I am a bit worried about the release. You have a distributor for North America. Will the release be at the same time as the American? I hope so, because otherwise I would have to be without the game for a time. And the european players will start with a disadventage to the americans if the european release is later. I don't know how many europeans there are in the test, but I would like to start playing together with the americans. Or before :)

Harmless Trader

There are quite a few European players...this is a very valid question.

If worse comes to worse, I will be happy to procure copies and ship them myself to anyone that wants to pay for the shipping.

Of course, a download would be the easiest method of delivery and I'm pretty sure Guild has already mentioned that as a possibility.

Well, if Vendetta will be available for download in addition to having the boxed version, I don't see how a simultaneous release with Europe wouldn't be possible.

don't forget that CD would allow devs to use much more artwork than now. right now vendetta folder is only about 52mb. i imagine that release will be at least size of one CD - 600MB compressed. Graphics needs to be improved and increased. You don't really expect the game only have 60mb of textures in final release, do you? :)

what about the middle east?
we exist also....and we play the game as well....

You can just download it from the site. I remember many times where Incarnate has said that you will be able to pay Guild via CreditCard or whatever and download it like we do now.

This publisher is just for the retail( read in stores) release. It generates a larger market this way. Vendetta-Online will be available to purchase online.

Unless Guild Software changes what they have said, I would stop worrying about it.

The game should be available to players outside of north america. Whether they choose to order it from Amazon.com or some such online E-tailer and have it shipped, or to just download the client and pay the monthly fee.

Assuming we find some success in North America, however, we do plan to do full releases in Europe and Asia. These would be separate universes from the North American universe (a requirement dictated mostly by transatlantic latency). This would let us do more marketing in a specific regions and roll out servers that would be more local to players in the area. I imagine that, should additional "regional" server come online, we would allow people on the NA servers to port their characters to the other "local" universes. Thus, if Europeans who play on our NA servers for 6 months then find that there's a new European server cluster going into production, we would migrate their characters if they wanted. Or, if they would rather continue playing with their friends on the NA servers.. that's fine too. Up to the individual. Creating local server clusters (and separate universes) is only done for the purpose of reducing ping times. Our game deals with high latency (pings) pretty well, but the game would be better for distant players if there were a closer server.

Couldnt really be any worse than it is now, could it?

so, incarnate, and just for claification, when you say, "These would be separate universes from the North American universe" are you implying that they would be a sealed environment only accessable on that contenient or would it be similar to the way Blizzard Entertainment has their StarCraft Battlenet setup where a player could pick a gateway and play on that universe on that contienent? I know you said you can migrate accounts but could the player have a char for say NA, ME, and European servers without their overall account (only their chars) being dedicated to their server cluster? Also, would it be possible for European and ME players to say transfer to the European Server Cluster (ESC) discover they didn't like it and choose to wait a month or so before transferring back to the NASC? Or would there be some sort of restraint held there?

Because I think I can say honestly, that if we get separate, non-interacting universes occuring across the globe, the game will suffer greatly for it. Some of the best players that can provide the best backing to n00bs are on two or three contients and by splitting them up, the n00b training base suffers.

Well, it's worse the more traffic needs to be sent. So, the more people there are flying around, the more activity, the worse it will get. I don't expect it to be too bad for Europeans, but for people in Asia it can be pretty horrible. Regardless, both regions would benefit from a local server cluster.

I don't know exactly how we'll handle migration, or what we'll make possible. The current plan is to have people exclusively play in the region for which their client was intended. Breaking up the userbase is not something I would like to do, but it would really benefit the more distant users from a technological (ping) sense. Also, this is all on the assumption that the game would be successful enough to support a multi-region rollout. If that were to happen, I would expect thousands of simultaneous players in each region, pretty much negating concerns over breaking up the more experienced players. If we can't sustain much of a userbase, we'd be hard pressed to afford rollouts on other continents.

I get it, thanks incarnate!

Wow, doesn't this just make people excited that Guild's getting off the ground and going totally public? YEAH!! ROCK ON GUILD!!

Hmm... in a few months to a year, we could be sitting on the couch watching TV, and suddenly you hear:

"Vendetta-Online... a space MMORPG... Thousands of players... All waiting to compete with you for galaxial domination... Can you beat them?... Come and try your best... We'll see how it goes..."

BTW, if Vendetta sells well the first few months and you guys have enough money, are you planning any large-scale advertising? With the graphics Vendetta has now, you could have awesome commercials.

lol danielky

he's right though. Do a 3rd person view of a Vulture diving through a dogfight, guns blazing. Explosions all around. Then cut to the cockpit view in a barrel-roll firing tachyons.

Cut to narration, picture of box."Vendetta-Online... a space MMORPG... Thousands of players... All waiting to compete with you for galaxial domination... Can you beat them?... Come and try your best... "

Flash to missile rag firing on a target then the explosion animation. "We'll see how it goes"

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>I don't expect it to be too bad for Europeans, but for people in Asia it can be pretty horrible.
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Incarnate is right about that. I'm in Asia and ping rates of 200ms to 800ms is what I usually get.

--Sorial--

But would it still be possible for Europeans to get on the US server (if there would be an EU version of the game)? I'd like to continue playing with ya all here ;)

Read Incarnate's post. It answers your question.