The Daily Update at the Com

[TB666]

I'd rather have more communication than less. If that means that we will sometimes have expectations raised and then deferred, so be it. Better than a black wall of "when it's done."

Indeed.
If you go by TWC(unfortunately) they make it seem like it's best just to keep their mouth shut because they will threaten with lawsuits if you don't release it, since they think they said "it will be out tomorrow" instead of the what they really said "We hope that it will be out tomorrow", thus treating it like a verbal contract or something.
Happy that the .orgians(or something) is more calm in this matter.

[Balbus]

Indeed.
If you go by TWC(unfortunately) they make it seem like it's best just to keep their mouth shut because they will threaten with lawsuits if you don't release it, since they think they said "it will be out tomorrow" instead of the what they really said "We hope that it will be out tomorrow", thus treating it like a verbal contract or something.
Happy that the .orgians(or something) is more calm in this matter.

No kidding. It's pretty scary over at TWC. Some of the posters there seem to be genuinely deranged. I'm not joking. You'd think CA had murdered their entire families or something. I've never seen anything quite like it.

[TB666]

No kidding. It's pretty scary over at TWC. Some of the posters there seem to be genuinely deranged. I'm not joking. You'd think CA had murdered their entire families or something. I've never seen anything quite like it.

It was the same during the RTW era(which again the .org was the more reasonable site back then).
All the forums were pretty much hot-zones back then.
TWC handled itself well during M2TW due to a zero tolerance being issued on CA-bashing.
Some people got banned for simply looking at the CA-logo the wrong way but overall we had a more reasonable discussion and far more productive.
Today there is none, any thread being created is usually derailed after a few posts resulting in whining about bugs and other issues.
I have been flamed quite alot of times for simply trying to put things into perspective.
Hopefully the patch will calm things down a bit but I can promise you that some of them will complain regardless, no doubt about the same issues despite them being fixed(some of people complaining about the load-save bug in RTW complained about it even after it was fixed).
Kinda strange that CA doesn't post here that often despite being a better forum to communicate with their customers.

[Ordani]

Kinda strange that CA doesn't post here that often despite being a better forum to communicate with their customers.

Where-ever CA people are will be the forum perceived as most desirable to be using to most people.

[Phog_of_War]

I find it funny that some of the same people who said

"Take your time CA, we are willing to wait for even 2 to 3 months."

Are the same people who now say

"Wut? No patch today?!? That is just wrong CA!! You promised!!!!!!!"


Side note: post #100

[TB666]

I find it funny that some of the same people who said

"Take your time CA, we are willing to wait for even 2 to 3 months."

Are the same people who now say

"Wut? No patch today?!? That is just wrong CA!! You promised!!!!!!!"


Side note: post #100

Even more funny is that people that screamed out "OMG CA you released a non-tested patch that made the sound bugged, why don't you test your patches CA !!!111" are the same ones that are screaming out "Stop testing the patches and release the patch now, you can always fix it later !!11"

[Elmar Bijlsma]

TB666, Phog_of_War, is that even true or are you saying it to make yourself look cooler by comparison?

On the daily updates thing, sure, it's lots better then it was during the RTW days when communications were infrequent, later then promised (that were just the announcements, not a patch!) and used as many words as possible to tell us as little as he could get away with including pre-announcing announcements and worst of all resorting to direct untruths.
I got so fed up with Shogun/Richie, and also the people who kept profusely thanking him for any bit of non info being drip fed. Back in the STW days he was far more open, less prone to PR spin.
Don't miss Shogun/Richie one bit.

By comparison, a big two thumbs up to the recent comms. It's been getting better ever since SEGA grabbed the reigns. While the news/circumstances haven't been all that good, the generally frank communication (excepting Kierans off site post-release interview which put a bit too rosy hue on things) allows me to be a bit more understanding towards CA and the people that work there, and be more accepting of the current situation.

My annoyance as expressed in the previous post wasn't so much about CA naming a date and not making it. I took more issue that they couldn't get the release right when it shouldn't be all that hard. I mean, the patch was ready Friday, probably earlier. You'd have thought they'd be getting everything ready then, merely waiting to flip the switch after testing. Instead they seemed to have done it the way I do my chores... at the last possible moment. And got it wrong.

[Veresov]

No kidding. It's pretty scary over at TWC. Some of the posters there seem to be genuinely deranged. I'm not joking. You'd think CA had murdered their entire families or something. I've never seen anything quite like it.

You must be new to the internet and its forums. Angry posts and contention are a trademark of game forums particularly when a game is released in an unfinished and buggy manner. There are enough acknowledgements from CA on .COM on this to ensure that no sane person argues that point.

TWC is more of a hardcore gamer site than the .ORG in fairness. You can see that by the huge number of mods and posts over there. At any time there can be hundreds of users on there. There are more veterans there and a high percentage of them are unhappy with Empire. They have high standards and higher expectations. A lot of the issues and clamour being raised have merit. I myself couldn't play the game until the latest 1.2 patch.

[TB666]

You must be new to the internet and its forums. Angry posts and contention are a trademark of game forums particularly when a game is released in an unfinished and buggy manner.

That is more correct.
Just look at the left4dead forum when they released the free expansion pack.
People were whining all over the place demanding their money back.
It looked exactly like TWC and yet Left4dead is a well-made game.

[Marquis of Roland]

W00T, there it is, the SFX loading thing, if they fix that I'll have no more crashes! Frickin' Awesome

[Fisherking]

May 7th

Dear all,

The new multi-threading support was made more stable today, resulting in proper four core utilisation in large naval battles. This has yielded some great performance boosts. We've also edited the way farm structures are handled for land battle loading, shaving a few seconds off of loading times for battles using these objects.
The graphics team are also working on restructuring the underlying code framework that handles unit variation, resulting in a possible move from 8 varities to up to 64 on ultra settings.

All of these things we hope to feature in the next patch, or the one beyond that making Empire more stable, more rich and more fun.

Kind regards,
Kieran

today's

[Servius]

Excellent, excellent news. I like the windows error reporting thing a lot. I hope that tool is able to provide useful information about crashes. Also keen to enjoy any improvement in stability, better use of multi-core processors, and shorter load times.

The last patch sorta fixed the cursed unit bug for me. While I will still occasionally CTD with the WSOD when clicking a unit, a simple restart of the game allows me to continue (whereas before any action involving the cursed unit would cause another CTD). I think I may be able to finish a campaign now. Only once the game is completely stable will I start inquiring about things like greater randomization in troop skins and more faction-specific units at the lower tech levels. First things first.