Buying the sequel will be an act of faith. After buying Clod I am now an atheist. I'll watch what happens and if the evidence convinces me I will believe and buy it.

You're welcome. I was one of them. I spent $800 in computer upgrades to play, what I thought, was going to be near fantastic and still getting better.

I believe 1C was going in the right direction making patches but still left us with an unfinished product. It is not expressly stated that the game will never be finished on the box, and that's the reason I want a refund, or a finished game.

I love what was attempted, but hate the result. In the end, cases like this prove that buyers like us need consumer protections against something like this. 1C is truly showing itself to be a horrible company to have both forced the early release of this game and then pulling the plug on it. Not to mention Oleg Maddox lying about his involvement in the game. I remember a SimHQ interview with Oleg and he said the release version of Rise of Flight was not very impressive. I found out he was right and realized that his involvement in Clod meant it was going to be a real gem. Of course it ended up the other way around. The whole concept of what a train wreck the scenario surrounding this game has been is almost unbelievable.

First off Oleg was right, ROF wasn't very good at release, but that doesn't mean he didn't think it would get better. COD isn't dead either, but it appears you will have to buy the Sequel, which would probably be less than most ROF users have paid for extra aircraft. The Sequel will include new aircraft, GUI, SDK, and many other features, fixes that will improve the Channel map, not to mention all the user made missions and campaigns.

I highly recommend waiting for reviews from trusted people before buying the Sequel. Working exclusively on COD would make absolutely no financial sense, COD's sales are finished, and the development/publishers desperately need another influx of cash. The only way that will happen is a working Sequel and game engine that by definition will fix most of Channel maps issues. I know of very few people who bought the initial release of the original series, and waited for the development to exclusively improve it, they bought AEP, or FB for those improvements. This time of course nobody will buy on faith.

A lot of us did buy the original Il2 Chivas, that's where we all got hooked onto the series (in fact I still have the disc for the original and a lot of the sequels, the only one that I don't still have is Pacific Figthers because I passed that on to a friend).

The original did run a lot better for most on the pc that most of us had at the time, than this does. Oleg kept the series alive with regular visits to the forums with information and improvements, this has not been happening with Luthier and C.o.D.
Getting information from the team for this series is like getting blood from a stone (ok that has improved over the last few months) and saying that this or that was going to be fixed and never was over the 18 months since release is just a joke.
Maybe the things that need fixing still will be done with the sequels, that still remains to be seen.
Most will wait some time after the sequel is released to make sure some of the bugs in that are ironed out before making any decision about buying. Nobody in their right mind will rush into the sequel blindly after the fiasco of C.o.D.
If the team want to earn our trust again they must give us a playable demo (don't care if it is a time restricted one done through steam and it has to work with Windows 8 ).

The windows 8 problem is one that isn't going to go away, both MS and 1C Maddox are very quiet over the issue. Once again it would be nice if Luthier came to the forum and said, "hey we know there is an issue and we are working on it" or "tough luck we consider this is MS's problem we will fix it with the sequel". To be honest I don't think either will happen looking at the track record and Luthier's statement that C.o.D. is finished.

Talking of being left high and dry...why were sand dunes not accurately modelled?

There is no chance there will be a demo. They don't have the time or money to produce one. Like I said in many previous posts, you will have to make a decision based on reviews you trust.

Windows 8 is not a priority issue, it would be if it was listed in the recommended specs. Not many people would have upgraded to Windows 8, so soon, if they had read any of the early reviews. That said I'm sure its now better than those early reviews. Its always better to wait, or atleast have multiple operating systems on your PC. I currently have XP, Window 7 64bit, and see no reason to add Windows 8 yet. I have no doubt that Luthier will look at Windows 8 when he has time, but he still has far higher priorities to address first. My guess is Windows 8 will be a recommended OS in the Sequel, with the possibility of an updated before that.

Standalone COD is finished, but that doesn't mean the Battle of Britain and further scenarios on the Channel map are over, infact its just the end of the beginning. Almost everything will be improved by development Sequels, and user made content. That said there still a good possiblility the development will fail, and we will have to depend on the slow improvements made by the community. Personally I'd rather the developer stuck around to add improvements and supply tools for the community so the series could improve far quicker.

I notice there are lots of posts now about kings bounty and hardly any for clod. Tell's me they could use all that kings bounty money to fix clod instead of telling lies to sell a likely already broken sequel to a broken clod that doesn't work on xp when they said it was supposed to, but really doesn't.

I understand people trying to be positive, but there is a fine line between positive and utter denial.

Saying the sequel will fix all the problems, will do this and that, weather, campaign, etc. etc. is really a silly thing to think will happen given the track record. The same thing was said over and over with every beta patch for CLoD.

What makes you think that the devs that couldnt put CLoD together, after over a year, will have any more luck with the next game? Ever think they just dont know how? I personally do. I dont think they are capable to making a working game.

And finally the biggest mistake for the devs...lack of an SDK. Without it, you can kiss the franchise goodbye. The fact that user made content and mods, helped sell original IL2 for years and years, its proof that the user base of talented modders knows more about making what people want than the devs. They should have realized this, and given us a shell and let the community do the rest. Like ArmA did.

Thing is if CoD was worth the effort to mod it would already be done.
How long did it take for kegeties(sp?) To add a basic modact? Not long. Modders don't really need an SDK, they need something worth adding to. Thus far there isnt.

They plan to have the map SDK in the Sequel, that said the original series never had any SDK's, or development support, and still did wonders. Even if the development shut down today I'm sure there will be people in the community and other third parties who will tackle the issues head on, but I would prefer the development stayed in business aswell to make it all happen much faster. Just because the development hasn't been able to finish the project in a reasonable time frame doesn't mean it can't be done. Thankfully they have investors, who aren't as pessimistic, that still think they can pull it off.

"Everyone" understand there are no guarantees that much will be fixed in the Sequel, but much of the work over the last couple of years was dominated by rewriting and optimizations on the game engine to make the sim playable on the average PC. Now that they've made decent strides with the game engine, I see no reason they can't make decent strides with the gameplay issues, over the next year or two.