Siridean
04-09-2005, 12:54 PM
I had a bad feeling about Mourning (that's why I didn't pre-order). Here's a quote from the Free Corps forums that includes a post that was deleted on the Mourning Forums ( http://p211.ezboard.com/fshadowbaneplanningfrm62.showMessage?topicID=6.top ic ):
Well these F'in bastards charged me today for a game that is not playable - so much so that for the last 7 days I have tried constantly to attempt to play and cannot.
They also have illegally charged for a downloadable product that is not yet available to download.
There are SOOOOooooooooooo many things unfinished in the game, I wouldn't pay $5 for it as it is.
I have requested my order be cancelled and I get a refund, somehow this feels like a scam, hopre I see my $30 again
There is no tech support or customer support or phone numbers or documentation... I should have known better, I only blame myself.
This ship is sinking fast
Hello,
I was charged $29.95 on my CC today, thus I concider myself to be a paying customer of this game, and no longer a beta tester.
The NDA cannot legally be applied to me.
Thus, I'd like to tell you all my Beta experience.
I got into Beta by fluke on April 1. I was pretty glad I got in. The download was 1.2 gigs and it was pretty fast. I had only pre-ordered the game pretty recently and didn't expect to be in the first wave of beta testers in April.
Download was done in around 3 hours. I tried to login the game, everthing seemed to be working .. abit a bit slow, but it was working nevertheless.
The character creation screen is very bland, almost like pre-90's games. You cannot change your face and women had beard/mustache options right there. I'm pretty sure this would get fixed, but probably not for retail.
I was not bothered with this, quickly made a character and logged into the game. Took about 2 mins to load the game after creating the character.
I first tried a human character and she appeared in the human town. But I could not move at all, I saw someone to the left of me, and he was warping on the screen. Suddently, my game froze and a connection lost error popped up.
Not giving up, I tried to log in again. After 15 mins of tries, I got in again, but shortly after everthing loading and having gotten my character to move, the server crashed again. Total game time was 30 seconds at most.
This kept happening till they finally brought the server down.
On April 2, they did something that made all our logins in valid, we had to recreate our logins again. That was fine.
I tried to play again, crash, crash, crash, froze.
I reboot and try again, this time with all my graphics down and so on. I have a tool called fraps that shows my fps. The game has horribly low fps for something that doesnt do as much as my other games (WoW, Doom3, Vampire Bloodlines etc). I didnt bother much about the fps thinking it was mostly cause of their debug stuff etc.
Then one day I finally got to play the game a bit more, I run around and fall into a dark hole. I do the telport thing that sabbie told me about and try again, once again I fall into the hole. This happens right at the entrance to the human trainers are.
I was very frustrated, but I didn't want to give up, and I wanted to test the game, up to then I've tested the game to a max of 5 mins.
Then I start seeing how no one really has been able to test the game cause of the instability and constat crashes. I realized my fellow beta testers were having the same problems I was having, no one has put more than a few mins into the game so far.
And then one day, they say they fixed stuff, I log in, fall down a hole, freeze/crash. Try to login again, and it says "Account Already In Use" (AAIU) <-- Famous phrase you've seen around here. This AAIU thing went on for 9 hours. Till the server crashed or got restarted. So bascially if you crash within the game and if the login server didn't know of this, you'd still be assumed to be logged into the game. I heard they tried to fix this, but haven't been able to test it out much.
I tried hard to test, given the amount of crashes, I would say all beta testers deserve a round of applause for they tested something so reletelessly and with such dedication. But, where did that lead us?
We, the beta testers never got to test this game, the server can't hold more than 30 people concurrently. People start to warp, start to lag, actions lag, fights lag etc.
Then there are the horrible bugs, the falling into black hole thing happens almost every few mins. Your only option is to use the debug /teleport command.
I could say I never gotten past killing the first few mobs, all of which involve a number of other bugs: 1. Mobs that are dead look alive, 2. Mobs that are near you give an error msg saying "mobs are too far, cant attack". 3.
That brings me to my biggest disspointment in the game.
The combat system.
It sucks. It's the worst, most boring combat system I've ever experienced in a game. The spider video that you guys saw earlier is exactly how the combat is still going on. You basically hit attack and watch your avatar slowly swing, miss, etc. IMHO this is biggest game killer in this game. I can't believe they spent time putting the bloom effect (which i'll come to in a bit) while not fixing the freaking combat system.
The next worst thing is downtime. Between killing a bug you have to sit and regen for 10-15 mins. I am serious and not kidding. That is exactly the downtime you get.
Since we never got 10-15 mins of game time, the game server would crash before I got to regen, thus it always ended up in me creating an new character.
Bugs I concider minor: Spell descriptions arnt in -- thus you have no idea what your learning, many weapons/armor don't have models and thus don't show up, NPC's talk like they need to take an ESL exam (vague and rude interactions mostly).
There was only 1 quest I saw and I was only able to do it after 3 days of trying. The quest on the other hand involved just running to 3 npcs within shouting distatnce, but due to crashes and other stuff it just sucked.
There is also an inventory bug, if you crash and login you dont see anything in inventory neither can you buy stuff, thus you have to make an new character again.
Now the bloom effect. I don't know what they were smoking, but this is not something they should have put so much time into. The bloom effect is way overdone. I've seen bloom in EQ2, WOW but in Mourning, they had 500% bloom and everthing looks all glossy and glowy. Not to mention your nice video card would be doing like 15 fps with or without bloom.
The game has a horrible number of bugs, I was shocked when they said they were concidering to release it. In Beta2 forum most people were like "Are you kidding?" "This must be a joke".. etc. Cause none of us have gotten to test the game, cause of the constant downtime due to server crashes.
The stuff we saw was totally bug ridden. And then there are stuff that's not in beta, Fame system, Ranged combat etc.. I don't trust them enough to completely get a working fame system in without beta testing. Hell, I didn't even think this game got beta tested to tell you the truth.
I don't think there is one Beta tester who could tell you he/she was satisifed with the testing and the days from April 1 till now. I don't think there is one that would tell you that he/she was not frustratated with the way things went and constant crashes, so many bugs that you can hardly move.
Hell, just when I'm about to end, more bugs come to my mind. Lets see, the game freezes every 5-10 seconds as you walk. It's not a new place being loaded, it just freezes, and you can't do anything about it.
To be honest this game isn't ready for release. It isn't even ready for Beta testing since they haven't even been able to stabilitze the servers and get more than 30 people on concurrently testing for a few hours.
The release, I feel is a push by Dave and in the end very sad day for Mourning, cause this might be the downfall of this game.
I really love Mourning, but I don't want to see it die. And now I feel, releasing the game the way it is, would surely mean death.
I know the developers would have wanted more time, I know the beta testers asked for "Testing" we never got time to test this.
Pretty sad. Was looking forward to playing this game. :puppy_dog
Well these F'in bastards charged me today for a game that is not playable - so much so that for the last 7 days I have tried constantly to attempt to play and cannot.
They also have illegally charged for a downloadable product that is not yet available to download.
There are SOOOOooooooooooo many things unfinished in the game, I wouldn't pay $5 for it as it is.
I have requested my order be cancelled and I get a refund, somehow this feels like a scam, hopre I see my $30 again
There is no tech support or customer support or phone numbers or documentation... I should have known better, I only blame myself.
This ship is sinking fast
Hello,
I was charged $29.95 on my CC today, thus I concider myself to be a paying customer of this game, and no longer a beta tester.
The NDA cannot legally be applied to me.
Thus, I'd like to tell you all my Beta experience.
I got into Beta by fluke on April 1. I was pretty glad I got in. The download was 1.2 gigs and it was pretty fast. I had only pre-ordered the game pretty recently and didn't expect to be in the first wave of beta testers in April.
Download was done in around 3 hours. I tried to login the game, everthing seemed to be working .. abit a bit slow, but it was working nevertheless.
The character creation screen is very bland, almost like pre-90's games. You cannot change your face and women had beard/mustache options right there. I'm pretty sure this would get fixed, but probably not for retail.
I was not bothered with this, quickly made a character and logged into the game. Took about 2 mins to load the game after creating the character.
I first tried a human character and she appeared in the human town. But I could not move at all, I saw someone to the left of me, and he was warping on the screen. Suddently, my game froze and a connection lost error popped up.
Not giving up, I tried to log in again. After 15 mins of tries, I got in again, but shortly after everthing loading and having gotten my character to move, the server crashed again. Total game time was 30 seconds at most.
This kept happening till they finally brought the server down.
On April 2, they did something that made all our logins in valid, we had to recreate our logins again. That was fine.
I tried to play again, crash, crash, crash, froze.
I reboot and try again, this time with all my graphics down and so on. I have a tool called fraps that shows my fps. The game has horribly low fps for something that doesnt do as much as my other games (WoW, Doom3, Vampire Bloodlines etc). I didnt bother much about the fps thinking it was mostly cause of their debug stuff etc.
Then one day I finally got to play the game a bit more, I run around and fall into a dark hole. I do the telport thing that sabbie told me about and try again, once again I fall into the hole. This happens right at the entrance to the human trainers are.
I was very frustrated, but I didn't want to give up, and I wanted to test the game, up to then I've tested the game to a max of 5 mins.
Then I start seeing how no one really has been able to test the game cause of the instability and constat crashes. I realized my fellow beta testers were having the same problems I was having, no one has put more than a few mins into the game so far.
And then one day, they say they fixed stuff, I log in, fall down a hole, freeze/crash. Try to login again, and it says "Account Already In Use" (AAIU) <-- Famous phrase you've seen around here. This AAIU thing went on for 9 hours. Till the server crashed or got restarted. So bascially if you crash within the game and if the login server didn't know of this, you'd still be assumed to be logged into the game. I heard they tried to fix this, but haven't been able to test it out much.
I tried hard to test, given the amount of crashes, I would say all beta testers deserve a round of applause for they tested something so reletelessly and with such dedication. But, where did that lead us?
We, the beta testers never got to test this game, the server can't hold more than 30 people concurrently. People start to warp, start to lag, actions lag, fights lag etc.
Then there are the horrible bugs, the falling into black hole thing happens almost every few mins. Your only option is to use the debug /teleport command.
I could say I never gotten past killing the first few mobs, all of which involve a number of other bugs: 1. Mobs that are dead look alive, 2. Mobs that are near you give an error msg saying "mobs are too far, cant attack". 3.
That brings me to my biggest disspointment in the game.
The combat system.
It sucks. It's the worst, most boring combat system I've ever experienced in a game. The spider video that you guys saw earlier is exactly how the combat is still going on. You basically hit attack and watch your avatar slowly swing, miss, etc. IMHO this is biggest game killer in this game. I can't believe they spent time putting the bloom effect (which i'll come to in a bit) while not fixing the freaking combat system.
The next worst thing is downtime. Between killing a bug you have to sit and regen for 10-15 mins. I am serious and not kidding. That is exactly the downtime you get.
Since we never got 10-15 mins of game time, the game server would crash before I got to regen, thus it always ended up in me creating an new character.
Bugs I concider minor: Spell descriptions arnt in -- thus you have no idea what your learning, many weapons/armor don't have models and thus don't show up, NPC's talk like they need to take an ESL exam (vague and rude interactions mostly).
There was only 1 quest I saw and I was only able to do it after 3 days of trying. The quest on the other hand involved just running to 3 npcs within shouting distatnce, but due to crashes and other stuff it just sucked.
There is also an inventory bug, if you crash and login you dont see anything in inventory neither can you buy stuff, thus you have to make an new character again.
Now the bloom effect. I don't know what they were smoking, but this is not something they should have put so much time into. The bloom effect is way overdone. I've seen bloom in EQ2, WOW but in Mourning, they had 500% bloom and everthing looks all glossy and glowy. Not to mention your nice video card would be doing like 15 fps with or without bloom.
The game has a horrible number of bugs, I was shocked when they said they were concidering to release it. In Beta2 forum most people were like "Are you kidding?" "This must be a joke".. etc. Cause none of us have gotten to test the game, cause of the constant downtime due to server crashes.
The stuff we saw was totally bug ridden. And then there are stuff that's not in beta, Fame system, Ranged combat etc.. I don't trust them enough to completely get a working fame system in without beta testing. Hell, I didn't even think this game got beta tested to tell you the truth.
I don't think there is one Beta tester who could tell you he/she was satisifed with the testing and the days from April 1 till now. I don't think there is one that would tell you that he/she was not frustratated with the way things went and constant crashes, so many bugs that you can hardly move.
Hell, just when I'm about to end, more bugs come to my mind. Lets see, the game freezes every 5-10 seconds as you walk. It's not a new place being loaded, it just freezes, and you can't do anything about it.
To be honest this game isn't ready for release. It isn't even ready for Beta testing since they haven't even been able to stabilitze the servers and get more than 30 people on concurrently testing for a few hours.
The release, I feel is a push by Dave and in the end very sad day for Mourning, cause this might be the downfall of this game.
I really love Mourning, but I don't want to see it die. And now I feel, releasing the game the way it is, would surely mean death.
I know the developers would have wanted more time, I know the beta testers asked for "Testing" we never got time to test this.
Pretty sad. Was looking forward to playing this game. :puppy_dog