Jumpgate Evolution Delayed

Perhaps emboldened by the similar setback to Champions Online, Jumpgate Evolution developer NetDevil has announced that the space MMO will not be released in June, as was originally planned. NetDevil's president, Scott Brown, said, "One of the things we've always promised is that we would not release an unfinished product, nor would we subject players to a sub-par experience. ... Jumpgate Evolution is nearly feature complete, but since entering the Friends & Family phase of testing we've been able to bring new eyes onto the game and get solid, crucial feedback from actual players and fans. Based on these results, it is clear that the product needs more time to meet its objectives. As an example, we have received and read lots of feedback regarding the instanced and public PvP systems. The feedback has been vital in helping us polish and improve this core feature of the game." A new release date has not yet been selected.

Too Bad

[Mutio]

Being a college student I was looking for a game to suck away my summertime (when im not working), so i was going to pick this up as soon as it released. I haven't actually been excited about a mmo since i used to play WoW. Being that this game will not be released during summer i will likely never pick it up, as i will be busy with school when this releases. I really hope that the late launch will not effect them, but assume they will be fine if they release around christmas.

Emboldened?

[TheLink]

> Perhaps emboldened by the similar setback

Embolden:
cheer: give encouragement to

To render (someone) more bold or courageous; To encourage, inspire, or motivate;

to make bold or bolder; hearten; encourage.

Re:Still in "friends and family stage"???

[castironpigeon]

It's the new game development schedule. Everyone's doing it. You spend forever building hype about a game, have a lengthy family and friends alpha stage where seemingly nothing gets accomplished, do a one month public beta that's really just a demo for the fanbois since discs are already being burned and nobody is taking feedback seriously at this point, and finally distribute those discs madly before the hype wears off and anyone realizes how awful the game really is. If you're really good you'll have suckered a few of the fanbois into buying lifetime subscriptions. Tabula Rasa did it and so did Hellgate:London, so it must be a good thing! Oh.. wait...

Deja Vu?

[Dan1701]

When I read the plot for Jumpgate Evolution, I get an incredible sense of deja vu. There's a very simple reason for this: their plot is pretty much identical to to that of the existing space-based MMO Vendetta Online, http://www.vendetta-online.com/ [vendetta-online.com]

Again, we have humans isolated in space away from Earth, with several different races and some credible aliens (run-away mining robots in VO, which have turned nasty). Again we have twitch-based player versus player combat, licences for ships, role-playing and so on.

So, I'd say skip JGE and have a look at Vendetta Online; exactly the same plot, exactly the same capabilities but VO exists and is playable right now.

Re:I played this game

[nschubach]

I hated Eve because combat was slow and boring to me. I only hit the frigate classes, but it was enough for me. Jumpgate looked to be like Freespace or one of those more action oriented games. Eve was pretty much an online space-based spreadsheet with fancy graphics and tedious skill gains.

Re:Lesson From Blizzard

[ceswiedler]

Yes, a good dev team will "release when ready", but they'll also only schedule a release for a time when they're pretty sure it will be ready. A setback like this, so close to the scheduled release, points to a poor development process where a lot of issues weren't found until the (too-short) beta stage. It's a common situation for MMOs unfortunately.

The problem is usually that a lot of features aren't well-tested until beta, and so a lot of bugs crop up all at once. Notice how they say "almost feature complete"-- an MMO isn't going to be ready to launch until many months after being really-and-truly feature complete. This sort of self (or at least public) delusion is usually a sign that the game is far behind schedule and will be massively delayed, buggy, imbalanced, and/or not fun.

MMOs need a different development mindset than other games, because of their huge complexity and the fact that they will be continually updated post-launch. The way to develop them is to focus on a small set of core features and get them polished and (reasonably) bug-free. At that point, you can at least launch a good, simple, well-executed game if you absolutely need to. Then you just keep adding features and content, and you're able to release pretty much whenever you want to.

Re:Emboldened?

[immcintosh]

Your point? "To make bold or bolder; hearten; encourage." That is precisely what happened with respect to delaying their release date; an activity that is generally considered a "bold" move from the business standpoint. I'm not really sure what you're getting at. Makes perfect sense to me.

Re:Can anybody provide a summary of the game?

[FileNotFound]

It's EVE with guns...

Wait that didn't come out right. Ok. How about it's EVE but you actually fly your ship, aim and shoot instead of clicking "Warp to", "Target" and "Activate".

They will not have the same skill systems and pvp system.

EVE has a lot more tedium and prep downtime than any other MMO I have ever played. It's a lot more "work" than other MMOs. Please don't try to argue with me, I've played EVE since release till about a year ago. EVE is a great game in what it does, but if you ever sit back and do the math on the number of hours you played EVE in the past week and how many of those hours were fun vs how many were preperation, you'd quit on the spot. I did.