I say that it might take more than a few weeks. (I couldn’t resist)
Seriously though, I was going to let this one go, since I’m not playing AoC, but in reality that’s never stopped me before. I can’t really say much about the specifics of it, other than, test much? Funcom, did your QA department take a break for a couple of months? Did your developers decide women are inherently slower? Do you hate the womens?
"I know that many of you will probably be disappointed to hear that it might take us as much as another three to four weeks to solve this issue, for which I can only apologize, but we want to make sure that we devote the amount of time that an issue of this magnitude and importance deserves … I have to stress that even with our internal goal set and everything currently proceeding on schedule I cannot currently promise that this will be patched to Live at the projected date."
Sure, I’m poking some tongue in cheek fun at Funcom, but in reality, this just stops me from playing a bit longer. Sure, it’s not stopping me as much as their being no demo, but if their was a demo today, I wouldn’t play and wait for them to fix up the women’s animation. So I’m still in no big hurry to play AoC. Probably for the best, since I’m really busy doing nothing these days.
Back to Funcom…You’d think they’d be working over time to fix this problem. It’s literally made half the choices in character creation not as good. How come they can’t kludge in a fix for the animation while they fix it up? How come they can’t come up with some solution that isn’t at least a month away (and probably more, knowing MMOs and schedules)? You’d think this wouldn’t be the kind of press they’d want at a time when they are rocking it with 700k subs.
And as a former QA guy, I’m dumbfounded that such an easy to find bug got through the process. I’m wondering, is there a process?
Oh, one more question that I can’t figure out. Why in the fuck is damage tied to the animations in any way? Is there an actual technical reason for this? It sounds pretty iffy, at best, to me. As a friend pointed out, doesn’t this mean ANYTIME you want to adjust the speed of an attack, you have to fuck with the animation? That’s plain retarded and suggests that maybe they never thought about the future and how things might change.
What Would Matt Do: I’ll continue to not play AoC. Maybe in a couple of months after they’ve got the launch bugs figured out, I’ll give it a shot. Oh, and after they quit hating women.