Post by Tim on Sept 9, 2014 15:00:00 GMT -6
It time to prepare for V13! The number 13 is pretty significant in the WoT world, so we should all prepare for something big! Something game changing! Something huge!!!
Or not.
As much as I'd like for every age to have significant changes, sometimes things just need refined. As a whole, I'm pretty happy with how things went in V12 and the current state of the game. Things are by no means perfect, but I've given it some thought and I think I need to spend next age fixing things that are broken and tweaking unbalanced systems before adding anything else game changing. Admittedly, the fact that RL has been crazy this Summer and I haven't had a lot of time to make big changes played a factor too.
This doesn't mean there won't be noticable changes or new features in V13. Just that these are likely to be smaller new things or refactors of current features. There's also quite a few minor bugs that I keep kicking to the next version to fix that I'd like to get off cleared off my plate finally.
So that's the bad news.
The good news is, that making less big changes means it SHOULD take me less time get the changes made. Based on what changes I have planned for next Age, I'm further along than I've been the last few ages at this point in the release cycle. I expect the gap between Ages to be significantly smaller than it has been previously. Really, the biggest thing stopping me from opening the test site right now is my RL schedule is insane until the end of September.
So here's my plan:
- My countdown posts will start tomorrow. Likely won't run too long as I don't have all that much to talk about.
(for the new people, I make a new post every weekday talking about something that's new or changing next Age).
- Test site will open to donors late September/early October. Non-donors get access a week later as usual.
- Testing will run for 1-1.5 months. There are a few tweaks to the Last Battle coming next version, so there will be some testing for that as well (I can kick it off early).
- Based on the above, I'm shooting for an official launch of V13 in mid to late November.
We'll see how close I can maintain this schedule. I admit I don't have a great track record of hitting my initial timelines, but we can hope this time will be different.
Go Team!
Or not.
As much as I'd like for every age to have significant changes, sometimes things just need refined. As a whole, I'm pretty happy with how things went in V12 and the current state of the game. Things are by no means perfect, but I've given it some thought and I think I need to spend next age fixing things that are broken and tweaking unbalanced systems before adding anything else game changing. Admittedly, the fact that RL has been crazy this Summer and I haven't had a lot of time to make big changes played a factor too.
This doesn't mean there won't be noticable changes or new features in V13. Just that these are likely to be smaller new things or refactors of current features. There's also quite a few minor bugs that I keep kicking to the next version to fix that I'd like to get off cleared off my plate finally.
So that's the bad news.
The good news is, that making less big changes means it SHOULD take me less time get the changes made. Based on what changes I have planned for next Age, I'm further along than I've been the last few ages at this point in the release cycle. I expect the gap between Ages to be significantly smaller than it has been previously. Really, the biggest thing stopping me from opening the test site right now is my RL schedule is insane until the end of September.
So here's my plan:
- My countdown posts will start tomorrow. Likely won't run too long as I don't have all that much to talk about.
(for the new people, I make a new post every weekday talking about something that's new or changing next Age). - Test site will open to donors late September/early October. Non-donors get access a week later as usual.
- Testing will run for 1-1.5 months. There are a few tweaks to the Last Battle coming next version, so there will be some testing for that as well (I can kick it off early).
- Based on the above, I'm shooting for an official launch of V13 in mid to late November.
We'll see how close I can maintain this schedule. I admit I don't have a great track record of hitting my initial timelines, but we can hope this time will be different.
Go Team!
