I belong to exactly the same category as tgb1. After getting used to a series of exquisite productions from Ageod with ever increasing levels of perfection achieved, releasing WW1 as it was released has been a bit of a shocker to us all. I am a prowd owner of all of your major productions, and in all honesty, had you selected 50 or 500 people from this website to beta test the game prior to the release, not only you'd have in your disposal an army of avid testers instead of the awkward mob you got now, but this public embarrasment would've been avoided.
I'd have compiled the manual myself in 7 days for a free copy, a mention in the special thanks or even for pure personal enjoyment because I like what you've done in the past to address strategoheads like us.
I'm not even worrying about the future of the game itself, and I've stated that before - I know that you won't rest until you perfect it, and the manual will come and everybody will be happy and it will be bravoes and kudos in the end. I'm just wondering as to who took the decision to put the fanbase through all that grief and why didn't you consider the inevitable credibility hit for releasing a potentially magnificent game in such crude form.
I've worked enough years in tough,multinational business environments to be able to speculate in considerable degrees of accuracy, and the only plausible answer that comes to mind is that it was merely a decision dictated by financial considerations. Because I can't believe you would allow yourselves to miss the mark by THAT much otherwise - and I simply can't consider that you were unaware that the game was NOT market ready. Because then my surprise (and disappointment) would have been far more greater.
That was one great risk you took. A great risk. If you consider the amount of fans you have posting, who have lent you their 50$ (and all of their trust) and don't want to have them back (including myself), you will realize that we all see you as champions of pure, high quality, historically accurate strategy gaming hallelujah and we'd trust you to deliver 100% based on previous experience. I know of marketing executives that would kill to have found ways to build the image you have in the market.
And you risked all that.
