So for the last few weeks, (or maybe months), I have been seeing all the new wonderful changes that will appear in V7.
At 19.14 last night I received a mail informing me that V7 will be here in 16 hours and the system may be down for a while. I wouldn't exactly say that was advanced notice for a game which relies on 'timing' but I naturally assumed the technical team knew what they were doing.
Loading up my W5 account today was a bit of a shock. Although the graphics looked impressive I personally didn't like them. So I searched around for the button that said, 'use old layout', or 'use classic skin' or something to that effect, but I couldn't find it.
After much searching, (as no instructions were provided with the update), I found nothing. Somebody then kindly pointed me towards the '/oldstyle.css' option. Great that's looking better... oh actually hang on, it's not actually the same as what I had.
After raising a support request I was told that there was nothing they could do! Great! :icon_rolleyes:
Okay, maybe I just have to get use to this.
Ploughing on, it time to do some mass recruiting.... Oh it doesn't work! But hey I could pay extra for something similiar
Troop Manager! Similar to to the Construction Manager in function, the Recruitment Manager allows players to fill in a desired number of troops to recruit per village. These will then be recruited when the resource and farm space requirements are met - pausing when this is not the case.
Oh well who needs troops anyway, let's do some resource balancing. Wow I impressed, that kind of works but your browser is now 50ft wide due to formatting problems. Still you can always pay extra and have something similar.
Market Manager! Players will be able to set up a number (default: 50) of periodic resource transfers (Trade Routes) between villages in order to maximise their resource usage efficiency. The villages involved will of course need to have the required number of merchants available. If the requirements for a transfer are not met at the time it is meant to be sent, the transaction will be skipped until the next scheduled time.
So a summary of my experience today:-
I can no longer mass recruit, (unless I pay extra).
I can no longer balance my resource, (unless I pay extra or want a 50ft wide browser).
The system will run 4 times slower and frequently crash Firefox, (or you can have other issues with Opera or I.E).
None of the buttons are where you are used to them, (because skins or a 'classic view' has not been thought of or implemented).
'/oldstyle.css' will allow you to have the layout loosely to how you had it but will not work if you are account sitting somebody. In addition if they don't have prem you can't change it anyway.
So what has gone wrong? Well firstly that seems to be a lack of or not enough bug testing. There hasn't been any consideration for people who don't want all the fancy stuff. Maybe this appeals to the youngsters and I'm just being and old crock but I just don't like the settings. I don't want to see a huge picture everytime I look at a report!!!!
So what's being done about it? Well from what I see another three worlds are being updated tomorrow, which is really bad planning. Has it not occured to anybody to wait for some feedback before they implement this on to new worlds? I am under the impression this may have been running on W7 already but surely it's crazy updating 6 worlds in the space of 24 hours.
I think I've said enough now. I simply can't believe the flaws of this upgrade and the lack of forethought with rolling it out. This is produced by a German company, I may be sterotyping but having worked with Germans they are usually so precise and methodical about things.
The End
