For players residing in Europe!

There has been a lot of heat regarding NS2 going from alpha to beta, mainly lots of negativity. And it's not hard to believe that all this negatiity is effecting the moral of the dev team (they are human after all!). But we all have to remember that the choices being made aren't being made lightly.

This was recently posted on the NS2 forums by Cory and I hope everyone stops to read it (and drop a positive comment on the thread!) :)

"We have been working nights and weekends and putting our all into getting this game into a more playable state. We are very tired, and we want to be able to play the game lagless and without server crashes as much as anyone else. Frankly, the general lack of support and constant stream of negativity from our own community is really getting to the entire development team.

We aren't stupid, we know what the problems are with the game. Of course we'd love to wait until the game was almost done and polished to put out a Beta version to the public, but due to the issues Flayra mentioned in the blogpost update, that just wasn't feasible. We could have gone the traditional publishing route on this game, get millions of dollars from a company like EA to finance the development, hire up a large team to crank out the game. But that would have meant compromises, it would have meant the publisher would be able to call the shots and change the game to their liking. It would have meant this interaction we have with our community would not exist. We would not be allowed to share the behind the scenes development of this game with our fans, the game would be created behind closed doors, and only occasionally glimpsed in small, carefully moderated PR related events. Your feedback would not be heard and would not have an impact on the game development, as it does now.

We made the decision to self finance this game, through non traditional means, and through the support of our loyal fans. We made that decision for you.

Yes, we made mistakes, especially with releasing the first version of alpha that we hadn't realized was so unplayable. It took us a while to address some of the big issues, but we've really picked up steam. There have been significant improvements to the game and 2 large patches just in the last week. Some people won't notice the improvements as much as others, and that just goes with PC development, as there's an endless combination of computer system specs, operating system versions, graphics cards, etc. that players are using to run the game, and it takes time to sort through all of the issues.

We are constantly optimizing the game now, more so then many companies do at this point in development. A large amount of optimization tends to come towards the end of the project, but because we have put the game out to the public so early, we have been forced to deal with that sooner. So, the state of the game will continue to get optimized and become more and more stable. I guarantee it will be better next week, and then even better the week after, and we will be releasing patches at a much more frequent rate. Our recent track record has proved this.

We wish everyone would understand how harmful this negativity is, not just to those of us who are working hard to make a great game for you, but to the future of this game and company as well. Yes, people complaining and telling everyone this game is not worth buying really hurts pre order sales. And that lack of money coming in puts the development of this game in serious jeopardy. We understand people want a fun, polished playing experience, and they want it now, but if this constant stream of public negativity continues it may mean NS2 never comes out at all.

We embarked on this road together with our fans, and your support has meant everything to us. Yes, the road has been bumpy, but we are listening, we are working as hard and as fast as we can, and we still need your support , now more then ever.

Thanks.

--Cory"

http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=111433&view=findpost&p=1807590