An interesting development

[Olorin I]

Here my last two posts on the Total War Forums on this subject - offered to the community here as food for thought.

12/23/2005:

@ Shogun:

It is simply absurd that you have not crafted a solution to this issue after the passage of this much time. I do not say "problem" because this implies that CA had something to do with causing the lobby abuse. Clearly, this is not the case.

Surely, you cannot take this Choja fellow too seriously. He is abusive and parochial. He derides the manner in which free speech is protected in the USA without a true understanding of the complexity of the issue under US Constitutional Law. Although he is certainly verbose, mostly his diatribes are specters -- they may appear formidable, but they are without substance. It is difficult to believe that a true litigation exposure assessment conducted by counsel experienced in this field would yield a conclusion that CA is at siginificant risk of being held liable in a civil proceeding for the intentional bad acts of others.

As for fear of bad publicity, do not make me laugh. Racial comments, religious ridicule, abusive language, foul language, etc are certainly not confined to the Gamespy Lobbies of RTW - unacceptable behavior is rampant on the net --- and RTW is not even an egregious example of this kind of reprehensible behavior.

Let me leave you with this thought. Barbarian Invasion is an expansion pack. Only people with RTW will buy it. If the percentage of your customer base that plays multiplayer is important to you, then you will find a solution to this issue that permits lobby communication without further delay. This is not a threat, but I am merely predicting that potential purchasers who primarily play multiplayer will not purchase the game without the lobby chat function restored. Those of us who have already purchased the expansion will begin to consider returning the title to the stores where we purchased BI requesting a cash refund based on the product not conforming to its advertised capabilities by reason of an action undertaken by the game's developer. This would be truly tragic as RTW and BI are, all things considered, excellent products. I enjoy playing, but much less so now, I must admit.

Olorin I

12/28/2005:

@ Shogun

It has been four weeks since you unilaterally announced the disabling of the chat feature in the RTW multiplayer lobbies. It has been two weeks since your last comment in the very thread that YOU started to keep the multiplayer community advised.

If you are serious about crafting a solution, then it is beyond reason to think that you have not, at least decided on a course of action and taken the initial steps along that course. It is time for you to apprise the community of the progress of your efforts in some degree of detail.

Of course, the cynical amongst us might think that multiplayer is not important to you and that CA never intended to do anything to restore the chat function - but that you/CA simply intended to make enough posts to prevent an initial firestorm, hoping that the ferocity of the storm would ebb as time passed. Certainly your conspicuous silence for the past two weeks gives creedance to that line of thought.

Since the total war forum moderators and administrators are largely intolerant of opinions that differ with or are critical of CA policy/comments, I imagine that one or both of these posts will be edited out and/or I will be banned. Nonetheless, I stand by my critical commentary.

Olorin I

[Grey_Fox]

Since the total war forum moderators and administrators are largely intolerant of opinions that differ with or are critical of CA policy/comments, I imagine that one or both of these posts will be edited out and/or I will be banned. Nonetheless, I stand by my critical commentary.

I doubt you'll be banned and I doubt the posts will be editted. I've said pretty much the same thing and nothing has happened to me or my posts. You are allowed to be critical over at the .c0mmie, despite what the self-styled 'martyrs' and 'suicide bombers' (I kid you not, that is what they term themselves) over at the .Net and TWC might say.

[RTKCharlemagne]

Your posts Olorin, are indeed direct and to the point. iI has been 4 weeks since Sega's decision, and at this point they should be apprising us of their intentions. To still be in the dark after 1 full month is completely unnaceptable, and they need to know this so they do not confuse our patience and goodwill with naivete.

[TosaInu]

Since the total war forum moderators and administrators are largely intolerant of opinions that differ with or are critical of CA policy/comments, I imagine that one or both of these posts will be edited out and/or I will be banned. Nonetheless, I stand by my critical commentary.

Olorin I

It's bad language, schoolyard bully behaviour and the like that will have a post edited, the poster warned, removed for a few days/weeks or even banned at totalwar.org. Not voicing critics, concerns or even rants ('I don't like it' can hardly be called critics).

[RTKCharlemagne]

Mablung's reply on 12-30:

Perhaps you could wait until the Christmas holidays are at an end, I imagine the CA crew are having a break.

My next post on 12-30:

I wonder if the Publishers of other major games like BF2 or WOW would be completely silent on such a a major issue, and

"wait until the Christmas holidays are at an end"

to address it?

Most in our MP community are mature, respectful, and patient. Conversely however, this is no way for a responsible company to treat consumers who have purchased its product and the products ancillary services.

RTKCharlemagne

[Grey_Fox]

Hmm. I guess nobody in your neck of the woods gets a couple of weeks off for christmas...

However, I agree it has been too long without anything done. I'm just telling you nobody is going to respond until after New Year's.

[Wishazu]

long live Ensemble Studios & Blizzard Entertainment.

Thats what i was thinking untill i actually played AoE III in my opinion the most boring game of the AoE series

[Emperor[1G]]

My clan and our community have completely abandoned the Total War series over this. Well, that and the fact bugs and a crummy interface/bad servers were not improved upon by the expansion. The several members and myself who bought the game feel very cheated. Given the chance over, I would not have bought the expansion, nor Rome TW vanilla either. The headaches and frustration visitied on us first by the game and then by the developers lack of foresight has ruined whatever kind of loyalty I felt towards CA. I won't even start on Sega. I bought RTW on the basis of your past games of Medevail and Shogun. I bought the expansion in the hopes that this was an isolated incident, the "bomb" game some companies make from time to time. Instead, you (CA) proved you simply don't care about your customers, or take pride in the product you vomitted onto the shelf.


Before you trumpet the accomplishments of Blizzard, you may want to look at whats happening to them. Much like CA's developers, in World of Warcraft the game continues to decline as the developers ignore the pleas of the community and its paying customers. Look at the census numbers of players, you'll find that WOW has lost 28% of its North American player population since September. Thats staggering for a first year MMO. Granted it still has millions of players, but the rot is setting in.

Secondly is Warcraft 3, the current RTS for Blizzard. Again, looking at their own Battle.net census, you'll see between December of '04 where a little over 1 million games were played, there were fewer then 225,000 played in December of '05, and you can see the stready decline month by month. Its not because there's other RTS's out there competeting, because there isn't. Its because Blizzard screwed with the game and changed their match making system on the ladder, turning away tens of thousands of players who were tired of being pitted against the top ranked players game after game, with balance issues still severly out of whack. The ONLY thing I like that Blizzard has over CA and everyone else is the BattleNet, WHEN it working properly.

The lesson is too many companies are making games with the thought in mind we'll like them because they TELL US to. i.e. Square-Enix and Final Fantasy 12, Blizzard's World of Warcraft, Creative/Sega' Rome Total War, etc. Gone are the days when companies made games people wanted to see, or adapted them to the wants of their players.

[Mooks]

Dont forget about Ensemble studios and AOE3, the game producers completely abandoned everyone that made the game, leaving once-loyal costumers pissed off. Theyre multiplayer doesnt work for a decent percentage of costumers, and even if it does work the servers dont half the time (Can you beleive ESO servers were flooded by a mere 5k people? the games got out of synch and at the end of the game their victorys didnt count)

Seems theres a plaque going around...Devolopers abandoning their games, in the hope that everyone will buy it and the expansion without complaint.

At LEAST RTW has patches coming out, and i think the single player is awsome, even if the multiplayer chat got f*cked up.

[Tomisama]

Not to darken an already dismal picture.

But you do all realize that quite possibility SEGA only bought Total War to avoid some nasty legal wrangling over the release of SEGA’s Spartan Total War.

That when the name conflict was realized, it was then resolved by simply gobbling up the embarrassment (probably cheaper that the lawsuit and adverse publicity).

If that is the case (which I hope it is not), we have little hope of ever moving forward to get things fixed, and have better Total War games in the future.

----

In comparison with previous editions, Rome was, and continues to be (for different reasons) a disaster for multiplayers. A community of hundreds of (quite possibly over a thousand) avid multiplayers has been lost, which is a shame for them, but even more of a shame for the manufactures.

I say that because of the belief that I have, that a thriving multiplayer community is the best advertisement a game can have, even for people who don’t play multiplayer. When single players see a healthy multiplayer community, it has got to be the “best” endorsement for a game's purchase. The logic being;

“if all of those people are having that much fun, It must be a great game”…

[NihilisticCow]

But you do all realize that quite possibility SEGA only bought Total War to avoid some nasty legal wrangling over the release of SEGA’s Spartan Total War.

Wasn't Spartan Total Warrior developed by CA though?

[Grey_Fox]

Theory is wrong. Spartan Total Warrior was in development long before CA went into negotiations with SEGA. Frankly I'm happy that SEGA now has CA since now we have had patches 1.3, 1.5 and 1.6 released, something that would not have happened under Activision due to it's one-patch policy per game (that means expansions would not be patched either).

The games might be developed by CA, but it's the publisher that actually sells them.

[Tomisama]

Wasn't Spartan Total Warrior developed by CA though?

Yes that is correct. Please forgive my ignorance. I was speculating on possibilities, with no in-depth knowledge. I will be sure to do my home work in the future.

Theory is wrong.

In that case, I am happy to be wrong. I too was initially glad to hear that SEGA’s involvement. But believe that they are, and will be operating only in the same capacity as Activision and Electronic Arts before them, with little or no concern with the development and maintenance of the actual games.

But I would love to be wrong about that also

[UgliElmo]

I decided to add my two cents worth in that thread at the .com:

"The online community has never been given much priority with CA.

With each new TW game the MP community fell lower and lower on CA's priority list. The initial RTW MP game was proof of exactly how low on the priority list MP had dropped. It had fewer features, old problems from the past, and a really bad lobby interface which didn't attach usernames with CD-Keys (which is the main reason for chat being removed). Without the CD-Key-to-username, players cannot be banned from the server, nor can they be permanently #ignored or #banned from games since all they have to do is log on with a different username. This is very interesting, since MTW also used the Gamespy servers, but had the ability to permanently ban and ignore players from the MP lobby. Why would this have changed for RTW? Cost issues? New programmers?

A vast majority of the old STW/MTW MP community left once they tried RTW's MP and found it to be lacking. A vibrant MP community was deemed unneccessary and unimportant since CA's target market had changed. I am sorry to hear that the new tarket market group of MP players (who replaced the old MP community) are already having to deal with the reality of where MP stands in the overall CA TW grand scheme of things.

If you believe things will change for the better: They will not. Ask anyone who has been here since the STW days and they will tell you the truth (if you have any doubts) about the history of the TW MP and CA.

Some would agree, the only reason MP was included at all was due to the fact the game would not have gotten very good reviews, nor sold as well, if it had left MP out entirely. It has been said the MP community is a small percentage of overall sales of the TW series, but it is used as a major selling point when marketing the game. This "small percentage" mindset is why RTW MP does not receive the attention the current MP community expects. There has never been, and will never be, an interest shown in the needs of the MP community."


CA needs to be reminded every now and then they ignore the MP community at their own peril. Eventually their games will stop selling, since they haven't added anything to gameplay since STW. I think it is a dead franchise, on its last legs. I am not sure if they have lost their best programmers or if they have just decided to milk the game until everyone shows their displeasure by not purchasing future TW games. THAT is the real way to get their attention. If it doesn't effect the bottom line, it isn't important to them.

[RTKCharlemagne]

Very good points Elmo.

[Oswald]

<sighs>

[ElmarkOFear]

I am setting up a thread to collect a wishlist for the next TW game. Please participate in it and point out what absolutely must be in the next game to make MP work well and be attractive in drawing in new players.

Example: CD-Key-to-Player-Username feature so CA will not have to shut down chat to stop the current problems with harrassment etc . . Need to be able to permanently ban/ignore players from your chat screen and games. Also, in extreme cases, a player could be banned from the MP lobby altogether.


Things such as this. It may not do any good, but now would be the time to present a list since CA's attention has been drawn to MP with the shut down of chat. I am sure they would like to avoid that in the next game and will be more susceptible to take a close look at the MP community's wish list as long as it is non-critical of the current game and lists a valid reason why the item would be good for the game (MP and/or SP).

I will also post at the .com asking for ideas/wishes.

I am willing to come back to TW if they bring back features of old, which made the MP game so much fun to play. Atmosphere is what is missing from RTW MP. For some reason it just doesn't have that "THANG" which keeps you coming back. :)

[RTKCharlemagne]

My latest post at the RTW forums...

In a conversation I had with Choja several weeks back, he stated that in a personal meeting with 2 upper level Sega managers concerning the lobby issue, the Sega representatives made a comment alluding to a perception that MP had only 200 people playing. The comment was made in relation to making decisions investing more money to fix the chat issues based on such a small number of people playing.

At this point based on the lack of response from Sega, I have no reason to doubt his statement. Where is our answer Shogun???

The wait, along with the unresponsiveness of Sega is unnaceptable.

[cromwell]

Maybe we need another letter from the community, with sigs attached. We could mail this directly to Sega, and put pressure on from another angle. Forget going through "shogun" and the .com. There are more than 200 people all told, it's just that the online atmosphere sucks.

If Sega isn't concerned due to the small amount of people online, I wish CA would just release a server patch, and let us run our own servers. This takes them off the hook, and gives us some control.

Later all

Cromwell

[Squirrel_of_hatred]

HA hA hAaa

Dont you see the stupidity in that statement about only being 200 people online.

The Bloody online thing dosent fully work, ITS DEFECTIVE -thats why!! sheesh.

Its a fair testament to the people who do play online despite of this, putting up with "Cannot connect to host", "Gamespy has encountered an error" and so on when trying to join games then, with those that can host "the game has desynched" style error messages. Many people can host but not join games!!! the list go's on.

By right im suprised anyone play's under these conditions when you have the latest flash and dazzle, online, fully working titles but amazingly the community puts up with these hardships to say the least, and gets the above statement which contradicts itself.

If there are hundreds of people willing to be patient with a defective, frustrating, flawed online game imagine how many people would be interested in the same game that actually allows people to play online with out these afflictions. Look at the effort put into the top quality mods!! I like to call it common sense.

Not to be entirely negative i would like to thank CA/Shogun etc. for implementing the last patch and putting the option of removing the fairy sparkle effect a gripe of mine and also making the cav / infantry balance more realistic and plausable and for fixing the replays i do appreciate it and you deserve some positive feedback every now and then im sure though people arent likely to post just to say everything is working dandy, -for the patches thank you and keep it up.

Celtic Tiger...

[RTKCharlemagne]

Dont you see the stupidity in that statement about only being 200 people online.

Of course I do.

There is obviously more than a mere 200 people in MP, and with a properly working MP there would obviously be many more. However the reason I quoted Choja there was to make the bigger point that Sega is not willing to invest in a fix because they don't see a return on their investment by doing so, due to their percieved lack of people who even play RTW/BI mp.

Based on their actions, or rather their lack of it so far, it looks like Sega is willing to sacrifice the entire RTW/BI MP community over this whole issue....

After 7 weeks, and no workable solution put forth so far by Sega or Shogun, it looks like what Choja said to me reflects reality through Sega's eyes. Hopefully Sega/Shogun will prove my conclusion false, but so far neither has done anything to convince me otherwise...

[AquaLurker]

I think there is definately about a mere 200 people online... Well you see the same people over and over again when u log in. You see CA mp features sucks, people pissed people leave. CA refuse to do sh*t, more people pissed more people leave. Well...bad reputation is hard to mend...but it does spread real fast...wonder whos the brain behind CA business stratagies.

[t1master]

i believe the ca said don't bother with petitions/letters from the online community because they have no way of verifying actual authors. this was when there was a brief attempt to start a petition to restore chat some two months ago.

go back to mtw:vi would be my suggestion, and with hold any future purchase from the total war franchise and perhaps even sega.

your best bet might be to write sega and ca via snail mail and say or call their customer service lines and state... 'i am never going to purchase another product from either company untill we are heard' etc..

for me total war online is dead, except for those few occassions when i have an opportunity to log into the vikings server and run about with old comrades... what was once, is no more.

[The Hun]

People used to play STW also and then the server was shut down. How long will the VI server be maintained? Going back is only an option for so long, what is needed is to secure the future. The sad fact is that even on VI server there was abuse and no chat was shut off. But we must also remember that .Org is not a big important body that holds much power and no amount of shouting will make much to change.

[Tomisama]

No doubt that this has been said before but:

I don’t know why they even bother to go the trouble and expense to setup and maintain a multiplayer server? Just give us the capability to set up our own, and be done with the whole mess. They can still tout that the game has online multiplayer capabilities, with none of the headaches. It’s a win/win solution.

Why torment us?

Sometimes, to care just a little bit, is worse than not caring at all…

[Yun Dog]

Face it warlords,

we had some wonderful times with STW both because we discovered a great tactical game but also its evolution into clans and a code of honourable play, and legendary battles, which have been told and retold and are now myth, we also discovered a group of like minded people who loved this game and we're also expert tacticians, and many nei in fact the majority were 'damn good fellows'. The simplicity of the game (units) with the complexity of the morale was the secret you had to achieve great things with a limited arsenal, and your enemy had the same (brute strength would not do it), you were forced to be clever - the right stroke at the critical moment and you could carry the day. It was a golden age, and I still think warmly of those days and when I read some of the old crews posts... but we knew it then....


we knew CA cared little about multiplay... the community had arisen despite this through the hard work of individuals who loved the game... we were frustrated even back then... we could see the potential, we had tasted how wonderful it could be, and anyone who touched it was unable to leave

but change came, MTW took away the simple yet beutiful RPS tactics of STW and added many units, and nations which opened the door for more exploitation, (the simplicity was lost, and with it the tactics of mind against mind) again MP was the poor cousin, and many old faces turned away (myself included) the frustration of waiting and waiting for games where you lagged out, who can spend that sort of time, waiting to play a game - when they could be playing something else

so the MP community waned a bit more

RTW was the coup de grace of the MP community, the transferal to Gamespy, was like Pilot washing his hands, a lame limb in CAs eyes that could finally be removed.

The loss of tactics
the loss of the love
the loss of the community

we saw all these things clearly and with time they have come to pass

one day we may discover it again, it may not be TW title ... in fact it probably will not... but someone may discover the secret to great MP gameplay and tactics one day, and like the phoenix we shall rise again, and I shall see you there my old friends

edit: ok so I just read the increadibly long thread over at the .com forum

my 5c
I understand that the net, and onlines games are a reflection to a large extent of the enormous amount of losers there are in our society, who use it as a means to abuse other people and spam their extreme views.

However for CA to market a game for kids age 12 and then not provide some means to moderate the abuse that is inherent online is grossly irresponsible to say the least.

just because it happens alot and reflects the ugly side of real society doesnt make it acceptable or tolerable

It is the responsibility of the game company to provide the consumer with a means of moderating and censoring their games online environment.

I think we all appreciate that childrens TV is moderated and why... I wouldnt want my kids to watch big bird buggering Mr snufflufigous and then beating him to death with the grouch..

in short racism and abuse on the net should never be tollerated and companies that use this platform to run games MUST act responsibly and provide parents and children with the means of shutting out the freaks... and if they dont care enough to bother to do that... then their game gets 18+ rating.

CA have acted irresponsibly - they deserve a kick in the pants - and should clean up their act ASAP

regards
Yunus Dogus aka
YunDog aka
Yunratta Yamamoto aka
Yun

[BHCWarman88]

Face it warlords,

.

The loss of tactics
the loss of the love
the loss of the community

we saw all these things clearly and with time they have come to pass

one day we may discover it again, it may not be TW title ... in fact it probably will not... but someone may discover the secret to great MP gameplay and tactics one day, and like the phoenix we shall rise again, and I shall see you there my old friends


regards
Yunus Dogus aka
YunDog aka
Yunratta Yamamoto aka
Yun

Hey, I love MP, I got that love,lol, but no really, I do. I love MTW more then I do RTW, but it would be a big blow if MP goes for good, in any TW game,because Iwas only 8 or 9 (i'm 13,going to be 14 next month) when i got STW,so I was not a part of the STW MP Experince, but I was playing MTW in 2004,March 2004-Setember 2004,then June 2005-July2005, till vist the lobbies,and stuff.. even if MP goes for good, even if I go back to my first mP game,called Neopets (Neopets,you guys so cute!!), I won't be able to take the blow from loss of MP on TW games, if it ever gets shuts down..