It is a rocky road…

…and not the tasty baked goods kind.

I’ve had a lot of RL stuff on my plate of late, so most of my experience with FE has been fed from afar, checking out the forums and the shiny new Dev Blog on my mobile phone – with more time to check in on stuff at the weekends.

At the moment, things are in a state of flux, with Alpha County and the combat revamp slated to go ahead on July 6th, and no currently functioning PTS, which means no further testing before live. Ouch.

I know I posted that I think they should push to live and quit dicking us around with iteration after iteration, but (silly me) I was writing that under the assumption that the PTS would be there right up until the patch hit. Feel free to point out the old saw about “assume making an ass out of u and me”, I know it was the first thing that occurred to me. Also, there hasn’t been any external testing of mobs, mission and crafting etc. in Alpha County. This worries me too. Not implying that the in-house testers in FE are not good, they are, but it’s impossible to find all the bugs players will encounter by running stuff internally only. Couple possibly bugged new stuff with a not-recently-tested-on-players combat revamp and you’re asking for nerdrage.

More info on this (unshaded by my commetary) as well as the F2P transition is available from the (new! shiny!) Fallen Earth Dev Blog here.

Now, in the FE forums G1Linus has been quick to stomp over the wording about the vet bonus buff, and I’m glad he did, because reading it on the blog the day it went up:
“For about $15—essentially, what you’re paying now—you would get a Premium membership that grants increases to all the above-mentioned things plus adds a slight experience increase as well. The third Premium package is a bit more interesting, and again, putting things in perspective, should not necessarily be considered an escalation of the previous two but something different altogether. The third Premium grants all the same things as the previous with some minor increases PLUS you become a shining beacon of concentrated awesome because you’ll emanate a special aura that bestows some of your benefits onto your group members.”
That bolded above part screamed “Unfair, P2Win!” to me, even though I’d be granted it as I already have vet status, and have no plans to drop my sub over the transition. Given that they’re not going to be gating content for free players, I guess there is some logic to offering paying players bonuses over and above the having more character slots/unfettered crafting/whatever the heck else people getting the game for free won’t have, but permanent passive bonuses relating to XP gain and other things seems a bit OTT. Essentially, the level playing field is dead and gone.

Sure, MMOs never really have a level playing field, since those with more time tend to achieve more than those with less time to play, but there is an illusion of equity, a “we’re all in the same boat” vibe that goes with coughing up the same sub money on a monthly basis for equal access to the same product. Now we’re all going to be squished into tiers depending on how much we’re willing to stump up per month. It feels icky to me, even though I’m one of those vets that’ll qualify for the top tier.

Ultimately, as to how I feel about it I’ll bowdlerize a quote from an O’Casey play (because I’m Irish and that’s how we roll): “The whole FE world’s in a terrible state o’ chassis” because that about sums it all up.

Transitional period, to be fair, and hopefully the chaos will lessen over the next few weeks.
Keep an eye on the FE Dev Blog linked above for more updates, I’m busy moving house for the next couple of weeks and won’t have much time to post.