Don't Shoot Me

Yea, speed picked up quite a bit this last hour. I just finished. Total download time over broadband = 90 minutes

Tried DAP. Says it can only do normal downloading, not multi-streaming. Creeping along at 9K Oh well, by morning should be done.

How many people can access at once now?

Ah, there goes my sleep for the rest of the week!

their trains always run on time too

Yup, try rebooting. That should speed things up.

{scratches head} If those who pre-ordered can get first dibs on downloading the game then why can't we do it now since the game's been gold for a couple weeks?

Now that's the tail wagging the dog!

Spot on Liam. MOO3 was a disaster but actually more time would not have helped. They fundamentally ignored all the good UI and design decisions that made the MOO series a classic. In fact, they destroyed the MOO franchise. Atari did do a project review about a year before release in which they should have killed the project. The game was in deep trouble at the time, overly complex and consumed with trivia that slowed the game terribly. Atari made their second mistake in not only going forward but keeping mostly the same team that got them into the mess in the first place. The team fundamentally didn't understand abstraction for playability's sake. They didn't at all see it as a problem that there was next to no visual feedback of progress until beta testing hit. By then the financial pressure was such that it was really too late to go back to the drawing board again. They had to push it out. Unlike MOO3, SC2 is a good enhancement of an existing design. Extra time does help here. Hubert understands the balance between abrstraction and playability quite well. And unlike the MOO3 team, he actually did the prior incarnation and so understands the meaning of his franchise better than anyone. I actually think this is going to be a classic in the genre, tough to beat for a long time.

LOL Konigs. Good one.

"France will declare war in the USA"??? Okaaay But surely they will surrender in France. It's tradition.

Same as in other businesses. The book publisher is at the mercy of the author.

Good points Retributar. Also, the Italians got whacked. Their position on the flank was steamrolled the first days of the offensive. They were never a cohesive force on the eastern front after that.

Point taken about the russian front. It certainly does not seem to try to represent the some 4 or 5 million men the russians had on the front at the time. Maybe these things can be adjusted in the editor.

My first computer wargame was SSI's Battle of the Bulge written for the Apple II+ in 1981. It was pretty good for the time. For years after that the Apple II series had all the good games. SSI made a lot of the Apple wargames back then.

Excellent AAR pzgndr. Thanks for taking the time to give us the detail. It really sounds like the play balance is down to fine tuning.

Excellent AAR pzgndr. Thanks for taking the time to give us the detail. It really sounds like the play balance is down to fine tuning.

Amazon doesn't pull dates out of thin air. Someone provided them that date. It may be a bit delayed beyond Thursday but likely we are very close. I can almost hear the pitter patter of tiny marching digital feet!!

...as was the real war.

...as was the real war.

There's a good Rambo?

I like the hex pattern but I can't figure out why...something deep...subliminal...can't understand...controlling my brain...argh!

We're close enough now...place your pool bets I'll be putting my dollar on February 28.

Yes very encouraging. Starting to feel more certain that by the end of February SC2 should go gold.

Agreed. That's a great post pzgndr. Thanks for the insight and for the background about yourself. It's good to see that I'm not the only 30 year wargamer that still finds this stuff fascinating. Also thanks for your service to the country and for helping Hubert out. I have a lot of confidence from reading your many posts that your ideas and feedback are helping to make this a solid sequel. I've enjoyed SC1 immensely and am looking forward to seeing a fully play balanced and tested SC2. Take care.