1) Compatibility. You need all the latest drivers (as NWO uses features that are only in the very latest drivers). You also need a 32-meg 3D card and some AGP memory allocated (it normally is all automatically, 16-32 megs). Due to a memory leak you also need at least 256 megs of memory, the more the better.

2) There is a huge bug, with clients leaving a game crashing the server!! This one is pure evil. Basically holds us all back from playing the game properly. I have gone through a lot of coreErr.txt files from users, when they have experienced a crashed server - and they all have a deleted client at the end of the file, at the crash. Our servers at the office can handle deleting clients just fine for some reason.

3) The mini-gun can crash the game when reloading. Also a really nasty one as it is kind of hard to get people to not use the mini.

4) Hosting a server on Win98 is no fun. This is because networking priority boosts are reversed on Win98 compared to Win2K/WinXP. This causes severe lag under Win98. I know a lot of people use Win98 as their gaming OS for the extra fps.

5) Controls setup causes a lot of games to crash.

The number 2 bug is the one that is the most evil, since it brings the server down with every 3rd or so of the clients that crash. Once bug number 2 is gone the servers should be stable.

The Master-server got seriously screwed up at the release of the test. It now at least reports number of players in a game and a medium ping. It is not completely solved, as it requires an update to the OS on the master machine. As it is now, servers with 0 ping either don't have any players in them (except the server-player) or they're playing on a Lan.

The net-speed should be set to Cable or below in the network options. It was set on Lan in the install zip. When set to cable your client only sends 600 bytes per second on average.

I've had a couple of good games when I set up servers and players joined me. One eight-player game really got the action going and it was a blast!Everything worked fine.

We are working like maniacs to solve the list of problems described and will come up with a patch as soon as we can. In the meantime keep the reports coming about other items."

UPDATE:

The master-server has now been fixed! The full effect requires an update of the client aswell though.

For now it reports ping-times and number of players properly.

We are now working towards completing an update to the test - removing the really annoying bugs and especially the ones that keep crashing the servers.

Although we would have preferred to keep the critical bugs out of the test, it does what a test is supposed to - we are finding and fixing a ton of problems now.

Compatibility issues have been quite annoying. Unfortunately, there is very little we can do here except to wait for new drivers.

We're happy that so many of you do get the game running good, in some cases even fast on low spec machines.

The update to the test is going to be out as soon as possible. Days.

NWO seems to be destined to live a fast-paced and wild life! Think it wants to be a star?

We're sorry for the inconvenience for all of you that have not got it running yet.

To all of you who brought NWO to the #1 spot in downloads on FilePlanet, and #6 in all-time most downloaded - our sincere thanks!

Jimbo
Termite