What's Next for Snowblind?

[Marveleg]

I ran into three breaking-bugs in games , for three walkthrough on ps3 . So the game was clearly neglected on this platform . Though I love it , I wish it had a wee more bit freedom ( less dirigist and linear levels ) and a better IA management .

[ragnew]

You know, I loved WITN, but I do agree with almost everything JHeard posted as well. I mean seriously, this game was a huge looter, and we had exactly no way of looting the areas with the best loot. The different levels should have all been accessible even after the game was completed. That way we'd be able to actually farm for items and not be forced to play the entire game over again to see if we could get something better then what we had!

[Rosie Cotton]

I'm hoping they produce a game that :

1]. they actually test before releasing
2]. doesn't feature game-breaking bug's on every level [nice try with the "few bugs" comment....lie much?]
3]. they don't walk away from after 7 weeks and one failed patch
4]. actually resembles a RPG, one that takes longer than 4 hours to complete would be nice
5]. features sidequests that really are sidequests
6]. isn't as incredibly repetitive and unimaginative
7]. doesn't feature an inventory system designed by an imbecile
8]. we actually know which weapons, armor, and elf-stones are available
9]. is much more evenly balanced in that you don't have to complete 10-15 playthough's just to find one lousy legendary elf-stone! [I'm guessing the same imbecile who designed the inventory is responsible for this stroke of genius]
10]. feautres a MANUAL SAVE OPTION!
11]. isn't universally panned in gaming magazines and websites everywhere, and one that actually receives some kind of recognition [a nomination or two would be nice] where the VGA's are concerned.

But most of all I hope they produce a game in which they won't embarrass themselves the way they did with this horsesh$t, and one in which they won't steal the money of gamer's who put their faith in trust in them. A company that clearly did not respect, or deserve, the honor of working on the cherished LOTR licence. But hey, I'm sure this won't effect the sales of Guardians of Middle-Earth.....at least where mindless lemmings or SnowBlind sycophants are concerned.

There really isn't alot I disagree with concerning your comments JHeard. They are very accurate for the most part though I'm afraid they've fallen on deaf ears. Now don't get me wrong as there are many aspects of this game I love, but I also believe this game could have been so much better in the hands of a more capable and dedicated developer.

[Rosie Cotton]

Ummm sorry but War in The North featured one game breaking bug from what I remembered and that was the Mirkwood bug which was easily avoidable. I've played through the game three times (and through that mission several times) and haven't ever encountered that bug or any other game-breaking bug. The only bugs I did encounter were a few technical bugs which were fixed after saving and reloading so please refrain from passing your experiences off as the experiences of me and others who actually enjoyed the game. The inventory was fine and was easy to use, the only problem with the inventory was that it ran out of space quickly.

You played the game 15 times (well according to your own comment) so it couldn't have been that bad and it's not an RPG either. Rather it's an action-loot-RPG so it's supposed to be about fighting and looting but if you would rather go and play a mindless action-loot-RPG like Diablo 3 (which was actually universally panned unlike WiTN which did receive some good scores) then go ahead.

You're entitled to your opinion but claiming I'm lying when your whole comment is filled with lies* is just annoying. Don't do that.

*
+The game is longer than 4 hours. Try 13 hours on normal difficulty.
+The game doesn't feature game-breaking bugs on every level. There is one game-breaking bug in the entire game. Admittedly Snowblind should have spotted it and should at least have patched it but alas they still haven't.
+The game wasn't universally panned. Go check Metacritic. Diablo 3, Mass Effect 3 and Resident Evil 6 were universally panned. Either way you'd be silly to believe Metacritic is a reliable source for reviews when it allows emotional and disappointed fans to down-rate games to 0. Either way, that never happened to WiTN so it couldn't have been universally panned. If you're referring to critics then there were mixed-positive reviews.
+If you hated the game so much why did you play-through it 15 times? Even if that's an exaggeration, your comment still hints that you played through at least several times and probably more times than me.

And before you (or anyone else) calls me a fanboy of Snowblind, please note that I despised Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. This is the only game from Snowblind that I have enjoyed and I do believe improvements could have been made but it was still a great game IMO.

Ummm sorry, but 30 pages of bug report threads [before that section was mercifully shut down] listing gamebreakers on every system, game mode, and level make your "only one bug" comment the most dishonest, or stupidest, I've ever seen here. No offense, but you are either incredibly dishonest or you are just plain delusional and in need of a mental health assessment. Or who knows, perhaps it's just time for you to up your medications. But it is not only these things I find disturbing, but also your blatant arrogance. Who exactly are you to call every single person who has taken the time and effort to report their gamebreaker bug experiences on this forum....liars? And that is exactly what you are doing when you ridiculously claim there to be only one gamebreaker bug in this game. And you,with your vast experience of 3 whole playthroughs....wow, now that is impressive.

And your "so please refrain from passing your experiences off as the experiences of me and others who actually enjoyed the game" comment is laughable. For 15 month's you've been telling everyone [based on YOUR limited experience] stupid enough to listen to you this game has only one gamebreaker. So for you to tell someone to refrain from behavior you yourself have been exhibiting for well over a year really is funny...not to mention extremely hypocritical. Just a suggestion, but perhaps it's time for you to stick with topics you're actually familiar with and let the adults around here carry on this conversation without your moronic input.

BTW :
* I never timed myself but playing on legendary using Farin [and his explosive bolts] I can complete this game, start to finish, in 4 1/2 hrs or less. And while it may take a simpleton 13 hrs to complete this game on normal, the time it takes for those who actually know what they're doing is significantly less.
* 30 pages of gamebreaker reports make you a blatant liar, or a clueless idiot. And FYI, I've personally encountered 6 separate gamebreakers on 4 different levels [2-Ettenmoors, 2-Mirkwood, 1-Grey Mtns., 1-Barrow Downs] so tell me again how there is only one gamebreaker....moron.
* WITN averaged appox. 7.5/10 in website and magazine reviews, and for those of us who actually know what we are talking about, that is an average at best rating and a "kiss of death" where sales are concerned. And this fact was borne out where sales are concerned with this game doing very poorly in that regard, after excellent pre-order sales. And WITN didn't not even receive a single VGA nomination last year, so yes, it was completely ignored by the gaming industry.

Any more lies you want to tell?

[Gimpyeh]

My game is completely fucked and I've had it 2 days. I hope nothing else comes from this company.

[Rosie Cotton]

My game is completely fucked and I've had it 2 days. I hope nothing else comes from this company.

I'm sorry, but you must be mistaken. According to our resident SnowBlind mouthpiece this game only features one gamebreaker bug and that one is in Mirkwood and is easily avoidable.

[jamescook48]

I hoping for some feedback on the Nordinbad Glitch that I've experienced and read about here on this forum. WITN is a great game and I hope we see a followup. However, we've experienced a number of Game breaking Glitches that make us very disappointed when they happen. It would be nice to see a feature in a followup game that would let the player override a glitch by just starting the current level over. This way you don't have to scrap your whole game when Glitch occurs. With the Nordinbad Glitch we are trapped with no enemies spawning. Both doors are closed, we have all our Inventory and weapons intact but no way out and no enemies to fight. We had just killed the Trolls just as the last Troll broke the door down. The last Troll died but then the door crashed as he died. My wife and I are in the USA playing multilayer using two new XBOX 360 Slim's over XBOX LIVE with the Patch installed from the start. The date is Feb 2012. We hate to start this game over but it seems that is the only solution. Too bad there is no override to restart the current battle. It would be nice if when you press Start on the Xbox 360 Controller and the menu comes up that you would have an option to restart the current battle or go back to the last battle or just advance to the next battle. But to just be trapped with no option but completely starting over is very frustrating to say the least - Especially with what I consider to be such an outstanding game. We've encountered other similar glitches but have been able to find workarounds but this seems to have got us. An example of another glitch is when once my wife somehow ended up on another level. When we started up our Multiplayer game she received the message that she was on a lower level than me. She worked around this my playing a single player game until she go on the same level as me and then we started the Multiplayer again and everything was fine. No such luck on the Nordinbad glitch. So next time we're ready to start the game back up looks like it's from the beginnng!

[HolyTemplarKnight]

Ummm sorry, but 30 pages of bug report threads [before that section was mercifully shut down] listing gamebreakers on every system, game mode, and level make your "only one bug" comment the most dishonest, or stupidest, I've ever seen here. No offense, but you are either incredibly dishonest or you are just plain delusional and in need of a mental health assessment.

Ummm sorry but those "30 pages of bug report threads" only mentioned the same one game breaking bug at Mirkwood/Nordinbad/Fornost (caused by one common bug). Other bugs and glitches concerned some quests that people weren't able to complete because they ran into a few bugs. The major game breaking bug however was the Mirkwood bug unless you care to direct me to the supposedly "hundreds" of game-breaking bugs that your clearly emotional post hints at. Not everyone encountered these.

No offense but I think you need a mental health assessment if you think I'm delusional for saying that there was only ever that one game breaking bug (or bugs by one common occurrence) that was ever encountered by people and that some people - such as myself - never ran into it.

Or who knows, perhaps it's just time for you to up your medications. But it is not only these things I find disturbing, but also your blatant arrogance. Who exactly are you to call every single person who has taken the time and effort to report their gamebreaker bug experiences on this forum....liars? And that is exactly what you are doing when you ridiculously claim there to be only one gamebreaker bug in this game. And you,with your vast experience of 3 whole playthroughs....wow, now that is impressive.

Or perhaps you should take your own advice and treat that biopolar disorder you have. How many playthroughs have you done? If you've done around 10 (for argument's sake) and only encountered that one game-breaking bug during two later playthroughs then clearly the game was good enough to keep you playing again and again. I'm sorry if the fact that I never encountered a game-breaking bug offended you but you should really get a lesson on reading because I never said those people were lying.

And your "so please refrain from passing your experiences off as the experiences of me and others who actually enjoyed the game" comment is laughable. For 15 month's you've been telling everyone [based on YOUR limited experience] stupid enough to listen to you this game has only one gamebreaker. So for you to tell someone to refrain from behavior you yourself have been exhibiting for well over a year really is funny...not to mention extremely hypocritical. Just a suggestion, but perhaps it's time for you to stick with topics you're actually familiar with and let the adults around here carry on this conversation without your moronic input.

Says the one whose only intent here is to insult people who enjoyed the game. How is my experienced limited when I've since played through the game more times? Again, if you've played through the game more than 3 times then you clearly enjoyed it enough to keep going back through - what you clearly think - is a bug-filled game. Either you're just plain stupid, crazy or just enjoy sprouting infantile nonsense.

There is only one gamebreaking bug that is majorly reported and that's the Mirkwood/Nordinbad bug which - from what I've seen - appears to be caused from one common cause. I never said few people experienced it so get your facts straight.

I've seen many posts where people mention the Mirkwood gamebreaking bug. If there are any others then they weren't as common as the Mirkwood one because that's the one that majorly covers the bug report section. I myself encountered a few graphical hiccups and minor bugs (that vanished after saving and reloading) but never any gamebreaking ones and clearly there are others who have never experienced them otherwise this game wouldn't have any good reviews whatsoever.

BTW :
* I never timed myself but playing on legendary using Farin [and his explosive bolts] I can complete this game, start to finish, in 4 1/2 hrs or less. And while it may take a simpleton 13 hrs to complete this game on normal, the time it takes for those who actually know what they're doing is significantly less.

Yes, everyone can rush through the game by skipping all dialogue, the challenge quests, side quests and so on but some people like to enjoy the game they play. The game is around 7-10 hours on the hardest difficulty once you've played through it once if you don't bother just rushing through. If you want to be a moronic speed-runner then fine.

* 30 pages of gamebreaker reports make you a blatant liar, or a clueless idiot. And FYI, I've personally encountered 6 separate gamebreakers on 4 different levels [2-Ettenmoors, 2-Mirkwood, 1-Grey Mtns., 1-Barrow Downs] so tell me again how there is only one gamebreaker....moron.

30 pages of gamebreaker reports makes you a moron for ignoring what they were speaking about. The game breaking bug occurs when one progresses through the story without completing a certain side quest or quitting the game mid-way through a certain level. It's the same game breaking bug. Get your facts straight idiot.

* WITN averaged appox. 7.5/10 in website and magazine reviews, and for those of us who actually know what we are talking about, that is an average at best rating and a "kiss of death" where sales are concerned. And this fact was borne out where sales are concerned with this game doing very poorly in that regard, after excellent pre-order sales. And WITN didn't not even receive a single VGA nomination last year, so yes, it was completely ignored by the gaming industry.

Any more lies you want to tell?

7.5 is not an average rating. One only need check the user scores on Metacritic, amazon or gamespot to see that most people who played this game enjoyed it. Most people who did not enjoy it were the people who encountered the bugs but as my previous post was pointing out, not everyone has experienced the bugs.

VGA nominations matter? Since when? Many good games last year didn't get VGA nominations.

Any more rants you want to share with the community alongside incorrect statements?

P.S

If you saw my review for this game on the forum (clearly you've read my posts but not enough since you missed it) you'd see that I never rated it as being perfect. The mechanics could have done with more polishing and no I don't like how Snowblind have disappeared without patching the game. However, I'm not going to hate the game because of a bug that I personally haven't experienced.

I've even expressed time after time that I don't like previous Snowblind games so I couldn't possibly be a fanboy. Hell, you're even probably more of a LOTR fan than I am using a name of a LOTR character so just get your facts straight next time before you write a post calling somebody a liar and insulting them.

Please note the emphasis on this comment:

The game breaking bug occurs when one progresses through the story without completing a certain side quest. It's the same game breaking bug.

This means it can occur in different points but it has the same cause hence why I've called it one bug.

[HolyTemplarKnight]

Here you go, my review:

http://www.warinthenorth.com/forums/...ad.php?t=23034

7/10

You ranters need to do some growing up yourself and realize that it's all just a game in the end. If you're unhappy with the product, fine, sell it, write a review, move on and chalk it down to experience. I can go into depth about the flaws of WiTN without even mentioning any bugs if I wanted too. I don't hold it as the perfect game and never have and have simply only defended it from those continually insisting that *everyone" who has played it has encountered game-breaking bugs. While it's true I encountered some small bugs, none stopped me from progressing in the game or enjoying it.

Snowblind abandoning the game without patching it is quite disappointing considering they were quite involved with the community at one time and considering the severity of the gamebreaking bug (which seems to occur when you quit a level mid-way or skip a certain quest that you undertook - this is the bug that stops complete progression of the story and can occur in different places) they should have worked to fix it. Honestly, what they've done is quite bad but I've seen worst companies.

Whether you define this error in the scripting/engine as multiple bugs even though it seems to be ticked off by one common action (hence me defining it as a bug) is irrelevant.

At the end of the day, I've moved onto other games like Dragon's Dogma and Dark Souls which I hold to be the far superior games with the later being more superior than any RPG released recently (a view also held by many critics and fans alike). If I'm a fanboy of any game, it's of Dark Souls.

So enjoy what you will, just don't shove your opinions down people's throats as though they are facts. I have long since acknowledged there are some people p*ssed off as Snowblind for WiTN, I'm just not one of them.

So to clear things up:

I don't support Snowblind nor do I hate them.

[Zaltyre]

Am I the only one who would love to see a WitN-type game that is not set in a LotR universe? While my itch for action RPG's is currently being scratched by the borderlands and torchlight franchises, I am a huge fan of cooperative, third-person RPGs, and WitN was neither first-person, nor third-person overhead camera, which I really enjoyed.