There are still a lot of negative reviews being posted for TWD pro, recently and now. The Prem/Le has climbed a lot of spots and is fairly high in the overall ratings over the last year, not so much for the Pro. Can't blame that difference on the code changes from early to now. However, that difference does support the set up sensitivity of the machine discussed below, and would affect pros more (because many people find them on location more). What is even more telling is that the Prem/Le rates somewhere around 50-70 positions higher than the Pro. That is by far the biggest spread between a Pro and Prem/Le that I'm aware of. And that isn't because of early vs late coding either, as both have had the same core code and the same code release schedules.
WRT art, go read the reveal threads. Most people really dug the PF and art. Sure some won't like it but most did and therefore that doesn't account for the low Pro rating, let alone the big difference between the Pro and Prem/Le ratings.
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Posted much of this before. Stand by it
It has been de rigeur urban legend now on pinside to say TWD sucked early on and only became good with the last code updates. And I'd say it's because many members use it as an excuse to justify why they hated the game at first but now really like it (man, was there a lot of hate for a while, especially from some vocal members here over and over). It is wrong.
In reality, I and many others found TWD to be reasonably coded early on; it was fun and interesting to play. Especially after the first update, which became available a few months after release and was quite significant. Many people could already see how good TWD was. Lyman is great and his coding doesn't just become awesome with the last code updates. The major complaints and TWD hate one finds on pinside back then on the pin was not about poor coding, it was about the cheap drains. Coding got better and better with more updates too, and is now one of the best out there imo. But early code was still good. In fact there are some really cool DMD animations from early code that were dropped in later releases.
IMO, the true reason people here posted lots of TWD hate early on is because they played location machines and they had cheap drains. Other people did not have these issues. Over time it was determined here that TWD is notably sensitive to setup (and some of them more than others too), and without care taken TWD becomes much more of a STDM/outlane drainer from many areas including magnets, slings, pops ramp rejects, etc. In home use this sensitivity is not very significant; on location it can be very significant.
Yes, not having actor voice work was a big misstep in TWD. But the negativity was about more early on, and actor voice work was easily fixable with pinball browser. Many people say that TWD sucked earlier but now is excellent. If it were only about actor voices, people would have posted early on their like for the game play and that pinball browser would fix the sounds for the game.
The reported TWD history is typical revisionist human nature and confirmation/selection bias. And unfortunately, I doubt this TWD urban legend history will change.