GOA posted what they put on the EU servers  as hotfix concerning the city siege stuff.. (here)
Funny thing to note.. No reduction of city siege stage1 or stage2 times to be found there. In the forums GOA claimed that the timers got reduced, but nothing on the webpage…and the game itself. Reading the forums not only Drakenwald is still stuck in 2 hours of stage 1, but the other servers too.  This could make it to the strangest hotfixes I’ve ever seen…

Another strange thing..Even though there are heavy flaws in there,  I really like the game… when it’s actually going on. Meaning ORvR with nearly equal forces…you know.. Limbs and fireballs flying through the air. Screams of fleeing elves and such..

So it’s official. Release date for Star Trek Online is 02/02/2010.  Edit: For EU it’s three days later.. Jetlag or something like this must be the reason ;)

You could already guess it from looking at amazon.com, but now it’s at least official.  Marked it in the calender and will definitely test it.

February is in the middle of nowhere. Maybe this is a good move, because I can’t remember anything big releasing near that date. So maybe Cryptic catches some “tourists” who might even stay…

Andy posted the short term changes because of the city siege concerns on the Mythic forums, check them for yourself. They aren’t so long.

No word on the GOA run forums.. I am not surprised by it. They weren’t vocal about anything game related if it wasn’t already released and they just had to translate the Mythic stuff.

Does those changes feel better?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: No. Only the availability of the merchants is nice. The adding of the known scenarios is nice, but this will wear off pretty fast because we have constant Altdorf attacks on Drakenwald.

I just get a bit cynical when he promises some cool improvements.. They promised them too often..Delvivered them too rare.

Mythic really screwed that up. No one is happy with the state of the game, though 1.3.2 could have been a good patch it’s a disaster. Everything is overshadowed by that city siege stuff.

So.. Destruction is dominating not only on Drakenwald, but on most servers. Most likely because of having a bigger population which is now most important in RvR.

On Drakenwald this led to destro players having nice gear and nice RR. Tipping the balance even more, but that’s the game design. No one can blame them for that.

After getting constantly beaten up for some weeks now moral is really low and things get really ridiculous now.. When Order manages to gather some troops to form a resistance, the servers don’t support the population wise even balanced fights. Destruction has always at least 8 warbands out there and if Order gets somewhere near that number of warbands in a zone, the zone crashes.

Now this is really fun ;) If the Destruction pug-zerg pushes towards Altdorf they are able to lock everything because Order can’t get the troops together. If Order gets their forces together the pairing crashes.  Yesterday I even experienced some spooky server reaction on zone crash which led to Destruction locking the zone, even if it shouldn’t be possible. No one blames Destruction for that..

But this all feels like a cheap shot from Mythic .. First demoralize the underpopulated realm and then don’t support the last hope of getting an even fight out there.

I try to stay positive, but there are some vent-posts to come, because there is so much going wrong in that game right now and Mythic stays silent about it. Though Andy posts something on the US forums I think that Mythic should be more vocal about the problems and their solutions for them. In the last couple of months they are in general really silent. (I don’t count that lardi-da “everything will get really cool with that patch” posts/podcasts.) Here in Europe you don’t get any reaction from GOA or Mythic and that’s not giving any hope that things will get better..

Mythic, stop this city sieges!

I’ve planned on some venting-posts, because of the city-siege-crap, but I’ll try to stay polite … I’m not the only blogger who’s unhappy with the city siege frequency.

In fact.. it’s common sense in the forums that Mythic did not only shoot themselves in the foot with the removal of fortresses, but really screwed up the game and fun of the game by doing so. City sieges aren’t fun … they get really annoying if you are trapped in an empty instance for 2h and just do flag recapping. Even if you happen to be in a somewhat balanced instance with much action.. it gets really annoying if this happens every evening/4h. On Drakenwald it happens as fast as possible. Every time I log on there is just an Altdorf siege happening, just over or imminent. I don’t have a chance to group up with guild or alliance members, because they are either in an instance, alt-ing or logged off because of the city attack. So I stand there with nothing to do. Now that’s what I call fun!

It’s just frustrating to see this happen. Destruction doesn’t even need to coordinate for this attacks. They have just more warbands and roll over the opposition. It’s not their fault because the game forces them to attack Altdorf or to log out. Not good choices if you ask me. I only get a bit angry with destruction when they brag about getting to stage2 in prime time..because there is no more prime time in Altdorf defense. After the 83948394′th defense in a row there are just a handful of people even trying to defend. It’s just no fun and most people log out. Even the high ranked Destruction players are fed up with this and log onto an alt.

Angry little dwarf I am..

I got (again) a little bit angry when I saw the production podcast from October when Jeff or Josh stated that they saw that the fortresses where bottlenecks for the campaign and city sieges. Guess what.. that was their whole purpose! Now you’ve taken the only thing that helped the underpopulated realm in defending its capitol. Don’t expect any applause for this. They were lagging like hell and not much fun, but just cutting them is no solution.

To top it all, if it happens that the enemy reaches stage2 you are trapped in the city siege pq for a sum of around 8h (shorter if you complete some pqs).. how much fun is this?

A ping pong with alternating Altdorf and IC fights is no way better. It’s all just a boring Nordenwatch with two warbands. They don’t feel different. Maybe a mechanic that’s not known from T1 would make things more fun. Why is there no special scenario mechanic for a city siege?

Overall all the improvements from 1.3.2 where overshadowed by this city siege garbage. The motivation and fun is on an all-time low because of it… The T4 never felt so less epic than it does now. There is no point where you get the feeling that you’ve achieved something. This comes mainly from the speed of things locking. Zone locks are so fast that you just make a check on your todo-list and don’t feel that you’ve accomplished anything. With fast zone locks come fast city sieges.

Order on Drakenwald has no option of rebuilding the city because right after the attack destruction is nearly at the gates of Altdorf again and Drakenwald is not alone. I’ve checked the War Fronts on war-europe.com  and saw either both cities with 5* rating or Altdorf with 1* and IC with 5*. So either the forces are equal and there is no way for stage2 or one realm steamrolls the other one. This patch really tipped all there was on balance in population (though there was hardly any pop-balance, but a small chance to defend as a underpopulated realm)

To be honest I don’t longer care on rebuilding the city. I don’t care any more about Altdorf. If destruction likes Altdorf so much they can have it. My only problem is that there is no real RvR going on any more because of this frequent attacks on Altdorf. Mythic/GOA are quiet on this subject and still claiming this removal of fortresses to be an improvement.. though I’ve read some Mythic producer admitting that the city sieges are a bit too frequent. If there are any more improvements like this… they should change the dictionary entry for “improvement”