by Mooge » 16 Sep 09, 11:47 am
Yeah, it's not looking good but it is very easy to fix. They may just wait until the last minute to tell us.
We can't get details about most of the timers because to date the level cap in the closed and open betas prevented us from testing that end content. The forts are different though.
If you go to the map in game (hit 'M') then right click on it you get the world map. In the top left corner there is drawing of the whole world. Click on the middle bit, the Abyss. There are 3 levels to the Abyss, each map detail shows Dreadgeons and forts. If you hover over each fort you can see it's status for the current 2 hour slot, it's status in the next two hour slot and the count down to the next slot.
Through closed beta no fort became capturable from 6pm to 2am Sydney time (I checked this myself every day). Others report they came available from 11am to 3pm Sydney time. No Dreadgeon were seen during our prime time but the word from Korea is they normally only spawn when a fort is vulnerable which makes sense as they exist to attack forts.
Of course everyone said we were jumping to conclusions and we should wait for the final build in Open Beta and test that. We did and found it was the same as Closed Beta. Bit of forum warfare later and NCsoft decided to look after the American playerbase by splitting their servers by time zone, half west coast time, half east coast. Just the system clock has changed, all the servers are still on the east coast.
All NCsoft will confirm at this stage is that game content is optimised for the time zone of the server which we had already worked out. They may change the mechanic so we can attack forts at different times but this looks unlikely due to balance issues.
The easiest fix is to set one server as Oceanic and change it's clock to GMT+10 so it's content is optimised for Oceania. That fix can be done very quickly and before live (actually it's better to do it before people are playing on the server so American players don't find themselves on a sub-par server). They have done it twice since Open Beta for US time zones but keep skipping Oceania.
Anyway, there are the facts. There is still time for it to be sorted but it's getting close. Personally fort raids are a main part of the game for me so this will be a potential deal breaker, for me. You can all make up your own minds on what to do.
The good news is that if NCsoft still have not told us anything by next week we get two days head start in which you can check the map and see how it works. If it's still broken you are still within your rights to cancel your pre-order and get your money back. In fact EB Games are offering cash back up to 7 days after purchase.
Fingers crossed they fix it up. Peace.
