What Went Wrong? - Cube World... Omega? (Update) 

>we're remaking in a new engine uh oh, heard that one before

Oh no, I forgot my keys at the shop. Brb

THE feature I liked the most of Cube world Alpha (don't know if it was in beta or not), is the forging where you could put little cubes on your weapons to upgrade them and change the design, that was SO FREAKING COOOOOOOOOL

"We're remaking it on a new engine" is one of those things that feels like it's part of almost every game dev catastrophe story, so I wouldn't get my hopes up tbh

Holy balls, you're alive.

I don't think the question is a matter of him finishing the game. The question is whether any of the people waiting will live to see it finished.

This one still hurts. As someone that was able to purchase Cube world right at it's release before the store was taken down, all I ever wanted was the Alpha version but fleshed out with more skills, biomes, enemies and some longer semi-structured dungeons. The hype for this game was at near Minecraft levels. Remember, Minecraft was still very new and at the height of it's explosive growth, people were dying for more games like it.

3:01 It's funny to stumble upon my histerical laughter in a random Cube World video. Trogg almost broke character there, didn't expect artifacts to be so... special... Great video, Trogg very proud! Tiny human that make this video almost as good as Trogg!

Never expected an update, also welcome back!

It's insane how wollay fumbled this bag so hard... sure he ran away with some money thanks to this, but this guy had such a great idea, if he kept at it IN TOUCH WITH THE COMMUNITY this could've been another Minecraft. This guy could've gotten as rich as Notch did, but no. Radio silence, lies and everything that happened. I can't understand what is going through his head, but it can't be good.

At this point, I see the Pre-Release and Post Release Cube World as AbandonWare due to the lack of updates and transparency about the dev cycle. I feel Wollay got tired of so many people trying to contact him about Cube World and pushed out a 1.0 build. I played the 1.0 Cube World and it felt soulless compared to the countless videos of the Alpha I had watched back in the day. I really do hope that CW Omega has a good dev cycle and release, as well the Wollay and Pixie learned from their mistakes. I truly believe they weren't ready for the demand of Cube World when it came to regarding the networking and issues.

Damn it has been a while, forgot about this channel. Love that it's also an update video.

I still have Cube World Alpha on a flash drive. The alpha is so good.

Wiz: "not being a man of my word." Me: "I TRUSTED YOU!"

honestly what i think happened is that wollay saw normal site traffic, thought it was a DDoS attack, and panicked. the guy just seems super anxious in general, and definitely needs a community manager to handle criticism. i mean this is all speculation but my takeaway is that cube world omega will go the same route if wollay hasn't changed

Been pointed at Veloren as well by a friend recently. It seems to be a cubeworld clone that aims to bring the original vision back as well. Sure, some features are different and they're aiming to continue differentiating over time. But a lot of the core mechanics are the same, or very similar. Certainly has the same feel as the original alpha despite the extra additions. Honestly, given that Wollay keeps disappearing several years at a time with no updates, this new game is more worthwhile of supporting imo. It is also. ENTIRELY FREE.

i appreciate how well thought out the desk is in these videos, down to the always fresh 770s

Yeah I paid for alpha, either I get a key for Omega or he can get bent

I still disagree that he was DDoSed due to all the reasons listed in the "There was never any "DDoS,"" album, especially #1 the timeline of events where he showed us "This is the DDoS I'm experiencing," it was merely 1/4,150th (0.02%) of the data of 1 average DDoS attack for that year making it absurd to call it a DDoS, and #2, these "attacks" always occurred during peak or near-peak traffic hours - as a result of real people trying to access the site and DL server. And then there's reason #3, he stated that disabling user registration resolved the DDoS's. If they were really DDoS's, this would have done little, if anything, to impede them, plus reason #4, on July 3rd, he admitted that his launcher's poorly programmed updating system, which sent & received more data than necessary from the website's server, overloaded his website. He publicly admitted that at least 1 of the times his site went down for about a day straight was his own fault due to his lack of competence, then expects people to believe that 1/4,150th (0.02%) of a DDoS's amount of traffic was him being maliciously targeted by a DDoS... I just can't fall for that. Tbh I can't even agree with the "let him cook (and everything may turn out fine)" sentiment. Just look how that's been going for the past decade... Wollay's repeating the same mistakes, and not for the 2nd but the 3rd time. To quote someone else, we're firmly in "shame on *me*" territory now. Props for being the only YTer I know of who's covered all these points nonetheless, even if we disagree. Liked and subbed.

The man is just not cut out to be a solo developer in truth

this whole project has always screamed "slight incompetence" to me, and this video further proves it imo. why wouldn't they hire more devs, or at minimum a community manager? If your project is hugely successful, you're obligated to at least tell people wtf is going on every so often imo. Ghosting everyone after getting a bunch of sales just makes people lose trust in you, and at worst they'll think it's a scam. i don't understand why these 2 just absolutely refuse to do even the most basic of steps every damn indie dev has done for a decade now.

We need a "What Went Wrong? Heroes and Generals" or "What Went Wrong? Starbound". Please! :)

My friends and I paid for Cube World specifically to support the development. We believed in the vision and waited years for the release and got something worse than if the development had just been abandoned. It stopped being about the money we spent, ages ago. He hoed us and chose not to acknowledge that he did. Unless this is a free update in an attempt to regain favor, it's a no-go from me.

before i even watch, Wiz i am so proud of you man, i know making the jump to youtube as a full time career was scary and nerve wracking as hell!! but always love the content, on this channel or your other! not sure why you took the long break whether it was jus pressure/mental health/ just needed a break, no matter what the reason is. We happy to see a post from you and we truly wish you nothing but the best! take as much time as you need brother!

I hate that this dude said he was wanting to do this full time but then just kinda fucked it... such a waste of talent

Thanks for reminding me about Veloren.

I grew up getting hooked by Cube World but I never got too much into it to be part of a fandom or the "diehard" community. Looking back at it now feels like a weird nostalgia for something that has been so promising and fun to play when I was younger. However, I personally feel bad for the devs. Obviously their behaviour was wrong and irrational, but in the end I would give them the benefit of the doubt and believe, that they had well intentions but were overwhelmed with the popularity, the community, and the demands and responsibility that comes with it. There's similar stories of devs not being able to handle the sudden popularity of their games. I believe Flappy Bird had a similar story. In the end I personally have no big expectations and I won't care too much either way about how it will turn out. But if it will be free and a kind of "update" then I would try it out for sure. At least for nostalgia's sake :D

"Let bro cook" Bro burned the cook

This game is absolutely, 110% a total scam, the dev and psycho mods are silencing all dissenting voices, and anyone who falls for it a second time is a fool. Full stop.

Its crazy how so many developers are failing when success is handed on a silver platter. Cube world, you could've just hired devs. Bethesda could actually put some effort into a game. EA could come up with something original. They all have the resources and the instructions are elementary level, but they always seem to let us down.

The dev of cube world and its team seem to be expert emotional manipulators, using that to guilt trip people into buying their scam. Seems their money dried out and now they need a new cash grab.

(Damn, I caught this within 3 minutes) Welcome back Wiz, hope we get some bangers along with this one.

Welcome back Wiz! Seriously though, my main take-away from this is that I'm happy the dude is okay and still has passion to keep on dev-ing. Not the best ending, but definitely not the worst either. EDIT; There are so many things that can look like a DDoS, mind. Especially with games; if some content creator covers your game outside your typical circles, you'll get a rush of folks from new places, likely completely blind siding you. I remember when suddenly I got contacted on social media that my game's website is blocked in China. Not by CCP, but by my host. I checked up on them and there had been some sudden spike of file activity (i.e. downloads in my case). This being tons of traffic out of nowhere, from China, well the host assumed the worst and hit the panic button. Luckily I got that cleared up - and now when I release new games I warn them that there will be an unusual spike coming up 😅

Turning the comments off and absolutely no acknowledgement about what went wrong last time is the biggest red flag I've ever seen since "updated for modern audiences." The whole point of releasing unfinished alpha builds is to engage with the crowd, receive praise and criticism, iron out the kinks, discover what does and doesn't work, generate some hype, and release a finished product. You don't get to use one as a cash cow, just eff with your supporters the way he did, bugger off into the sunset, and then just come back like nothing happened and start doing the exact same stuff all over again. I'm not normally so cynical, but if the very first thing that developer did WASN'T a formal apology for all the chicanery, you really should turn your back on this project. Never forget: you are not obligated to give a creator your time or money, and you do not need any reason, let alone a "good" one, to not give them your time or money.

I remember playing the Alpha, man it was such a blast! Me and my brother kept speculating what may or may not get added, one of my fav speculation was that they'd add in Building. Never could we foreseen that it would turn into...This.

Cube World was one of the few games that got me addicted, and the Original Alpha got me and many friends together adventuring everywhere and raiding harder and harder dungeons for challenges and better loot. Game had some flaws, but it was awesome. When Beta came out, i played it on my own, and had fun for a while. It was nostalgic and made me miss my friends, but the missing features left it a bit bland. At least i wasn't bleeding out exp from dying everywhere :D Hearing about the Omega proyect makes me happy again. Even if it never comes out.

I loved how in Cube World alpha, there wasn't much of a limit on how fast you could climb, swim, or glide. On top of being able to level those stats infinitely, some classes also had movement abilities that played with the physics engine a bit. The Ranger's backstep could send you flying at accelerating speeds in the opposite direction if you pulled your glider out, while the Rogue's jumpslash could gradually gain infinite height for more gliding. Whether it was a bug or not, it was a really fun game mechanic. My brother looked up the Rogue trick, but I found the Ranger trick all by myself. :]

Glad you're back! Sure took you a while to get that milk. This gives me hope - it's only been 15 years since my dad did the same!

Speaking as an (indie, solo, mostly hobbyist) developer - the thought of having a hit as big as CubeWorld on my hands **in alpha** is genuinely terrifying. I feel like there's a significant chance that the CW developer initially misinterpretted the figures on the "DDoS", and then allowed that to be a convenient way to narrativise their situation - perhaps even after they'd realised it wasn't the case. Either way, I think this is pretty forgiveable. As I said - if that was me, even without a DDoS in the picture, I'd be utterly terrified. I definitely have respect for him for coming back to the project after so long away.

I don't think anybody really cares about Cube World Omega. Same shit as before, the dev talks about what he wants to implement and in the end, it will not end up as the people expect.

HES BACK

Ethos Labs is a new way to say Etho's lab that's not heard before lol

yeah it takes a lot of work to achieve decent quality but glad wiz is back sometimes standing on or in strange places and items.

He was happy to take your money, unhappy to take criticism from early access players, and happy to abandon the project and run off.. (with your money). No second chances for thieves.

If atleast the artifacts gave buffs like +5% damage with 1 handed swords maybe something like the region lock would make sense because you have artifacts that speed up progress whenever you get kicked back to 0

I'm happy you're back and I'm also happy wol_Lay is back. I just hope he's better now and that we get the game we deserve and the game he's happy with :)

Welcome back WickedWiz. It will take time to rebuild the trust that's been lost, but I'll embrace you when it returns.

I feel Wally should have stuck to sight seeing around the world with his silly hat!

now i don't have to keep wondering "What Went Wrong? - WickedWiz"

It’s nice to see a Valoren reference, me and my friend toasty_b1 know the dev of that game personally and have enjoyed playing his game. It’s impressive what a small team of people can accomplish. I feel bad for the dev of this game though. It sounds like he got overwhelmed by the sudden popularity and just needed some time away from the limelight

Love how in depth you went with this, I know that level of digging and research must've been absolutely exhausting. I highly respect your writing and editing skills in this. Glad I don't have a personal stake in this saga but I like the vision of the game he was trying to make. I wonder if he will ever actually realize that you're better off embracing the community and symbiotically harnessing its ability to help you and your product improve rather than always keeping it in the dark where it is likely to come to hate you for it.

You are ignoring the fact that he "came back" several times... and disappeared a few months to a year later.

Welcome back, brother! Honestly, I hope both Wollay and the fans get what they need and deserve. After all this time, the complete radio silence, the botched 1.0 release, and everything else, I don't blame people for lookin' at omega thru jaundiced eyes; hell, I'm amongst 'em, myself. I want it to be good, even though I never played any version of Cube World. Give the fans what they paid for and show that he wasn't just blowin' smoke up people's arses, ya know? I ain't holdin' my breath, though.

If you only heard about it now and want to try Cube World, I recommend getting an early alpha copy and not the actual release. It will make sense why so many people got disappointed with the final product if you experience what it was and the potential it had.

ty for the vid wiz love ya mate

Unreal this game is still around, I remember getting so hyped about it years ago... followed by years of dragging itself through the mud. I wouldn't hold my breath for this one, I certainly won't be.

I look forward to him abandoning the game again.

As a perfectionist creative myself, I understand the pressures to creating a quality 'thing' even without the external pressures from a rabid audience. But to add on the demands and expectations from his fans, I can absolutely understand the overwhelming anxiety Wollay must feel around the development of his game. But even so far as that's concerned, clearly people immediately fell in love with his original vision, so I don't know why he didn't just continue with that to begin with. Though I suppose again considering the anxieties and pressures he may have been experiencing, there may have been some expectation within his mind about what sort of game he was 'supposed' to make, as per what he perceived as the expectations of his fans when it could have just as well been a vocal minority, or even just himself getting influenced with whimsical ideas from whatever games he happened to be playing at that point in development. All that being said, I'm all for Wollay giving it another go and 'trying to do it right this time'. I mean hell, if No Man's Sky can make a comeback, then I think Cube World sure as hell could. He already had a winning formula just with his Alpha, all it needed was expanded features and more polish. And Omega seems like it's slated to be just that. But for his sake, I really hope he can overcome his developer anxieties and actually _interact_ with his fanbase for once. And if he can't handle doing it by himself, a community manager would go a LOOONG way for him. Someone to create polls and probe the audience for what they want or expect to see in the Omega version, filtering through the trolls and the spam and relaying any useable information to Wollay in a more palatable format.

So this is what that old game I use to play turned into. Pity it was fun, didn't know it was Cube World.

Is this channel dead?

It's great to see you back!! I really do enjoy these What Went Wrong videos ❤

welcome back ser!

I think Wollay legit got stressed out because he underestimated how much bandwidth he'd need, letting out some of those details, then realizing it showed his lack of experience & judgment. So he backpedaled & tried to blame an outside force, so people wouldn't be upset at him. Like, I get it, he was under so much pressure & high expectations. And whenever things go so wrong, it can feel like a nightmare. Then, it'd be even more painful to have to face all those people you're disappointing, & likely get yelled at by tens of thousands for your mistakes... So, I think he just wanted to get some of that pressure off his shoulders, while he worked feverishly on a solution. Hence the DDOS claim. If so, I sincerely feel for him; I have rejection sensitivity (part of ADHD for many people), & it can feel absolutely horrific to let others down, & the fear of being hated or rejected can be stomach-twisting & tear-inducing. ...But, lying is NOT right. And will get you even more rejected & distrusted if you get caught. And maybe if he IS sensitive like that, his (acting) community managers may have been trying to protect him... He likely has his comments off on unmodded platforms for self-care. I totally get that too. But, customers are gravely affected by this borderline scam. And the overreacting (perma-bans for nothing!) is ridiculous! There's no excuse for how far they've overdone it. I do believe the possibility that Wollay was genuinely suffering psychological distress from the disastrous release, maybe partially crushed by his own guilt for not getting more bandwidth. And that he made up the DDOS story in a desperate attempt to stop also being crushed by the weight of thousands of gamers getting (rightfully) impatient & frustratedv(and then, being again rightfully upset by the awful changes that practically made previous versions false advertising... painfully further invalidating his hard work). Just trying to redirect their wrath away from himself, so he could deal with frantically trying to fix everything without so much pressure. He probably also feared the risk of losing sales from people who would scoff "Wow, if he's so bad at managing bandwidth, how can we trust him to maintain this game?" So he may have tried to hide his mistake so all his hard work wouldn't go to waste financially. Buuuut yeeeaaahhh... That's NOT cool. At all. And now, it seems like he's likely trying to ignore criticism & input, so he can just concentrate on development again, shutting out questions to keep his resolve firm, & just sharing enough to show that something is in the works. I get that too; sometimes I have to kind of robotically move forward to get a task done putting up a mental wall between myself & others, or else others criticizing me along the way might weigh me down with doubts until I lose steam & can no longer finish the task or project. But as said in this video, that has the danger of developing in a bubble & losing touch with the playerbase, who deserve answers & reassurances (& so much more). But, maybe in the meantime, he's quietly made a bullet list of what fans seem to want over the years (hence why he's building based on Alpha), & is just steadfastly trucking on until he meets a certain goalpost. Then maybe THEN, with a big hurdle passed, he may finally open up more, tentatively, carefully. I have to say, if a lot of his silence WAS due to rejection sensitivity or similar anxiety, trying to give things time to calm down or buying time to cope... then I highly respect him for managing to come forward again. That's brave as hell. But, people invested in this game (financially & emotionally), are absolutely entitled to still be upset at the repeated screwups, deception, & practical scamming. And to not trust him or anyone representing him. But, maybe if everyone can understand, or consider the possibility, that he may have just lied & been silent out of fear & desperation, then long-term dread & angst, which it may be a monumental struggle for him to overcome... ...Then maybe, with some tentative compassion kept in mind, instead of only anger or fanboy blind apologism, we can coax him to open up more about development & details. By showing him he doesn't have to be afraid of us. Heh, I dunno, that got longer than I intended, & I've got a double eye infection so I can barely proofread this (hope it makes some sense). But all I'm saying is that, as so many in the community are already doing, hopefully most folks can still try to give him SOME benefit of the doubt (without it having to be actual trust; like I said, he has NOT earned that), that he indeed may have still had legitimate psychologically painful reasons for what he's done. NOT an excuse... But, maybe a reason. And until we know otherwise, maybe try to handle him accordingly. Though of course, being ready to stand up for ourselves if too much bull crap happens again, or even take legal action if this new "version" isn't gonna be free for those who paid for the original. Cuz that would definitely be egregious enough to no longer indicate poor trauma-coping, just all-out scamming. ...But that's just a theory.

Good talk.

Welcome back to this great channel, Wiz.

Damn, that Vi line hit hard. Holy reference game, batman, I actually understood most of those.

Nice to see you back! Thank you for being respectful of Wollay's mental struggles. Regardless of what people think of the whole situation it's not ok to treat him like some game developing machine and forget about the actual person.

Are you covering also indie games? Pixelpiracy has some crazy dev story with ignoring community, money grab, return after years with dlcs and stuff

700k in two months for a game that’s a decade into development…. Man I wish Wollay would just work with us

As a software engineer this story is heartbreaking. Really just shows how toxic and ignorant the internet is these days. They'll take any excuse to misconstrue and bully creators. I am a networking expert and DDos attacks do looks like that. It all depends on your infrastructure configuration and it's completely unreasonable to expect infinite autoscaling from one dude on an indie budget (aka unemployment). Same applies for expecting them to pay a community manager salary when they themselves are not even being paid a salary.

Man, one of the few memories I still retain from back when I was in my mid teens was buying Cube World Alpha on the website using my shitty potato of a laptop at the time. Back then I never kept up to date with any issues for things [I still kinda don't lol]. Crazy to see how long it's been since then. Hopefully Wollay gets it right this time, but any interest I had in the game died years ago so I'm not holding my breath on it.

I still have the original Cube World downloaded on my old win7 system. My friends and I played it back when he allowed people to buy into it and alpha/beta test it. We played it maybe 6 months and then all of a sudden there was complete silence, years past with very little info. Honestly I didn't even know Cube World Omega was a thing until I saw this video pop up in my feed. Then I thought...here we go again.

I remember watching Ethoslab play this years back I always wondered what happened to this game

Id like to thank youtube for showing this one on the side.

I stopped supporting wollay and lost faith in him already, honestly, I kind of forgot him and his flop of a game existed.

Figure wollay might comb through these comments (maybe not, he has mentioned in the past he avoids reading comments for his own sake) but if you are reading, good to have you back man. I won't lie, when I played the steam release of cube world I was pretty disappointed but I never gave up hope that you'd eventually release some updates. You're only human, and humans make mistakes when they think they know what is best. I trust your vision, Wollay, I just hope you can be receptive to feedback and realize we do not hate you as a developer, far from it. We simply want your project to be the best it can be so that way both you and us players can be happy. If you read this, take care man I love your game.

He will work for it for a few months till he gets bored and then pull out the depression card again.

I'm really glad to see he's doing better and posting actively. It's really hard to confront the past issues, the community and himself really, the anxiety can be unreal and it's easier for the time being to just pretend it never existed. Unfortunately, not doing so really prevents you from moving forward, I hope he realises that sooner rather than later. Nonetheless, I think every person that bought the game at any point deserves to receive a copy of Omega for free.

The lack of communication has always been a red flag on this project. I found cube world back in the day like a month or two before the alpha was put on the sale so I didn't notice how the development was going before that. But alpha was already very fun. Shame about the changes on the steam release. It was kind of fun, but did a lot weirdly which discouraged exploration. I do wish the new project will be good. But since it seems to be another radio silence for god knows how long, I'm not putting my hopes up. You would think he would have learned to have some transparency and communication with the community, but no.

For those that arent aware, veloren is a free and open source game. Meaning it costs nothing and you can read and modify the source code if you have the abilitiy

That moment when a random video in your feed make you remember a youtube channel you love but haven't watched for some reasons... and then you realize that reason is simply that said channel haven't uploaded anything for months.

welcome back

It's worth pointing out that a denial of service attack does not have to depend on sheer traffic volume to take down the service, it's simply the most blunt and well known form of it. I recently dealt with an internal server outage from a script making a whooping 5 requests per minute, simply because each request was opening a new session which after an hour added up to around 300 and that was the limit of what the server was configured to handle. Naturally, a public web server should be hardened against something like this, but it's entirely possible it wasn't. Many people, including indie game devs will give little to no consideration to security until it hits them in the face.

There are people watching this video RIGHT now that will get scammed by this dude again with the same scam lmao If he was smart, he would have called it Cube World 2 so there would be no delusion from those that he got the first time around.

Guys looking to scam again

I bought in when he was doing the “buy in forever” thing and wasn’t able to play it in release. Fool me once…

I literally remembered about this channel 2 days ago and re-watched like 3 vids, and now this appears. Talk about odd timing

It's gonna be another 4 years before we get a tweet/blog post update from the dev.

We thought you died mate also question is wicked wizard also ye channel?

I was lucky enough to get in early, some of my friends had to wait. We understood that. The game was in early development, we understood that too. What we didn't understand, and what pissed us off is giving Wollay millions of dollars and then him and his wife disappeared. They popped back up to get more money from the Steam release and then disappeared AGAIN. Why wouldn't they disappear with the money and leave the game hanging for a third time?

Recently found my old pc from like 10years ago and it still gave the og cube world installed the games pretty fun. But alot harder then I remember

I mean leveling could still be a thing to add something like small passive skills or small stats up, while finding rare artifacts cpuld grant you unique skills

Do as you might, that game is dead in my heart no matter what. 13-14 was a blast playing it. Excited for a release of the game but yet nothing. Waiting for the Beta was a massive let down. Then the release was absolutely horrid.

I think this game will never get finished

Broken feedback loop usually coincides with bad product. This is the first thing which I test when I want to interact with some project.

even if there is going to be anything, him not caring and right out avoiding any input, how well could it even get?

You've been gone so long I was thinking about making a "what went long with WickedWiz?" Video

From an IT perspective, if your server can't support your traffic load (such as in this case, where they had an unanticipated number of connections and sales that it couldn't handle) it IS in fact still a DDoS, just not maliciously done, it was NOT a TARGETED DDoS, but it was still a DDoS.

As much as I anticipate Cube World eventually being good, Veloren is just better at the moment and it's free.

Man, the alpha infinite fly roll glitch was the best part of grinding the game with my friends.