just a couple of final things

1: if you are implimenting a new forum, would it not be wise to either A: practice the transfer of users/posts a couple of times to make sure you know what youre doing and indeed everything works BEFORE you do the final transfer - or B: create the new forum in parallel while keeping the old one running JUST in case everything goes wrong?

who in their right mind - a business, i mean - just shuts something down cold before implenting a new and untested replacement? its the worst way you can approach a changeover - are we suggesting cdp are ignorant in something like this? surely not, come on.

2: this isnt the developers forum - theyre basically fobbing off all the responsibility unfairly on gog - if they come here -when it suits them-, then ok fine, but its still a situation of leaving the problems out of mind until they 'feel' like dealing with them... the problems are someone elses unless they 'want' to involve themselves, so its nowhere near the same as having their own OFFICIAL forum where avoiding the issue is a far harder thing to do.

3. still not up... :D

LOL, I had stopped going to Bioware forums before DA2 released but I remember ME2 debacle and DANG!

People were ANGRY AND PISSED OFF!

This launch is ultra smooth and happy compared to first 3 weeks on Bioware Mass Effect 2 boards.

As for CDRed boards, im a old member of them but my login is greyed out as well!

Rather disappointed about that honestly

I'm a moderator on the Witcher forum, and I was talking with the other moderators about how we would manage to cover the forum on May 17th. All of us would want to be playing the game, of course -- one of the preconditions for being a moderator is being a rabid Witcher fan :-) -- but we expected the forum to get a HUGE amount of traffic with people asking installation questions, asking gameplay questions, posting tips, posting funny lines, asking and posting all manner of stuff.

We discussed a couple of different ways to make it possible for us to play the game while still making sure that the forum had something resembling adequate coverage.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that the answer to my question, "How will the moderators manage to play the game AND cover the forum on May 17th?" would be "There won't BE a forum on May 17th."

I love The Witcher. I admire CDPR. And I still think that in taking the forum down right before releasing a game, they screwed up big-time.

I'm glad to be able to play the game without distractions, though. :-)

I miss the first iteration of the official forum. You know - the one that didn't have a fancy background taking 1/4 of the screen and most confusing UI ever.

I like a lot of things about it; I think it's a very good game. But I didn't fall in love with it, the way I did with TW1. Of course, I've only played the Vernon Roche path so far; it's possible that I'll like the Iorveth path a lot more.

The graphics are stunning, the cutscenes are gorgeous, and some of the things that happen in Chapters 1 and 2 are just WOW. But while I can point to elements of the game that were stunning and clearly better than TW1, the whole didn't cohere for me in the way that TW1 did.

SPOILERS BELOW!!

.
.
.
.

Like many people, I was disappointed in the ending. Having the whole thing be a Nilfgardian plot seemed sort of obvious. Oh, the bad guys from the books are the bad guys here, too? The bad guys are still bad? How ... predictable.

Also, Letho's motivation didn't make much sense to me. I can see where restarting a witcher school could be a big motivator, but starting a witcher school in order to make mutant assassins for Nilfgard -- and why else would Nilfgard be interested in starting a witcher school? -- seems like it should be anathema to any witcher. Letho isn't stupid, naive, or unskilled in double-dealing, yet he seems to take Nilfgard's plan to restart the Viper school at face value. Huh? I don't buy it.

And I didn't feel as if I got as full an explanation as I wanted of Geralt's return to life and his amnesia. Whenever you leave the Wild Hunt, you have amnesia because ... well, just because. Or was there an actual reason in there that I managed to miss? And the Wild Hunt wants Geralt and Yennefer because...?

It seemed to me that the events in TW1 were wrapped around Geralt. In TW2, it seemed like Geralt played a significant role in events that weren't about him at all. From what I hear, that IS true to Sapkowski's books ... but that doesn't make it a fun game to play. Books and games are different. Reading about something and playing something are different.

I think for me the main drawback of TW2, as compared with TW1, is that so few of the people in TW2 are actually likeable. In TW1, I liked both Siegfried and Yaevinn. I liked Thaler. I liked Vincent Meiss. I liked and admired Shani. I'm not sure that I liked Vaska, but I thought she was interesting. Sure, we hate Javed and the Professor, but there were a lot of likeable people to ally with or even just to talk to.

In TW2, I don't really like anyone except for the characters who are repeating from TW1. I don't care that much for Vernon Roche, nor do I like Iorveth all that much. Henselt is an @sshole, and I despise Dethmold. I haven't met anyone as good-hearted as Vincent Meiss or as entertaining as Thaler, no one as interesting as Yaevinn. Being with all these horrible people left a bad taste in my mouth. (I'm hoping this will change as I explore the Iorveth path.)

I really just wanted to kill the lot of them, take Zoltan, Dandelion and Triss, and go far, far away.

I don't like the new combat system, and I think the art for the new flashbacks is ugly. I hate having to line myself up with a teeny, tiny context-sensitive thingy in order to interact with people or to pick up anything, as opposed to just clicking on something. Geralt kills a monster the size of a house, and then he can't find its freaking corpse in order to loot it because it's lost in the grass? Yeah, right. And having the oils and potions last for five minutes ... I don't know who made that design decision, but whoever they were, they didn't have FUN in mind.

It's nice to see Geralt again, and Triss, and Zoltan. It's nice to have new places to explore. I love having an entire town full of dwarves. Many of the dialogue lines are cute or funny, and some of the quest design is fun -- I loved the idea of disabling the ballista by hiring a prostitute instead of by doing something obvious like cutting the rope. The whole wraith spell thing in Chapter 2 is cool, and there are many, many cool moments throughout the game.

It IS a good game. But I'm not in love this time, the way I was when I played TW1, and that saddens me.

What did you think of it, Demet?

Actually Corylea, there were likable characters, you just didnt get to really interact with them much is the problem.

Cedric seemed like a nice elf and I would have loved to heard him explain his whole backstory and told me about visions and what before Triss does and then the final scene with him.

The elf who takes the child, same thing. We simply didnt get to speak to him.

The doctor in Hemsults camp that talks about the Wild Hunt seemed like a nice enough guy.

Thats where this game faulters.
They didnt spend enough time building up the NPC personalities!

I dont think there is one character (talking minor NPC) with as much personality as Granny from The Witcher 1.

Everyone in The Witcher 2 is to directed and focused. Like they can only speak if they have something to say, idle chat not allowed this time around!

And the drunks calling out the name (maybe I missed this as I forgot to do the side quests in Chapter 2 and 3) but was that story ever explained?

Its like CDProjekt forgot to character build the immersion side of stuff.

For lack of better word, The Witcher 2 lacks heart!

and maybe again it was the path I took (like you I went with Roche) but I would have liked to interact with the Nilfgarian ambassador more, built up more background and story there. Maybe even had the game build some sympathy towards nilfgard so the final outcome feels like a grand betrayl and shock. And what happened to the LaVelette widow (when you take that path) after you save her????

Like you, I just shrugged at that part of the story when I heard it.
Kinda guessed it from the get go.

I also said in my write up that Dandelion and Zoltan and Triss also didnt have enough lines of script.
We like them because of The Witcher 1
but can you honestly see anyone really caring about them if The Witcher 2 was their first impression of the series?

Pretty much agree with you Corylea.

Ill replay it and see the other storylines (with in reason, doubt I do all 16) and game still better then any Single player RPG Ive played in last two years (remember, played The Witcher 1 first time 2 years ago), but being better then Mass Effect 2 really isnt that much of a compliment.

Ive got Deus Ex 3 to play yet this year, so cant even say for sure TW2 will be the best RPG title this year as Deus Ex3 is going very story heavy this time around and returning to what brung them to the dance originally.

Why is there no spoiler tag here? Shouldn’t this be standard repertoire for a board based on BBCode?

The official forum will be back after a patch is released, mark my words :P

No reason to discus the game in this topic. I havnt finished the game yet, and i dont come into this topic hoping for some spoilerific reading!.

So do everyone a favor and edit your spoiler stuff out.

I have to agree with the "crazy" people that say "they did it knowingly and they are not going to put the forum up for quiet a while". Why? Because they hope the largest shit storm will have passed by the time they decide to put the forum up. Except... People are saving themself just for the moment when the forum go up.

Not only did they not keep the old forum up or the old database (how stupid is that?) but they are overall ignoring the community. The lack of information and stuff from them is pathetic. Their website is still not even working correctly (the new one) and it have been quiet a while now. Note: These guys know what they are doing. I could fix most of the issues there and im only "okey" at it. So there is no way it can take this much time unless they want the forum to be down.

Lets not forget that this is a BAD thing. Not only do people not have any location to talk about their problems with the game so its spread across most of the large gaming forums no the net. But it looks bad when people write "Can someone help me fix TW2" ... On a forum not related to TW2 because the company decided to be asses?

Oh well dont worry...My list of complaints, bugs, issues and other things are still going to come to their forum.

This is what pisses me off. Let’s hope this merging accounts crap is only temporary.

LOL, I mean this is pretty much the definition of out-of-the-box thinking though. :D
Glad to see you here. ;)

ahhh dammit, so you mean no new patch till august? :(

As i drove past the CDP offices today i saw them all leaving with heavy bags for thier holidays.
handing a load of paper to the janitor and saying something about,"fix this stuff we will be back in a month"
and the janitor saying "i just clean the toilets though ????"


*ducks*






;)