Since nothing very compelling happened yesterday, I’d like to add some thoughts on the upcoming(tm) 1.3 Global Agenda Patch and how it may help stabilize the process of european players still leaving the game.

Echelon map before opening

Basically, RebeL and Mpire traded two of the three rare ressources with each other, even along with the missile facility, standing next to the northern one. Aside the both big players on the map, nothing really interesting happened. MC got crushed down to one hex as OER-C settled on their former homeland. Stahl still seems to be sitting on their homeland, maybe even being satisfied with having nearly no fights at all while being able to get their production up and running.

As most people are waiting for the new patch, activity significantly ceased on Echelon - even more when Hi-Rez said that the open maps on patchday will be determined by ressources left. A lot of ambitious fights went down the drain on this day, it seems.

But nonetheless, people are still playing and do what they can to keep the european community alive - even with some silly americans trolling our official forums.

Echelon map after closing

The real question is, if 1.3 can really save anything for the european crowd. While the americans have still a lot of players, the EU pug queues are just plain empty and every alliance seems to have their own issues of sticking to the game. A lot of good people have been quitting the game all along, moving over to bug-ridden but to them somehow promising titles like APB and I personally doubt that they will return on the long run.

When the patch hits the live servers, people will return eventually, play the new content and then vanish into nowhere again. Even more when Hi-Rez really wants to split 1.3 up in several small patches. I personally hope that the playerbase comes at least to a stable state so that I don’t have to worry if there is still AvA going on when I return after a week or two.

But apart of all that and especially all the shiny features they promised, Hi-Rez really needs to get at least something onto the test servers. Just because people get impatient. And Global Agenda is not that good that people will stick to it no matter what indefinately - even as a lover of Action-MMOs.

Global Agenda 1.3