Long time lurker, first time poster
 

Hey guys,

Long time IL2 player, and a long time lurker of these forums.

I just have a couple of questions for the general population here.

While I understand and respect the fact that it's now taboo to even mention the words "release date" on here, so much so I sense I will be banned for this post alone...

\I still don't understand why there is no general timeline by now, it doesn't make any sense marketing wise, and if the game truly was 80% done months and months ago, then they must have a guestimate as to when the game will be completed.

I realize all anyone here can do is speculate without Oleg actually giving some facts, but I find it utterly amazing that the population here is satisfied with a weekly collection of 4-5 screenshots, hardly any videos and they praise the team with the groundbreaking progress they are making, and are completely satisfied to believe that the project is still going ahead 100%.

Something just doesn't add up here, perhaps its the culture difference and Oleg doesn't seem to want to inform his customer base better, or he simply doesn't understand how frustrating it is (or care) that we've been waiting for years and aside from some beautiful screenshots and stories we have nothing, not even a 6 month window for a release date.

Seriously, you guys who bash people talking about vaporware can't have a firm grip on reality. I've been a PC gamer since 1992, and have never seen the likes of this, not even remotely close to this...

For example, I am an "Iracer" (www.iracing.com) that project wasn't anywhere near the drawing board when BOB:SOW was announced, and it's now a multi-million dollar online racing simulator, with 30+ lazer scanned tracks, and 20+ authentic cars, and constantly growing, and yes it was started by a very small design group in a very small office.

Either there's stuff going on Oleg does not talk about (nor does he have to) or the team simply doesn't see it important to keep his fan base alive...

I'm not saying what Oleg is doing is not worth the wait, if everything in the end holds true, then yes truly it will be a fantastic end product...

Anyway, this is probably my first and last post, since no doubt this post will be destroyed into the ether, and I can't wait to hear all the flaming comments.

S!

This is the way Oleg & Team works, we get updates and he tells tidbits on the progress. This on a weekly basis and now he has stated release is not far off, depending on how fast they squash some bugs. And the publisher of course.

About vaporware..Duke Nukem Forever, literally ;)

because the truth is that you (or I), or whiny little kids like tree, dont actually matter in the grand scheme of all-things-oleg

from late 2009 oleg knew (and stated) he was aiming for a release date around "the anniversary of BoB in 2010", and it looks like he is pretty much going to be on target for that, so for those with their ear to the ground, there were announcements on release dates.

oleg's unwillingness to commit himself to a specific fixed date works in his favor. for the extremely complex and advanced new game engine they constructed, it allows him to balance trying to cram as many features as he can into it, resist pressure from his financial investors as long as he can, and try and fix as many bugs as possible before release. all by all these factors seem to be coming together nicely by the looks of it from the most recent weeks of updates

regarding advertising and pre release promotion, this is much less important in the flightsim genre (where the fan base is much smaller but much better informed), then for console or other pc games. once the product goes gold you'll see a website for it, and an increase in promotional material (including articles/interviews on the main big flightsim related websites)

for other gamers this might seem unusual as an approach, but oleg used the same method last time and in the end it is the quality of the product that will assure it longevity, popularity and financial and commercial success

Off the top of my head, and limited to flight sims:

- Strike Commander: delay after delay; when it finally released in 1992 there was a nice joke in the manual (an announcement that it was "coming 2012... really!" or something like that)

- European Air War: announced, then silence for ~2 years and lots of rumors about cancellation, until it suddenly emerged

- Falcon 4: apparently restarted from scratch 3 times and then dumped onto the market in a barely working version; would have needed 1-2 more years of full time development to be considered working. But at least they made the release that everyone was waiting for...

- DCS Black Shark: major delay (2 years?) and refocus (standalone instead of addon to Lock On) because the team was assigned to different projects for quite a while. The A-10C project is also later than initially announced and currently scheduled for "hopefully before the end of the year if all goes right", which isn't much more specific than what we have with SoW.

- Rise of Flight: sudden loss of communication with the developers prompted heaps of "vaporware" posts (and of course the most original Duke Nukem Forever references)

Apparently many people would rather have sim developers work like "normal" game companies, i.e. focus on marketing and release windows instead of content and quality. Problem is, if Maddox Games were a normal game studio, they would above all do something else than flight sims...

I suppose you will never have a clue how complex developing this sim has been until you try developing one yourself. The game your talking about has no where near the complexity of this combat flight sim.

I guess he's never heard of the follow-up to a little title called Duke Nukem....:)

Aviar

Well, somehow it feels like they don't have a western publisher yet and that is the "problem" for us...

It is the western publisher who will make fancy web sites, ad campaigns and set a release date. The developer does not decide the release date - they hope to get the code running as good as possible until the day the publisher decides as the date they will maximize profits...

Look at the game "World of Tanks" that I right now enjoy playing the beta of (even though it is to arcadey the tank models are beautiful, and almost every tank,TD,SPG that existed on the eastern front + prototypes are there) ... I heard of it some time ago and now when you try the beta you realize the extreme amount of work done in Russia before the masses in the west found out about the game. The masses dont know diddley about BoB yet so the comparison could be valid?

Lets hope so.

VectorForFood, if you're a long time lurker of the forums and member of the community, then you know what's the deal and it is simple: you wait for as long as it takes and then you get the best game in the market, in ALL genres.

IL-2 is still the best game in the market imo, though it doesn't have to be a favourite of everyone since this it's addressed only to a small part of the gaming community.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)

DNFTT