Now my critique… I’ve seen no advantage to the Flash interface so far other than speed (which could be attributed to having fewer users on the test server). I am intrigued by the idea of moving some processing off the servers and onto the local client, though… hopefully it will have a beneficial effect even with an honest server load (which I assume we haven’t seen yet).

As a longtime player, I really don’t want to see the animations, ever. They slow me down, they interrupt my thought process, they take too many clicks.

Hovering the mouse over any unit now brings up a full infographic about the unit. This gets in the way of what I’m trying to look at. The playing field is now a minefield; I can’t simply rest the mouse wherever it happens to be, I have to move it off the playing field or risk my view getting obstructed by these pop-ups. I’ve never liked the little coordinate popups on mouseover for this reason, but at least they’re tiny (and they’re broken in Chrome).

Also, Flash inhibits a subtle but very important feature of modern browsers: CTRL-TAB. When in the Flash window, the only way to switch to another tab is to first click outside the Flash window, then CTRL-TAB. Another minor irritant on its own, but it all adds up.

I also must agree with the post regarding Flash’s closed nature. First, I can’t play on my Droid smartphone (not a huge deal, as it’s a little difficult anyway, but I have done it in a pinch). Second, no more Greasemonkey. Weewar Stats and other useful scripts have been a boon to players, and to lose them would be a shame.

Sorry this couldn’t be a more positive post, but that’s where I am with this. I hope some of the issues can be addressed so the user has as streamlined and intuitive an experience as possible.

I, too, will be disappointed about the loss of Grease Monkey scripts. Things like team chat, autohealing and base/unite counts are invaluable and should (according to me) be a part of the basic interface.

The only things I don’t like so far about the flash interface are the animations and the fact that ending a turn means ending a turn. I kind of liked the delay built into the old interface. There was many a time I noticed an unhealed unit.

I’d be interested to hear what your reasoning was for the move to Flash.

The good news is that the new interface takes us a good step towards a better response time. It does a lot of things that were previously done on the server side. Therefore the tasks that the server needs to deal with become fewer and they become less complex. So our new flash interface is both very ‘shiny’ and an answer to the most pressing issues.

We have already received a lot of valuable comments and remarks that will help us keep the development on the right track. After all this is what a test site is about. Getting early feedback about what needs improvement the most. We will continue with full steam early next year (once we can move again after all the good food over Christmas) and hope to see some epic battles on the test site by then.