3 questions for the Beta testers ....

[Choco]

... or anybody who has some idea about the upcoming release

1)There will be the option to use Teppo Ashigaru, warrior monks and Christians priests even if that would be not historically accurate?

2)Is the Ninja and the Sword master so umbeatable as we fear?

3)Where about the possible loophole of hiding ninjas in the map such that nobody can find them?

[solypsist]

nothing in this thread is written in stone, nor does it necessarily come from my own personal experiences

1. No. There will be two distinct campaigns: The Shogun campaign, and the Mongol Invasion. Each is seperate and troop types for each are confined to that campaign. Multi-Player will allow all troops types together (except priests, which are agents).
2. So far the Swordmaster kicks ass like a one man Daimyo-bodyguard unit. So far the AI handles him (if you're playing as the Mongols) as a point-contact person, so there is a chance your men can take him out early if you gang up on him before the rest of the Japanese army catches up.
3. I havne't seen the new units in multiplayer mode, so I dunno.

[Choco]

Thanks for the fast answer http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

[Shiro]

Thanks for keeping us updated Soly!

[T-01]

damn and i only got the game just 3 days ago O_O. well um thanks for the info solypsist

[EA Raskal]

solypsist: What build are you playing? http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

I can only laugh at your answers.

[Jon]

Erm, what the hell is going on?, We have Solypist saying one thing, yet the official E.A rep saying another, personally, I go with E.A, so Solypist, stop messing about, because these jokes suck.

[Wireframe]

I am just curious who gave him a build or where he got one from.

------------------
Peace.

[Catiline]

Jon i suspect in this respect that soly is giving hte best of his knowledge and EA is just stirring. Soly feel free to disabuse me of this misconception if necessary http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif. For our sins (and they must have been greart) we generally have to put some trust in Soly on these issues, and I think he's generally close to the truth, so be nice

------------------
It's not a bug, it's a feature

[Wireframe]

I am just wondering where he got the build from. Evidently he has at least some connections. There is no dishonor in asking.

[Catiline]

Wireframe I wasn't having a go at you at all, I'd like to know just as much where Soly gets his info from. I was just saying that it's ussualy reasonably reliable, once you get used to guessing what he's made up

------------------
It's not a bug, it's a feature

[Wireframe]

LOL.. so normally this guy is full of _____.

------------------
Peace.

[Wireframe]

BTW, you could have a go at me if you want.

[solypsist]

I've already discussed where I got my "build" from, and it's contents with some of the admins/insiders online here. Making a game isn't like designing a spyplane, so things do get past "security" from time to time. Notice I've been silent on many issues concerning the expansion, this is because I don't know, so there's no point in talking about them.

In order to prevent confusion (and potentially keep my name in good standing), I've promised some .Org members to no longer mention anything "pre-release" on the subject of the expansion. Please don't ask me to clarify or explain. If you feel I have been lying or joking on the matter, well it's your opinion and you're entitled to it.




[This message has been edited by solypsist (edited 04-25-2001).]

[Erado San]

Very true, Soly. I know what you're talking about.

Let me just add that beta testing hasn't started yet. Everything anybody knows or says that has not been made public officially will probably differ a lot from the final product. I wouldn't rely on the speculations that are made in the forums. Many issues in the final releases have been announced, but nobody knows how they'll turn out.

Also, the beta testers will be limited by a non disclosure agreement so they will not discuss their testing experiences. Sorry....

[EA Raskal]

solypist: Getting defensive aren't we? I was just curious why you were spreading rumors(even if you feel them to be true) to the community. I am glad you are not going to discuss pre-release stuff anymore. Because it only creates confusion, and disappointments in the end.

Erado San: Testing has been going on in-house for many months. If you're referring to external testing, you would know more about that subject than I do, because I am not aware of such a thing.

[Erado San]

Raskal,

Of course in-house testing has been an ongoing process over the past months. I was referring to player beta testing, kinda like what happened for patch 1.12.

[Anssi Hakkinen]

As an update: the Gamespot (http://www.gamespot.co.uk) screenshots confirm that you will not be able to use Mongol and Japanese units together, not in custom battles, not in multiplayer, not anywhere. Solypsist's information seems to be accurate otherwise (but no, I certainly have no inside info).

------------------
"2. Yu: bravery tinged with heroism."

oooooh yes, EA has sure done some testing before... ROFL... makes all the difference

------------------
http://www.waymoresports.com/images/MapleLeafs_logo1501.gif
go Maple Leafs (http://www.torontomapleleafs.com/home.html) !!!

[Obake]

I cannot believe that for the first time in months someone from EA/CA/DT hasn't been afraid to show up on the forum and actually participate and no-one even says welcome! Have we become so jaded and cynical?

EA Raskal........Welcome! Hope you have the stamina to stick around and deal with our barbs. It's nice to have an official presence on the boards again. We have been without for far too long.

And speaking of barbs...Soly's so-called "rumors" are as a result of his desire to provide the community with some information related to the expansion as a result of his experiences with the build he has since we haven't heard squat from any official source! Whether they are correct or not relative to the current build is besides the point.

Without any official input from you, other EA reps or the developers this community is pretty much hanging 3 sheets to the wind with no option other than supposition and "rumor-mongering", Soly's sense of humor aside.

Please don't take this as an attack, it isn't. It is rather a tersely worded plea for more information from an official source. Give us something real to chew on instead of accusing us of spreading false rumors based on what we have!

------------------
Obake

I warned you, but did you listen? Ohh, no...it's just a harmless little bunny, isn't it?

[Magyar Khan]

yeah we heard many times before theyw ill visit us more frequent. the only thing what is visiting us is mouth and claw diseases. also from England....

ah obake, so what you're saying is that we should welcome them nicely every 6 months or so when one of them makes a post. i see. not to mention the quality and relevance of those contributions (i guess this one here would be particularly good example). don't forget that 'they've been around' all this time. we met them and welcomed them (very nicely for that matter)- oh about a year ago was it??? if you or anyone else still expects to welcome them, i might as well receive a warm welcome myself, after my first post everyday...

------------------
http://www.waymoresports.com/images/MapleLeafs_logo1501.gif
go Maple Leafs (http://www.torontomapleleafs.com/home.html) !!!

[Erado San]

Welcome Jaydee...

Well, I agree with you here. Damn I have defended EA/CA/DT points of view often enough, but the one thing I don't appreciate is their lack of participation in our discussions here and on the official forum.

True, they got a lot of stupid remarks made against them when they did, but their presence here would definitely help stop stupid rumours and could enhance the feeling that, after all, they build it for the gamers. That's us. It is clear that they look at these forums and take our views seriously. A lot of what has been said here and in Question Time 2 has found a way into the new releases, so they do listen to us. But if they showed up here some more and joined the discussions that would certainly lighten the spirit.

As an example, Maddox from Russia is making Ilyushin 2, a ww2 air combat sim. Take a look at their board and look at the amount of participation from Oleg Maddox, head of that company: IL2 Sturmivik Forum (http://www.bluebyte.net/forum/eng/default.asp?bid=41&id=)

Apart from that, their presence in the Tech Forums could certainly shed some more light on some of the persistent problems. Even though these problems are caused by the gamers' configurations, and not by bugs in the game, their knowledge of the code could give us some more clues on where to start looking for what's wrong on their computer setups.

[Dark Phoenix]

At the Black Isle studio forums a top guy involved in BG2 posts in a couple of threads
each day asks questions regulary about design issues. He doesnt get any flames or anger directed at him.

------------------
DoragonPhoenix of the Clan Doragon

[Wireframe]

Perhaps the person who remarked here from EA is too busy to comment daily and perhaps reads the board often to get a feel of what the community is thinking. People n the game industry often work 16 to 18 hour days for weeks and months on end. Then during those days they come online to see the anger and such, because of this I am surprised to see them at all.

[Obake]

Wireframe, before I get started, I'll remind you of an earlier post on this thread where you gave permission for us to "have a go at you". http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

I have no doubt that Rascal is very busy, especially in light of the some of the layoffs and difficulties EA has been experiencing over the last several months. However, don't forget that Electronic Arts is only the PUBLISHER of the game. The actual coding is being handled by Creative Assembly over in the UK and the production is being handled by Dreamtime Interactive.

It may also help for you to know that the majority of the "old-timers" here also work in the computer industry and I think we all have a pretty good idea of what the developers working conditions are like.

As far as your suprise goes, you should consider spending some time visiting the forums for other games. It is actually quite common for other game companies to have a specific point of contact with their community so that the developers stay in touch with what "we" want. In many cases this will also tend to settle an unruly community down as there is an official source of information coming on a "regular" basis. In the case of our beloved game, that person has been "The Shogun". Richie however is also the marketing manager for CA/DT and has a full plate with those responsibilities and keeping the .com site up to date before he even gets around to us. Given that, he did a decent job in the past, but we haven't seen him for a few months now. As to EA reps showing up, I think they're more interested in busting our chops than they are in providing the community with any support or information based on the content of Rascal's post.

What Erado, JayDee, Magyar, myself and others complain about is that we have been told over and over, again and again that we would be getting more official information and more direct contact from the STW team and it never materializes.

I don't know if that is a direct result of this community being on average a bit older and more intelligent than the rest, or if we're less willing to accept the fluff that other communities lap up. Regardless, we don't play well with those who don't follow through.

I am also willing to bet that if we had more official participation on this board, you would see a lot less antagonism and anger on the part of the community members.

Anyway, most of this is not directed at you personally, I just happened to use you as the "whipping post" for this message, not that it'll make any difference, but I feel better so........what else matters! lol http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/tongue.gif

------------------
Obake

I warned you, but did you listen? Ohh, no...it's just a harmless little bunny, isn't it?

[BanzaiZAP]

For the record, I agree, and am also champing and snarling and waiting for more hard info to make the waiting.... easier?

Anyway, one thing that they are not doing this time is giving away TOO MUCH information. When the game was first coming out, they were hyping things that eventually got cut from the game. There was disappointment at losing the Father Visitor, for example. Part of the reason to keep silent about gameplay issues, is because they still haven't locked them all down. Also, many of those features can (and hopefully are) modified by our discussions. What if they HAD gone around "officially" saying "Yes, you get all units in MP" and then looked at our forums and saw how concerned we all are about MP unit-balancing issues, then turn around and "officially" say "No, you choose Mongol/Japanese." They end up looking wishy-washy, and we stop believing ANYTHING they say. At least by saying nothing, they aren't contradicting themselves and setting us up for disappointment.

One the other hand, if we don't know the potential possibilities, we can't give them our ideas and concerns. We end up starting our own rumors based on old information, and get even more irritable. Ye goddess, gamers are never happy, are they? http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif

-- B)

Beta testing started recently the official site said...

------------------
Honour to Clan No Fear.

Visit my resource centre at: http://terazawa.totalwar.org

[The Daimyo]

I wholeheartedly agree with Obake on this matter, and JayDee as well. I think that they (CA/DT) do not show any direct interest in the goings on in the community beyond updating the Community site and trying to keep up with odds and ends (clan links, tournaments). I do think though that they are slowly coming around in a lot of areas. The problem here for the past year is that it's taken them so long to get around to fixing, making, doing, etc... all of these things.

One of the standout problems that most everyone's had at one time or another is the Official Tech Support for this game and it's online servers. Technically, it doesn't exist beyond the Tech Support page.
Trying to email EA's tech support (the one's who are supposedly responsible for it) is a rediculously unfruitful venture.
Case in point, pre-1.12's release, there were 2 server outages that were caused by some bad scripting, this left us all without Multiplayer for 2 weekends.

It took Richie maybe a few hours to figure this out when he came in to work on Monday each time, and then he most likely had to deal with 4-8 different EA people to get this matter solved - each time.

Me and probably 500+ other people emailed EA's tech support about this the moment the problems started. Most of us never got a reply, and those of us that did got the reply only after having submitted it to 5 different departments, recieving 3 different Tech Support generic emails, and waiting 2-3 weeks for a response! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/mad.gif
That's F'ing rediculous!

Things like that (which are still ongoing dilemas) have contributed to the cynical attitudes, and various flame fests that we've all had here and elsewhere where it concerns EA UK/USA/Intl. - . It's not just Shogun's community either, there's dozens of game communities out there that were spawned from other EA games - and they aren't happy with the level of service or the manner it is delivered (err...not delivered! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif ).

Noone's getting personal with the game's distributors, makers, or producers here, we're all quite general in our bitchings and rants - but most everyone agree's that the majority of the problems had resulted from EA's bumbling. Whether it be in the manner that they beta tested versions 1.01, 1.11, or 1.12 - or in how they handle their customer service, we all seem to agree that there's something amiss - not quite right - or definitly f'ed up about the whole deal.

I know that Creative Assembly and Dreamtime have us in their best interests and wishes, and do their best with what they have available - but I think that entrusting the final say on Beta's, Tech Support, or anything else "Quality of Service" (Or Product) related - to EA, is a mistake at this time.

People here want answers, not from their own conjecture, or from PR types, we want to deal with the brains behind the games. We want to be treated like fellow professionals. Most of the people on this board and at my board are directly related to or knee deep involved with making this game better, more enjoyable, and more accessable to all newcomers.

We're the people who help them pay the bills because we spend our free time advertising and discussing their games so that people will join in the fun and make sure that they keep on making these games.



------------------
The Daimyo
Miaowara "Kakizaki" Tomokato
@ http://www.planettotalwar.com

[solypsist]

two people said, Quote I cannot believe that for the first time in months someone from EA/CA/DT hasn't been afraid to show up on the forum and actually participate and no-one even says welcome!
Perhaps the person who remarked here from EA is too busy to comment daily and perhaps reads the board often to get a feel of what the community is thinking.
[/QUOTE]

It might be different if the EA guys showed up to give us some info once in a while, but instead EA Raskal spent his time trying to razz me for having something in my possession that the EA Development guys didn't know about. They're too busy to comment daily? Yet one guy can pop in and do his best to make me "get defensive" and then quickly disappear before anyone hits him up for some real posts. BTW, if that's their attempt at "damage control," for (possibly) missing development stuff, then that should explain EA's wonderful community outreach efforts.
Come on, these clowns at EA are napping, they have no intent of letting the Community Beta Testing have any effect on what they've put together; my little "build" I (may or may not, you understand)have is proof that everything's pretty much been decided on since mid-March and that the Community Beta is probably more for patch-development reasons than for application on the actual expansion.

[Anssi Hakkinen]

Be nice, Soly-sama... Although, admittedly, psychoanalyzing you wasn't exactly "nice" either.

A certain Deathshadow-san claimed to have a beta some time ago at the Tech Support Forum - in this thread (http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum2/HTML/000245.html), specifically. Now if there are "official" betas in circulation, it is naturally in EA's vested interest to supervise the forums to ensure beta testers don't go around violating their "vow of silence" - and this thread's topic doesn't exactly make it inconspicuous. Reading the thread, Raskal-sama noticed that you were giving out information - and also that it wasn't from the beta version that had been released (this assuming any beta has really been released). Thus, I think Raskal-sama's interest in this thread wasn't because of their promise to appear on the forums, but because of their need to supervise the beta testers.

Despite this, many valid points have been made in this thread, and I have no objection to most of them, despite my perpetual optimism. Sure, the developers have been attempting to tone down the hype after the unpleasant experience of features having been cut from the original game, but that doesn't justify ignoring us completely...

------------------
"2. Yu: bravery tinged with heroism."

[EA Raskal]

What you all fail to understand is, I am not here to spunge information to you guys. I am not at liberty to do so. All I am simply doing is looking through the Shogun sites, reading what people are thinking about the upcoming game.

I am in fact one of you, I play the game, that's it! I am not here to promote the game to the masses. The team here is simply supporting Creative on their game. Do you want to consider me a rep of EA? Um... I dunno. Sure if you want, I do work here. Don't expect too much of me. Thats all.

Peace to you and yours
Raskal

[This message has been edited by EA Raskal (edited 05-01-2001).]

[DoCToR]

Quote Originally posted by EA Raskal:
Don't expect too much of me.[/QUOTE]

lol

[solypsist]

Quote I am in fact one of you, I play the game, that's it! [/QUOTE]

Then I suggest you get a "normal" user profile instead of using one with with the EA Rep tag and logo.

[The Daimyo]

I wonder if he or any of the other folks from EA take into consideration ANY of the rants that we've laid down here over the past 10 months. I mean really taken them into consideration and then acted upon our requests.
EA specific ones.
Hmm?

I don't think so, so therefore we must all take what they say with a grain of salt, or a stick of butter, whatever's yer fancy for passing the urinal puck off with.
I'm not personally assaulting anyone, but I have developed a huge disliking of the corporate game production model. It stinks, it's inadequate, and it's a poor business model to boot.

These people require us to believe in them somewhat, and when they personally come in here and start spouting at us like we're their beligerant children then tell us not to expect anything from them - then perhaps we need to take a second look at this.

I for one, will never preorder another game again unless it's Shogun 2, or similar. I believe in the game, but not the distributor, Electronic Arts. Make sense?

I don't believe in any of the clap trap drivel that the other companies are piling up, about their "oh-so-cool" new games, because I've been around the block, and I've seen that almost 99% of all the PC games coming out lately are only 80-90% done, and most of those games suck ass anyways.
The 1% that do get it right, usually aren't 100% either, and then we spend the next 3-6 months waiting on the patches to make the damn things playable.

Here we are with Shogun, waiting on patch 1.13, and our torches have been lit for quite some time. The game's awesome, but the point of the matter is - it would have been perfect if they had only waited 3-5 more months - and tested it among the community - with real people - under real circumstances - and then gone back and made the necessary changes BEFORE going gold with 1.01.

That would have saved them an assload of time spent answering (err...not answering in a lot of cases) emails for tech support. Heck, then Erado-san coulda saved himself over 100 hours of his own time spent trying to do the Tech Support for them as well!
(Among others, including me and about 20 other people who attend this board, ahem!)

Far as I am concerned - they owe him 8 months of back pay as a Tech Support representative and Q/A specialist! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif

But, as good people we won't ask for that, or demand it. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/tongue.gif

I will ask for, and demand, that they PC game production and distribution companies stop and listen to us all. Stop rushing the damn games out the door. Stop promoting them for 1-2 years before they should hit, it's rediculous, and it's expensive. The profit margin for the game's makers get's cut into little pieces due to so many middle men taking their share for doing really unnecessary stuff, like putting ads in 10 different game magazines for 12 months at a time. 4 months works great for most things, games included.
Don't pass up the free help, like us game players, who sit for months waiting semi-patiently for a crack at the game. We're the most valuable resource that they have and most of them don't outsource to us because they are afraid.

Funny thing is, Soly, and dozens of other guys here and elsewhere have been given things by people from within the companies - that weren't supposed to have left the building.
Oh yeah, be very afraid of the fans http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/rolleyes.gif
Times are a changing, so should they.


------------------
The Daimyo
Miaowara "Kakizaki" Tomokato
@ http://www.planettotalwar.com

[Magyar Khan]

in return for the little things i did i just copy every artwork i like to my site. use as a i wanted and treat it like it was my own.... grab grab grab grab, just as they do... grab grab

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http://home-4.worldonline.nl/%7Et543201/web-mongol/mongol-images/mongolsmiley.gif Quote Although the enemy moves fast, a mongol arrow will kill him at last[/QUOTE]

[Erado San]

Hehehe, I like the idea of those 8 months back pay...

Nah, I did it without them asking for it, so they owe me nothing. Just a good game, is all I ask.

Raskal, fair enough. You're not officially representing EA here. Nobody appointed you to come in here and inform or help us out. We don't have a problem with that. What we do have a problem with, is the fact that nobody from EA/CA/DT is coming in here to do that. Seems the only time we're gonna find out about it is when we load the x-pack on our pc's in the near future.

Plus, impatience is running high here. Patch 1.13 was announced for november last year. It's now may. Good reasons or not, that drives some of us crazy.

Plus, there are some issues that are bugging us that we would like clarified if not solved. Many feel some issues don't get enough attention. Some more involvement from the companies could at least explain some of the issues and ease the atmosphere here a bit.

But that's utopia I'm afraid. For some reason there is a policy of the companies not to get involved in the discussions. And that is about the only thing I resent. Again, I would like to point to the forum for a game in development at this moment: The IL2 Sturmovik Forum (http://www.bluebyte.net/forum/eng/default.asp?bid=41&id=). In there, the project manager Oleg Maddox is very often around to explain issues during development, with a weekly dev update. It's nice, and people get answers. Man, I wish I could convince EA/CA/DT to adopt a similar attitude here.

On the other hand, (guys, beware, I'm going to defend them again...) some issues people complain about have already been answered. There was in this thread the question about whether or not you could mix all the units in online battles. Well, they already answered that one in Question Time 3. The answer was NO. I could give more examples, but this post is getting long enough.

Fun part is, when I ask questions I usually get them answered. Maybe they take me seriously for some reason, and they know I won't spread word around the forums, if only because of an NDA I signed. But by those answers I know they take us and these forums very seriously. I can say that about 90% of what we submitted as our wishes in Question Time 2 (http://erado.totalwar.org/qt/qt2/qt2_result.htm) has been addressed one way or another in the upcoming releases. And I bet they still have some surprises left.

About beta testing:

A little history first. At some stage last year patch 1.11 was released. One of the features of it was to improve online play. Well, it went hopelessly wrong. You couldn't play a battle with more than 2 players. period.

I was online the day after the release. I noticed some of the CA people in the foyer. They were checking out what was going on. I spent the whole day with them trying to play some battles and showing them what went wrong. I can tell you, they were as devestated as all the players.

Then they asked some people to do beta testing of patch 1.12. About a dozen players joined in and got the beta version of the patch. It was better, but not finished yet. We tested, and after some time the final release of 1.12 arrived.

Some of the testers doubt about whether our testing had any influence. You can see that doubt in the post of some of them above. Now I know that we had an influence. The final release was definitely better than the beta 1.12. And some of the issues we reported have really been solved in the final release. So YES, my fellow testers, we did achieve something. A point to be made here is, that if we had been given a chance BEFORE the release of 1.11, it would never had been released like that. After one hour of testing we'd have given our verdict.

And now we're on the brink of the new releases and patch 1.13. And yes, very soon the beta testers will again receive mail about testing. Fellow Testers, we'll soon know what we get to test, and even though some of you may have your doubts, I suggest you join in again and test the hell out of it. It's the one chance you get to make a difference, and I can assure you that some of the issues we come up with can still be addressed in some way.

[Anssi Hakkinen]

Thank you, Erado-sama: you said pretty much everything that was to be said.

So, I was speaking a bit imprecisely... Well, heck, I was wrong in saying that "we are ignored completely." It just ain't so, and scrolling through the feature lists for the expansion pack should prove it.

Our problem is... I guess I could call it "reciprocity". The question times are the only occasion when any semblance of communication is established between the community and the developers, or indeed anyone "in the other end". It's good, no, it's great that Erado-sama at least has established some kind of trust with the game companies. But if the only way to reach the devs is to sign a NDA, we don't have any interaction to speak of then. I understand they haven't got the time or the resources to maintain a full presence, but those meager resouces they do devote to this could be better directed.

As for the beta testing thing, I agree with a lot of what you said, Daimyo-sama. If STW had been developed for 5 more months, it might be even better, yes. But imagine what kind of storm would have risen if they had released the game "incomplete" after delaying it for 1.5 years! There are always more features to add, as has been proven on these forums, countless of times. And no amount of testing is going to make all the bugs disappear. Granted, more patches could have been released, and sooner, but we are not ignored!

------------------
"The unhappiest of all unhappy states is the republic or principality which cannot accept peace and cannot tolerate war."
- Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

[The Daimyo]

Anssi, If they had held off on promoting it, for say - 12 months or so, they would have given themselves the leeway to do what they wanted to with it. They would have also saved themselves (all 3 companies) countable amounts of of dollars (pounds).
Along with all that, they coulda spared many of the early burnouts - you know - the 1000's of players who were over-fixated - and over-hyped for the release that ended up being a year or so later than projected.

Just like this patch 1.13 - 6 months later than first projected. (granted it's all being done right now - and for a greater cause than just to fix some bugs, I'll give them that, hehe http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif)
The problem was - has been - and will be ever present for as long as companies like EA, and their peers - continue to push the game developers into early releases.
Creative Assembly was working on at least 1 other full game during the making of STW (perhaps 2 or more!). This fact alone may have contributed to it's delinquincy, or perhaps the dev's for one game had absolutely nothing to do with the other. I guess that's up to them to say.

Now, back to the main topic that many of us rambled on into under the guise of the first few posts.

We want them to talk with us, and we want them to deal with us in a personal fashion, at least as much as it can be done here. I don't think I've had any dealings with anyone from any of these companies that got more personal than the end salute of "Cheers" when that person was saying goodbye at the end of the letter. That sunk in as positive at first, then later on came to mean something else.

I'm dealing with a few other game making companies at present, and their lead programmers and marketing people have gone well out of their way to talk to me, gimme free goodies without me needing to ask, and they also frequent their own forums like crazy - looking to chat - and looking for ideas, feedback, and even help with issues!

I've personally dealt with the Presidents and Vice Presidents of a few of these companies as well. S#it, one of them even came looking for me to do some stuff with their games!

All very nice people, and I am looking forward to dealing with them more so in the future. THey email me with the goods, and to ask ME questions. Amazing huh? http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif

Noone from CA/EA/DT has EVER posted in my forum. Noone from any of those companies (EA/DT/CA) ever writes me to tell me what's up, what's coming up (besides the faint possibility of me being useful in the beta testing again), or to bother asking me anything.
Richie's there for me when I send him important stuff, but I don't get replies much anymore. I just see the things happen and give thanks to the great stars in the heavens that he reads my emails, hehe...

I find out the news the same e-way you all do, I hear about it second hand. I read it at some here-today-gone-tomorrow big name's game coverage site like Daily Radar, Gamespot UK, and so on.

Makes me feel like a mushroom. And you all know where mushrooms are found and what they eat don't you?
http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/rolleyes.gif

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The Daimyo
Miaowara "Kakizaki" Tomokato
@ http://www.planettotalwar.com

[The Daimyo]

http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/tongue.gif



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The Daimyo
Miaowara "Kakizaki" Tomokato
@ http://www.planettotalwar.com

[EasyCo]

Hi Raskal..I would like the TotalWarII:Roman http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif
Quote I am simply doing is looking through the Shogun sites, reading what people are thinking about the upcoming game.[/QUOTE]

thats it http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

EasyCo

[Wireframe]

Mushrooms don't eat.

http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

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Peace.

[The Daimyo]

Well, actually yes they do. What makes them grow and live otherwise? Ahem! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif


Or You could put it another way, where do you usually find "mushrooms" ?




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The Daimyo
Miaowara "Kakizaki" Tomokato
@ http://www.planettotalwar.com

[solypsist]

dig this site: http://www.leisuretown.com/library/jan1000/index.html

it has everything to do with what's on discussion in this thread....

[Magyar Khan]

i just know that -wild- pigs really like mushrooms, maybe that will bring some light to u daimyo :0)

we are ll being treated like mongoloid kids, they like us but wont give any real attention to us.... get my horse and bow son, we gonna make a ride.

[The Daimyo]

Holy shit Soly, that was quite a read! Where do you find such great stuff!



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The Daimyo
Miaowara "Kakizaki" Tomokato
@ http://www.planettotalwar.com

[Kasikki Kanamori]

N E 1 who is testing, the game, internal, or external, can they tell me how much hard drive space the expansion pack takes up? Because I only have 500 mb left.

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[Magyar Khan]

pigs eat mushrooms if that might help u :P

i agree it all suks and i hate it how things are going. but i got my mongol add on with nice art work eventually in it so i cant really complain, can i?

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http://home-4.worldonline.nl/%7Et543201/web-mongol/mongol-images/mongolsmiley.gif Quote Although the enemy moves fast, a mongol arrow will kill him at last[/QUOTE]