Personaly, I think that the Devs should take a week off and just relax. No coding, no content, nothing (except emergency repairs of course)and take it easy. Heck, if I could afford it I'd send them to the Bahamas for a week! They've done a great job, and they're continuing to do a great job. But they're only human.

i completely agree with Kamui, the devs need a break.

but besides that, the thing is blizzard is well known for Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft. they're gunna make progress faster but VO i think will make it better in the long run. Just try and convince people to try the game. Who knows maybe they'll try it, buy it, and BRING IN THE INCOME!

" i think it would be in great intrest for you guys if you pumped out these new things within 3 months.
now you might be thinking, "with all the things we have planned, we couldnt possably get those things out in 3 months!"
i believe its is possable. you already have the artwork, and have even used them in previous builds of the game(so i heard). you know what you want from these two things(noted above) so you really do have a head start. i believe you guys could do it in 3 months, becuase you are always seeming to be releasing new things all the time. now, i know you guys are only 4 people, but ive seen what you can do within short periods of time. i believe you can do it!"

this has got to be one of the stupidest, most idiotic, most selfish, hedonistic, cruel, moronic, ignorant posts i have ever seen on the entire internet. you are the equivalent of someone walking into a factory and telling everyone 'come on guys, i want that new toy out in half the time. you can do it.'

what exact experience do you have in creation and maintenance of computer software? let alone hardware and networking and database administration? what experience do you have working on a project with other people? what experience do you even have building anything at all?

people like you are why workers get hurt on the job. people like you are why EA is being sued by its employees for forcing them to work 12 hours a day 7 days a week. people like you are why workers get burnt out and close down projects.

give the devs a break. if i were their boss it would be 40 hours a week and no more! strictly enforced. there is only so far you can push a human being. did you ever read the story of john henry? people seem to think that 'oh programming is mental work, a person can do that without getting tired and without limit... its not like physical labor' -- WRONG. in fact there is a point at which an overworked brain is suboptimal and will screw things up so that your blessed 'speed' is completely ruined because you have to then go back and fix all the things you screwed up when you had been up 4 days and blurrily typed in spaghetti code that you cant even remember what its for".

in short, dont go into a restaurant and tell the chefs, who have just stayed up till 2 am the night before making some magnificent catering feast, 'hey i bet you could cook my food in half the time if you got off your ass'.

have some m@#$@#$ respect. jesus christ.

I think that rushing the update cycle would be a mistake. The first major update was done with really no errors or issues. That's amazing and so I think the style they are worked out for updating is very successful.

I also think taking a vacation would be a mistake too.

Not because I'm a cruel and ruthless slave driver, but because simply from a business prospective they need to stay on the stick until the game is self sustaining in terms of suscribers.

The game's been up for release for like 2 weeks? If that? It's way to early to be talking about vacations. The sad fact is that now is the time they have to work even harder.

If I was involved in this project (I wouldn't be, I'm to risk-averse) I wouldn't even think of taking a break for atleast 6 months after the game was released. Don't kill yourselves at work, but this is a labor of love and you gotta be there for it until it's old enough to live on it's own.

only suggested what i did becuase i know they can pump out the material quickly.

"people seem to think that 'oh programming is mental work, a person can do that without getting tired and without limit... its not like physical labor"

no shit, i never said anything about "overworking" annyone, i never said they should stay in their office "12 hours a day, 7 days a week" i never said any of that crap your accusing me of.

all my statement is saying is, 'i think' they could do it within 3 months, and that if they can, do it as quickly as possable, becuase people might lose intrest. how is that selfish? im not the one losing interest in their game, i wouldnt care if they released it in 6 years, id still be around, waiting for the release!

you need to read things more carefuly before you start bitching about things you dont understand.
people like me? pfft, its people like you who give fourm whores a worse name.
and if you dont like what i have to say, then kill me.

yes i admit i was too harsh but my central point remains:

does anyone come to your work and tell you that for the next few months you need to work twice as fast? just the day after you have just busted your butt finishing the latest task, staying up into the middle of the night?

if they did wouldnt you be a bit miffed?

"only suggested what i did becuase i know they can pump out the material quickly."

You do? How so? Are you a game developer? Have you seen their spec sheets?

i never meant to speak in this thread, but i just NEED to answer to the questions asked by ananzi.

first question: uhmm, let me think: YES! Y E S ! and they can do that because they pay you. of course you do have a contract and noone can force you to do more than you are supposed to. but YES ! they can tell you and they do tell you. it's your answer that is very important.

second question: sure i would. VERY miffed (miffed?). as i said, it's all in the answer. and in the attitude. i don't like yours :)
that guy spoke his oppinion. can he do that ? of course. he payed and he can do speak, and even ask. will there be an answer? probably. will the answer be NO? maybe. but let the guy ask please.

p.s. and if you wonder what are his reasons, i will tell you mine: i love this game. i bet he does as well and i bet you do as well. so why are you pissed off ? ENJOY IT! thank you ;)

<since you have alot more money than you used to(and will get even more money once the free trials end :D) to work with, are you going to speed up this six month process?>

-Microeconomics 101 time.

There is a difference between labor and capital. Despite the money they make, their labor is still just 4 guys working almost every waking hour. They're basically at maximum productivity at this point so they can't speed up development without more laborers (programmers) and they probably don't have the money to do that.
Therefore, it's pretty reliable to say that the only thing that will affect their timetable would be major setbacks (which will only slow them down.) Chances are slim that the game will be done in under 6 months, most likely over. But like Rogue said, the features are being released piecemeal, so the chances of people getting bored isn't as great either.

"does anyone come to your work and tell you that for the next few months you need to work twice as fast? just the day after you have just busted your butt finishing the latest task, staying up into the middle of the night?"

actually, yes, they do. its called the holiday season.

WORD, BIG UP TO ANANZI!!! RESPECT!!!

MMO's are released in store fronts simply because its a good way of getting the average gamers attention. Lets be honest now - How many people will have heard of Vendetta Online somewhere on the Internet... Not as many as it should do, but by releasing the game to shop fronts, you get something more sort of, uh, in your face, so to speak.

...Same goes for any internet based game really, HL2 included... Plus, some people like the feel of a paper manual.

Yup, the main reason that MMORPG's are put on the shelves is more for advertising than anything, since most are downloadable anyway. A fair bulk of players will generelly get into MMORPG's from either buying it in the store, having a friend suggest it to them, or via having the demo on a pc game magizine, generelly its more the hardcore MMORPG players and other hardcore gamers that find games on the internet to download.

On that note, getting VO reviewed in a PC magizine with a demo on it should definatly be up there on the things to do list to get the player base higher. Atm its saturday, coming close to peak playing hours, and theres 95 players online, when the game went into open beta when EnB went down there were 150+ players on. so getting those numbers up is essential for sure :-)

That's not totally true. The store front idea does not really address the hugely overpriced game clients that other mmo's sell. For that matter, a game like WoW has such a huge propaganda machine that they don't even need the in store advertisement.

They want to sell the clients. They want to sell as many copy's of the clients as they can. This isn't advertising, it's straight up profit. A lot of times I feel like this initial windfall of profit is why they make the games in the first place because of games like Lineage2 where the patching and support where almost non-existant. This isn't true in some mmo's but for others, it's almost dead on.

The business model these guys used was the kind of model that I've been hoping someone would do for years. The investment to try out vendetta is so low! That shows to things to me, one that the people who made this game are pretty proud of it and two that they intend to support and make their money back off the long term subscribers.

WoW could have done this, Lineage II could have done this, hell any of them could have, but they didn't because they wanted to bilk you right from the start.