Thanks for the review.
For context, this mod has been active since 2001, and went through a large amount of staff turnover in the various years it's been active. Sadly, TVWP's best years were probably 2002-2004, and it's been mostly limping feebly along since 2005. A lot of the primary modders went on to be involved in other things (like me with ST:R) or just faded away (most notably Lightspeed and Blaise Russel). The lack of mediavps and other features is conspicuous nowadays, but try to picture this mod as a 2002-2004-era mod, and hopefully that will make you appreciate what this mod tries to be.
The thing I'm most proud about is the story. TVWP is one of the only mods I know of to have an actual "guide to the mod" document complete with descriptions, mission outlines, and tech entries. (I think I'll release that as a bonus to the campaign, if the staff are okay with it.)
I'm also extremely proud of the attempt we made to do a total conversion before TCs were in vogue. It isn't perfect, but it does the job. Our best years were probably when Lightspeed joined and really pumped up the quality of the mod with enthusiasm, energy, and awesome graphics. These were before the mediavps, mind -- in fact, Lightspeed's nebulas were the graphics that got the mediavps started in the first place! And I think Lightspeed really deserves most of the credit for this mod; he was the primary developer during the years when it most mattered, and he single-handedly did the entire new main hall interface. Similarly, Blaise Russel did by far the largest number of missions, and you could justifiably think of this as another one of his campaigns, albeit written according to someone else's story.
Unfortunately, this campaign is Exhibit A when it comes to feature creep. Unlike ST:R, I was unable to maintain my enthusiasm for TVWP after it lost momentum, and it actually became a chore to shepherd it through release. (I don't want to claim sole credit though; Admiral Nelson was a big help in pushing to finish everything.) I would say the single event that crippled the enthusiasm was when we decided that having one fleet shared by every faction wasn't "cool enough", and we brought on a new modeller to help create a ton of new ships. That, unfortunately, was an unmitigated disaster. Production on missions, graphics, and future campaigns ground to a halt while we tried to expand our ship set, and the situation was made even worse by the fact that the modeller produced models that didn't even work. They looked beautiful, but they were complete garbage on the inside and couldn't be converted to POF without essentially rebuilding the entire model. Even if the models had been perfect, though, I think it would have been hard to sustain momentum while making such a large overhaul.
TVWP's original mission was to produce a massive campaign with a chapter for each major phase of the war, and to this end, the Unification War was only supposed to be a "demo". This is when we were all in college, high school, or even middle school, and thought we could do anything. I think it's safe to say that that's not really realistic, but my hope is that the release might inspire future modders to make some missions set in the TV-War era, like Cardinal Spear. Fortunately we already see signs of that in the internal forum.. there's a lively debate on what should be done for Chapter 2. I don't think I'll be an active participant in that, especially as I'll be handing off TVWP leadership to whoever wants it, but I look forward to seeing what people come up with.
