2013 was a pretty ‘interesting’ year for gaming, at least for me;
–Minecraft and WoW were high on my list of favorite games.
-The Dead Space series is unofficially dead (with the end of the nightmarish ‘Dead Space
3: Awakening’ of the moon waking up and voring the Earth.
-Was having some major issues with BSOD’s caused by my own stupidity.
-When I completely lost interest in the MRT Server (of the mods and Frumple apparently not liking my idea of paving the world in asphalt).
–
…Then my birth month rolled in; August 2013. And two very promising games came out. One was Miner Wars 2081 (the birth of ‘Space Engineers’), and another… was
called; Cube World.
Cube World, as I said, looked to be a very promising, fun voxel-based game. Just like any RPG game, it offered a choice of races and classes (with cookie cutter skill trees).
Combat was quite fun, and even easy to master for my simple-minded brain. Played as a Rogue and I loved it; welding a katana, I felt like a badass.
The game even allowed you to have pets (and if they were ridable, you can also use them as mounts). Best of all, any class could have it.
People wanted more from the dual dev team; a guy named ‘Woley’ and his wife, and the devs promised more in the future. But.. it never happened. We were presented by a very promising thing, that stopped being worked on. People understandably began to get nervous. Did something happen?
Weeks, turned to months. Even more silence. People began to suspect the devs took our $20 and ran away with it. I however helped Wolay would post something soon about this.
–
And he did. And here’s the times he did;
-November 2013-January 2014: just pictures and text, no word on an update.
..Radio silence for 2 months. It was around this time when I got bored with the game.
-April-May 2014: just pictures and text, no word on an update.
..Radio silence for 5 months. Most people were getting frustrated, feeling Woley took our money and is wrongfully teasing us with ‘updates’ we’ll never have.
-October 2014-May 2015: ‘Tweet storm’ of pictures/text. Still no word on an upcoming update.
..Radio silence for 3 months. Woley.. WHERE’S THE UPDATE?! It’s been two years since the release! Where’s the promised updates you keep tweeting out?!
-August 2016: Only two tweets. More update pictures, no actual update.
..Radio silence for 2 months.
-November 2016: Only a single tweet.
..Radio silence for 5 months (again).
-April-May 2017: “This is getting ridiculous” a lot of people felt.
..Radio silence for a month (shortest one to date, but the damage was already done to his reputation. More and more were calling Woley a ‘scammer’ and demanding refunds).
-July 2017: Another single tweet. No update!
..Radio silence for 2 years and 6 months. Longest ever known silence to date.
-January 2019: “…Cube World LIVES?!” I also felt that this might finally be the year the update releases. Still, it’s been almost 6 years since the release. No update should take this long! Also, the UI has been noticeably changed since two years ago.
..Radio silence for another 5 months.
-July-August 2019: Another noticeable change.. what happened to the XP bar?
-September 2019: Possible RELEASE DATE?! That same month, Woley posted a blog on his website explaining the delays. Most people didn’t buy it. | Also that month, Cube World BETA was released, with a mentioning of Cube World Alpha people will get the game when it’s released on Steam (for free).
-Late September 2019: ‘Cube World 2.0’ released on Steam, with.. most promised changes over the years.
==Current day (late November 2019), radio silence, nearly two months after the release. Woley promised updates.. Woley lied. A majority of people want Steam to take the game down and ruin it for people like me who just want to play the game again.
So as you can see, it hasn’t been good for Woley. Claims he’s been depressed over what happened to his game (which seemed understandable). Yet at the same time.. why release a bunch of pictures and never follow with an update?
There’s two reasons at play that I can think of, and both are trying to be as supportive as I can;
1. It’s like poor Woley forgot the premise of what an ‘early access’ game is. Frequent updates are a MUST, especially when people paid for the privilege to do so. To release pictures explaining changes.. yet not release said changes for them to playtest, is wrong. So very wrong.
2. Something’s wrong with Woley’s mind; keeping these updates to himself (as he claims they ‘aren’t good enough’ for release). But this goes back to the first reason.
…I just don’t feel Woley deliberately did this. But it’s also hard to defend of the thought that these tweets were like a metaphorical ‘carrot on a stick’, and we’re the hungry pigs that are trying to reach for it. I for one just don’t want to believe that.. unless he admits
it.
And when it finally got released, some say it’s worse than it was 6 years ago. You want to defend the creator, but on the other hand you also have to agree that this is extremely ridiculous.
Probably the most ridiculous change is the region lock for weapons/armor, and special items. You go to another region, your gear no longer works (as they’re still bound to the previous region) and have to be replaced with weapons/armor of that region.
Essentially, you’ll have to ‘level up’ all over again.
Speaking of leveling up, getting XP from mobs is no longer a thing. You get it from collecting artifacts. And enemy level is now known by the number of ‘+’s they have.
1 +: Easy. 5 +’s.. four hits = you die.