoralizing the enemy, forcing them to PvP, creating unrest, creating a place that drives away your population.
Between that, and War of Towers, where we DO want to loot our enemies so they have to eventually re-equip, looting should be in the game.
Like I said there is a ton of stuff that needs to be finished before EE starts, a lot of bugs and issues that have been there for week already.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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So exactly what does such an attacker gain from constantly attacking a settlement, if they can't do anything to the settlement and they can't loot the crafters? Sounds like the definition of meaningless PvP.
What does the WoW PvPers gain from camping Stormwind in 2014 ? Nothing, but they do anyway.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Though I will commend you all for your positivity, you really are some easily satisfied people I must say! But why on Earth would you want to play this game without at least some of those things Cheatle mentioned (especially player looting)?
I dunno, it just sounds, not fun? And do you not see it as unfair advantage, if EE really is final, to the players that start after EE? We will be starting in easy, "carebear land" whilst when they start player looting, ammo, etc will surely be included. Something just seems off about that...
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am more interested in another MVP - Minimum Viable Population. At the moment players are few and far between, particularly in UK playing time. I get about a 3 hour playing slot at the weekends when the US players are on, nothing at all really during the week. I'm hoping EE will bump up the number of players, even if they are just trying to kill me.
People joining EE should be expecting MVP, which is what we will have if the bugs are fixed.
As for EE players having an advantage to players starting in OE, well 15 months of play is a pretty massive advantage in itself. We are going to be the ones building the content for them to play.
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Goblin Squad Member
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However, I disagree with this list:Last, content, we still need encumbrance, player looting, critical hits, ammo consumables, camp consumables, stamina drain for encumbrance, Arcane Spell Failure(or what ever penalty) for Armor, repair ability for items, salvage, Node Gushers(and all that entails with Monsters and kits), and major tweaks to combat.I don't think there's anything in that list that's actually MVP and required to start Early Enrollment.Hmm, player looting is definitely MVP in my opinion, isn't that what this game is all about? Risk vs. reward? It's not fair for us Early Enrolees to have pretty much no risk (when dying) if EE is indeed a permanent gameplay experience.
This is just my opinion~
Yeah, player looting is extremely important, player encumbrance, stamina drain, arcane spell failure, and repair ability are also very important.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Though I will commend you all for your positivity, you really are some easily satisfied people I must say! But why on Earth would you want to play this game without at least some of those things Cheatle mentioned (especially player looting)?
I dunno, it just sounds, not fun? And do you not see it as unfair advantage, if EE really is final, to the players that start after EE? We will be starting in easy, "carebear land" whilst when they start player looting, ammo, etc will surely be included. Something just seems off about that...
Without player looting? Because I know that it will follow in relatively short order. I don't expect everyone to agree on what things are absolutely mandatory to start persistence.
What I don't want to see is too much energy spent on features that can wait, when there are some pretty serious things need fixing (already) in what we do have. I don't believe that even an extra month (past the 30th) is realistic to address current bugs, add new features, and deal with all those new bugs.
Fix what is in now, the right way. Get the persistance happening so that interest does not wane. Add the features as we go. Fix new bugs/problems. Repeat.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think looting, encumbrance and threading are all part of one fix I
d like to see implemented simultaneously. They are linked (although bank storage is also part of that grouping of tools, and it is in, and mostly working except for what some have stated in chat...disappearing loots from bank...not good).
The bugs (teleportation, falling through the ground to death, and crashes/rollbacks) are really problematic. If they didn't cost so much RL time waste I wouldn't mind them so bad, but we're talking blocks of hours lost, especially for crashes and rollbacks. (Strangely sometimes the teleporting fixes itself, but not always.)
The rest can go in as we play, but the bugs are bad. (I do like the towers though. I think they will be fun if the settlement relationships functions begin to all work properly.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Though I will commend you all for your positivity, you really are some easily satisfied people I must say! But why on Earth would you want to play this game without at least some of those things Cheatle mentioned (especially player looting)?
I dunno, it just sounds, not fun? And do you not see it as unfair advantage, if EE really is final, to the players that start after EE? We will be starting in easy, "carebear land" whilst when they start player looting, ammo, etc will surely be included. Something just seems off about that...
They will be starting in a full economy land, we have to make the first everything. That's why I'm not worried about certain PvP elements being in for the first couple weeks, we will be kickstarting an economy.
I find that to be a mini game all on its own that will be different from the rest of the game and yes, I think it will be fun.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Actually, instead of encumbrance, what I'd like to see day 1 that I'm really surprised nobody is mentioning: falling damage.
I think that has to be in ASAP, but I don't consider it a game breaker for day 1.
And the elevation changes need to be fixed so it is impossible to go up or down aside from a few small and narrow paths at transition hexes.
And until husks are in, you shouldn't be able to re-spawn to a shrine at a different elevation level.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Dunno. I'm not sure that every transition hex needs to be a narrow defile. I'd think there could be a broad range of possible transitions.
With the current setup making the only way down from mountains one or two narrow passes will create a serious game in-balance in favor of the western lowlands settlements.
For game balance it needs to be possible to get down in more places than you can get up, by jumping to ledges at certain spots part way down and sustaining partial damage for example.
I think player looting and encumbrance are both necessary for game balance. I'm honestly surprised we've had people clamoring for new restrictions on large groups when two of the most basic and pervasive restrictions, encumbrance and player looting, aren't in. Anyone who doesn't think those are necessary for balancing the game will be disgusted by how much we gather early on.
I agree with what Cheatle is saying. I wouldn't actually mind it being delayed till Jan 1st 2015. That gives you (goblinworks) tons of time to fit in the fixes + add some new stuff in that you promised would be delivered later. Might as well roll it all into one for a truly special EE launch.
Game Delays are expected and are much better received than a bad quote unquote launch. Even though it isn't launch because Pathfinder is awesome like that we call it EE :P
Anyways instead of us getting closer to the cusp just make the big announcement EE launch delayed till Jan 1st 2015 and let that be that. That way people can finish finding bugs, and gives you ample time to fix those bugs. And possibly add in some content from the very beginning that we otherwise wouldn't have had.
The Company Interface is an interface and not much more than that. Is better than what EQ1 had back in 1999 sure. But we are in the year 2014 soon to be 2015 lets pretty it up a bit and get rid of those pesky slash commands.