It’s hard to believe that the updates we’ve done so far have all been on the v1.0 series.  v1.01 is the first update that GPG and Stardock consider significant enough to give a new version number.

Of course, that means testing and testing and testing and if we’ve learned anything in the past month is that the on-line testing procedures were inadequate.  So on the one hand, we want to get these updates out quickly because there are so many important improvements and on the other hand, we don’t want to put something out that has glaring problems for some people.

For example, one of the things we’re struggling with today is that occasionally Skirmish won’t start games. That is, the players will be connected and it’ll send the message to start the game but it won’t.  So we are trying to figure out what causes that.

On the other hand, other key things are working so much better. In-game connectivity is vastly improved. The handling if quitters and disconnects is improved. The stats are far more robust. The AI is noticeably better. A lot of command queuing issues are resolved. The bandwidth use is significantly reduced which should have a pretty big impact. So we have all those things nailed down and yet, we have the issue where skirmish games just get stuck about 25% of the time which is simply a show stopper.

Last night I played a game with just AI. It was the first time I’ve played against AI since shortly after release that was “fun” since before, the AI’s were just cannon fodder – throwing themselves at towers and just being ridiculously easy to manipulate.  I can still see areas for improvement with it but kudos to GPG for taking this stuff seriously.

Now all that said, we have a list of things that we think need to be focused on in the coming weeks – both from a business point of view and from a game play point of view.

1. Finding ways for friends to get into skirmish games on the same team. 
2. Dealing with “rage quitting”.  v1.1 (not v1.01) will have a concede option so hopefully that will help.
3. Finding ways to provide more free maps and Demigods that doesn’t break the bank.
4. Coming up with new powers that are fun and increase strategic depth.
5. Finding ways to keep retail sales up.  Sales are good now but let’s be real here, updates are fueled by new sales. If you guys have ideas on what it would take to get more of your friends to buy copies at retail and on Impulse let us know.
6. Building a system where we just host the games. Demigod would think it’s “peer to peer” but we would actually make it client server with Stardock hosting all the games ala Elemental. 

But right now, we’re working on the skirmish issue still. I’ll keep you guys up to date on where that is. I’ll be on the chat area too today.