Given recent events, my crystal ball is now retroactive and says CloD has long been dead. Let’s review some of the lowlights of this tragedy brought upon fans of the series:
1) Oleg bailed on the project. We didn’t find out about it till near CloD’s release date when he posted his now famous “train leaving the station” vid on YouTube. He tells us on his YouTube channel that he didn’t want to be a sim God anymore. We also have Oleg on video at a CloD release day event with some young girls in his arms. Okay. What the heck do these girls have anything to do with WW2 flight sim? So he gets the babes and gives us a DirectX spit girl ala Laura Croft to communicate his new priorities in life? Maybe his intent was to get some payback on the modders? Mwhahahahahah, a six year plan of revenge, perfectly executed! He gets the pretty girls to take pictures of and for fifty bucks we get a lunk of junk called CloD to mod up all we want.
2) The epilepsy filter. Simply, a marketing sham invented by 1C/Ubisoft to cover over the failures of the game. Turn the filter on and everything goes crapadelic. Who would play a game with that enabled? Answer? No one would. Not even an epileptic wearing rose colored sunglasses. So the filter has no practical use at all. Except, if you have invested 6 years and $8 million and have nothing to show for it. Well you gotta do something to hide this fact if you want to sell a broken game based on past reputation alone. So that’s what they did. A cover up. 1C’s version of Watergate. One of the most highly anticipated flight sim games in recent memory starts off with a picture of distrested pilot (subliminally we now know this to be a forshadow of the user after spending 1 5 minutes with CloD.) and a bogus epilipsy filture warning. Later, Luthier would claim he had no idea we would read stuff about the epilipsy filter in the russian forum! How suprised he was! Well, how suprised we all were Luthier!!! Last time we saw you in your flying cap marketing the game, we anticipated a game that was going to be good. No, not good. Great! !! But, sadly, we were in for a big letdown when we put our caps on Luthier! You can’t “filter” that away 1C!
3) No one is playing the game online. Steam stats show it falling off the charts because it is so low. The only stat spikes are when a failed patch comes out. They last a few days, then go away. Very sad considering the long and huge build up for this game and past history. So now, sadly, some of the guys that spent a bunch of money on new hardware to play on the few servers that are out there are ginning up the CLoD by dissing the old game. Making up stuff about how CLoD cem is “so much better” or saying stuff like “I could never go back to old IL-2, it seems like a toy now”. So now we see an onlsaught of bogus forum nicks, with hardly any post history, saying how great CloD is online. No mention of the launcher crashes or AI acting like its on heavy medication. Just upselling drivel and pointing to “the patch” that will fix it all. These very pathetic acts of desperation in and of themselves, point to a game on its death bed.
4) The game is now already selling for a paltry $12! Even more pathetic considering a large portion of past purchasers paid at least $50 or were suckered into buying the more expensive “special edition” version and still have not been able to get the game running without expensive hardware upgrades over all these months 1C had time to fix. It’s also a huge shame that newbies to WW2 sim, after going through the 5 stages of grief with CLoD, will now likely bypass IL-2 1946 altogether. Once bit, twice shy they say. No, they won’t take another chance with IL-2 1946 or the modded version, even though that is a far superior game. All because of the CloD.
5) Job vacancies, a not so subtle hint. Luthier, who now knows we read stuff in the russian forums after the epilipsy filter fiasco, posts job vacancies for several critical positions on the development team and alludes to possibly more in the future! At the same time we are to believe that the next patch will increase fps by 50%!!! Sure. We all believe that. Development team members quit the project and fps goes up! Makes total sense. In other words, the party is over. It’s been over for a long time. The game is unfixable. It was unfixable when Oleg left. The 1C team obviously doesn’t understand his code because they didn’t originate it. Oleg probably made it that way on purpose. To get his revenge an everyone for modding his game. Oleg probably had a good laugh when he told everyone we could all talk about mods now on the forum. Because he new what was coming. The hunk of junk called CLoD. Now the development team follows his footsteps and bails on the project. That’s probably why the patches have been less than stellar. Oleg left and they just can’t figure out what the heck he did. Stupid stuff like SLI, FSAA,...etc., it’s a mystery when it shouldn’t be at all to experienced game developers. And anyone that says they are hiring to expand...more likely folks that say this stuff are incognito “community managers” that receive under the table royalty payments from the $8 million slush fund. Probably some formula based on number of posts and responses on this forum is involved. So they drink Chivas Regal all day long because life is very good as long as the CloD dream stays alive.
There it is in a nutshell. Five well known facts why the game is dead, has been dead, and will always be dead. It’s just been a virtual web party celebrating something that could have been, but will never ever be. That’s probably why they called it CLoD. A lump of clay to be molded. But it takes talent to do that and Oleg is a free agent. The second stringers just aren’t up to the job. They make up stupid stuff like the dysfunctional 109 gunsight, anthropromorphic straight jacket and invisible propellars. Yes, the game is dead. My crystal ball told me so. But my glass if still half full. I go play IL-2 modded now. That’s a good game.
11-09-2011, 03:56 PM
Linear Mode
