PS2 Launching in January?

[Malorn]

And FPS isn't in beta nearly as long as other MMOs, which have to test a lot of content and the "end game" vs the early experience, and pvp vs pve and all that crap.

The main things for them to test are if the systems work as they expect them to and the game feels right. Some things only manifest at scale, and others only with time - sometimes both.

Big systems to test:
- Influence system & capture mechanics at-scale
- Resource system at-scale, costs of things, size of resource pool, rates of acquisition
- Mission system and how well it creates missions that get the right player distributions, or discouraging double teams against a weak opponent, etc.
- Cert gain rate over time & general experience balance for activities at-scale.
- General weapon balance
- Map/terrain balance.

For all of these things they could work just right for a small number of players but not scale well with more.

As far as actual work on the game goes, there doesn't appear to be all that much remaining. The big ticket items that I see are finishing the continents and the Heavy Assault weapons (which are carried differently and so require new animations). They may have more weapon variants and mods to make, but I expect that is mostly art assets and very little in terms of systems and programming. And of course polish, like fixing up a few animations or textures that may look wonky or rough.

The only "content" to provide in the traditional MMO sense are the continents, of which one looks close to completion (Indar) and the other two are in construction. This to me looks like the biggest challenge for them and the work items that will take the most time and effort. I think they are going to use Indar to determine how the gameplay plays out with various cover amounts and territory layouts and then use that knowledge to more rapidly develop the other continents. Would suck to make all 3 continents and then find out a particular layout or map design doesn't work as they expect it to. Another reason why I think Zurvan has changed so much over the months.

Bottom line is that given all they've done in the last 3-4 months, I find it hard to believe that they can't finish all of the systems work and balancing in that time. Creating the continents is the only thing that would seem time-consuming that might take longer than 3-4 months. That looks like the long-pole.

And if it does take more time because the continents aren't ready, that's not a huge deal as it gives the artists more time to create weapon mods, gun variants, different camo patterns, hats, etc. while the system guys fine tune the game with our testing.

I would expect they have a mid-November release date that might slip to mid-December. It isn't a pay-to-play game so they don't need to release at any particular sales time, but I expect they do want to release before the holidays so the devs have some much-deserved time off. I just hope they don't pull a Mythic and release the game with issues and then go dark for three months with no balance patches or communication.