My response to seeing the SCL: A big, whole body.... oof. The Illusion is now broken. there isn't a player out there who could watch that and not understand that there are some serious, perhaps even project threatening problems that have all but been confirmed. It's not JUST the servers. We all kind of knew this deep down. yeah, the game runs like a burning dumpster rolling down hill on servers with high populations. And yeah, there are critical elements of the game that definitely run better on lower pop servers, but we have all seen absurdly janky stuff happen on servers with populations as low as 14. Seeing NPC's and the game writ large behave as they did during the SCL on an offline/private server really just brought that knowledge painfully into focus at center stage. If SQ42 is built on the bones of SC, or visa versa, and it (SQ42) behaves anything like SCL did, it's Game Over. the consumer base isn't gonna touch anything CIG had a hand in with a 10ft pole being held by their worst enemy if SQ42 flops because its buggier than an ant farm. As a fan of SC, or perhaps more accurately, the VISION of SC I hope for CIG's success in their projects, I really really do! I play this game almost every night for at least 2 hours, sometimes more. I have spent no small amount of money (but not more than $2,500.00) on JPEG's, and have been happy to do so until recently because i believed things would get better. And sometimes it would get better. And then comes the fumble. the 3.18, or the 4.8, and all our hopes would be dimmed, and many of us would sigh like disappointed dads when their kid swings and misses on a slow and straight, right down the middle pitch. We are disappointed because we know the potential, heck, even the existing stuff is soo much better than what we are getting if we could just get some honest hard work done on the root of the problems which, we all now know beyond any doubt, is the spaghetti code than runs things as it stands. CIG, if you are reading this we IMPLORE you, stop this self destructive drive for content for content's sake. There is not one single backer left that would genuinely be upset if you rebalanced your priorities and start putting some long hours toward untangling the colossal bug riddled mess that is the coding from root to branch. We're not saying don't bother with new features or content. We're not saying don't keep churning out ships, (well maybe some of us are, but I don't think that's realistic.) We ARE asking for at least a 70/30 rebalance favoring fixing what's already in the PU. What good is adding new content if new and old players alike are walking away from it all because nothing is working well enough to enjoy more than half the time? No one wants to see this project fail. How about we pick the lowest common denominator bug, and fix that? doesn't have to be the elevators, (though that would be a huge victory to mark on the board for you if you did.) Just fix something and fix it soo well that you can demonstrate it's fixed on a live, online, garden variety server with absolute certainty. Please? A final thought. CIG, please don't just abandon live demos, or any other format of showing the player base and backers where things are in response to the clock cleaning you've likely taken over the SCL at this point. Take it on the nose, clear your head, own the problem and next time show us what you're doing/what you've done to fix it for everyone. We're a forgiving lot, but you have to make a clear and measurable effort!