Hate to say that I do not like the game!

[mmk]

Never had so many CTDs! And it is definitely NOT my machine that is to blame.

[pevergreen]

Well, compile a list of what caused them, recent actions, the debug and your dxdiag and email it to CA, they love user feedback. If you can help them solve the problems, you are helping yourself and others.

[Veresov]

Well, compile a list of what caused them, recent actions, the debug and your dxdiag and email it to CA, they love user feedback. If you can help them solve the problems, you are helping yourself and others.

That is a complete waste of time. I've gone down that path and SEGA support suggested I buy a new GPU card and /or a new rig. Then I saw zillions of posts in the Technical help area - all unanswered about similar issues. What I got was a nonsensical canned reply.

I constantly read the technical help forum threads daily at .COM and I almost NEVER see anyone from CA post a reply or other any suggestions. That is a community self help group with CA visibily silent.

[Gargravarr]

And what is your rig? Does it need replacing? Is the OS clean? there are hundreds of reasons for all sorts of problems. Let me ask another question. You are sat there, in front of your computer, and the bulb over your head blows. Do you blame the electric company? Now, I am not saying that there aren't issues with the game at all BUT!! (There always is) blaming them for everything is a little harsh. Like I have said before, I have an old rig and it works perfectly fine on mine and as an engineer who has spent many years problem solving, jumping to a conclusion like you have is not beneficial at all. I mean, I could sit and complain that this game doesn't work on my second gaming rig. It won't even read the disks.. but the crucial missing piece of information is that my second gaming rig is a PS3. Any wonder it doesn't work?

[nafod]

And what is your rig? Does it need replacing? Is the OS clean? there are hundreds of reasons for all sorts of problems. Let me ask another question. You are sat there, in front of your computer, and the bulb over your head blows. Do you blame the electric company? Now, I am not saying that there aren't issues with the game at all BUT!! (There always is) blaming them for everything is a little harsh. Like I have said before, I have an old rig and it works perfectly fine on mine and as an engineer who has spent many years problem solving, jumping to a conclusion like you have is not beneficial at all. I mean, I could sit and complain that this game doesn't work on my second gaming rig. It won't even read the disks.. but the crucial missing piece of information is that my second gaming rig is a PS3. Any wonder it doesn't work?

As posted above my rig is old, needs replacing and the OS is pretty shot as I have a glut of errors on boot up, but yet experience no problems with ETW. I'm simply miffed at the problems others are having with, I presume, far superior systems.

[Gargravarr]

sorry, this was aimed at veresov and his comments. I do sympathize with people having problems (while enjoying the game and laughing I suppose) but feel that these comments need to be constructive to be any benefit. Also, as shown above, if I can offer advice and assistance to solve those outside of the game then so much the better. I for one have no intention of trolling or flaming in these forums I am here to gain information and to pass information to others. HOWEVER(another favorite word for these sort of things) it does get depressing with all the "this is crap" "this doesn't work" "this is a waste of money" "i can't" "not working"

even "I have this problem. Please help. Want to play and make it work." would be better the above comments make me wonder "if you had these sort of issues with other TW games like they usually say, why not go away, buy a console, and keep out of the forums for PC games!"

Sorry, it sticks in my throat a little all these negative comments.

[Dayve]

The problem can't be with Intel processors, i have one. I played for 8 hours today, 6 huge battles (2,000+ units on each side in each battle) and no CTD's at all. None for over 2 weeks and i play at least 4 hours every day.

[Lord of the Isles]

sorry, this was aimed at veresov and his comments. I do sympathize with people having problems (while enjoying the game and laughing I suppose) but feel that these comments need to be constructive to be any benefit. Also, as shown above, if I can offer advice and assistance to solve those outside of the game then so much the better. I for one have no intention of trolling or flaming in these forums I am here to gain information and to pass information to others. HOWEVER(another favorite word for these sort of things) it does get depressing with all the "this is crap" "this doesn't work" "this is a waste of money" "i can't" "not working"

even "I have this problem. Please help. Want to play and make it work." would be better the above comments make me wonder "if you had these sort of issues with other TW games like they usually say, why not go away, buy a console, and keep out of the forums for PC games!"

Sorry, it sticks in my throat a little all these negative comments.

Welcome to the Org Gargravarr.

I can sympathize with your views on negative comments to some extent. Try to ignore the extreme ones (the phrases "class action law suit", "CA has stolen my money" and "If I bought a car.." are good clues ). But remember there are unreasonable and extreme posts on both sides. Think of it this way when you get frustrated at a silly whining post: the poster has to put up with reading unreasonably extreme pro-game posts (as you do with negative ones) but in addition, unlike you, many of them can't even play the game. And they get told by some that it is their fault (which it may be in some cases but that doesn't ease the frustration any).

It is very hard to track down the causes of problems in a piece of software the size of ETW, and figure out why some of us have problems and others don't (as I suspect you know). For a start, many of us are playing different games. Some only play multiplayer, some set battles, others are still on RtI and the US campaign. Of those who play the Grand Campaign, some will play as GB all the time, other european powers, some only in India. Some use huge unit sizes, some small, some will autoresolve all battles. Some will build large trading empires, others just fight wars local to their home area, some will build huge navies, others won't. The point I'm labouring is that some bugs will only show up for some people because of their game styles.

That's before we come to the vast number of combinations of game option settings and peoples' hardware. Add that we are dealing with a game with multiple problems as released, some with similar symptoms, and ... well, I don't envy CA their current work and at least they have the source code, which we on the forums don't.

Two observations to finish with. I know all PC games are released with problems/bugs. In ETW's case, I still have confidence in CA to fix most of them but I think it pretty clear by now, 6 weeks after release, that ETW has more issues with it than most games.

And the second one is one that concerns me a little. Fans on sites like the Org are in some ways the cream of game buyers (stop preening in the corner there!). To get here you have to be clued up to a certain extent on the net and to carry out some of the workarounds that have been discovered you need a certain level of computer competence. Hell, to even install the game properly using Steam you need some skills. There are many people out there who will struggle with all this hassle over ETW. It will go back on their shelves and never be seen again, and they will be a little less likely in future to buy a PC game.

I find that sad at a time when the PC gaming industry is struggling, and it is one of the reasons I get a bit frustrated at the current state of the game.

[Veresov]

And what is your rig? Does it need replacing? Is the OS clean? there are hundreds of reasons for all sorts of problems. Let me ask another question. You are sat there, in front of your computer, and the bulb over your head blows. Do you blame the electric company? Now, I am not saying that there aren't issues with the game at all BUT!! (There always is) blaming them for everything is a little harsh. Like I have said before, I have an old rig and it works perfectly fine on mine and as an engineer who has spent many years problem solving, jumping to a conclusion like you have is not beneficial at all. I mean, I could sit and complain that this game doesn't work on my second gaming rig. It won't even read the disks.. but the crucial missing piece of information is that my second gaming rig is a PS3. Any wonder it doesn't work?

I have a dual core extreme, nvidia 8800GTX's (768) in SLI, 4 gig ram, raptor disk as 'c', 2 x 1.5TB Sata Hard drives, all driven by a silverstone 1200W power supply. It is a Cool-master case with 6 cooling fans and the system is watercooled to boot. Each graphics card has a zalman waterblock. I have temperature monitors visible at the desk level. OS = Windows XP - all updated. Drivers all current. System defragged once a week, anti-virus, malware, and antispyware programs running and updated. System scans once a week.

The OS was just reinstalled thanks to Empire's lockups. FDisk'd and reformatted last week.

I am an IT professional with over 20 years experience and this instability is due to poor software coding. I even tried installing it on a new i7 desktop system I got from Alienware week before last and it still crashes on it. I await your thoughts on what is wrong with my hardware since you are convinced thats the root cause...

[Gargravarr]

I have a dual core extreme, nvidia 8800GTX's (768) in SLI, 4 gig ram, raptor disk as 'c', 2 x 1.5TB Sata Hard drives, all driven by a silverstone 1200W power supply. It is a Cool-master case with 6 cooling fans and the system is watercooled to boot. Each graphics card has a zalman waterblock. I have temperature monitors visible at the desk level. OS = Windows XP - all updated. Drivers all current. System defragged once a week, anti-virus, malware, and antispyware programs running and updated. System scans once a week.

The OS was just reinstalled thanks to Empire's lockups. FDisk'd and reformatted last week.

I am an IT professional with over 20 years experience and this instability is due to poor software coding. I even tried installing it on a new i7 desktop system I got from Alienware week before last and it still crashes on it. I await your thoughts on what is wrong with my hardware since you are convinced thats the root cause...

OK as an IT specialist in both hardware and software with 30+ years experience there are several things I notice. With all that watercooling are you overclocking the PC??? Otherwise you are wasting a lot of money on a waste of time there. Running 8800's in SLI has always been unreliable due to the internal coding conflicting when running two cards in parallel, especially the early 8800's like you have there. The new ones have 512 or 1gb mem, the early ones had 340 odd and 768 meg mem). You make no mention of the make of your motherboard (rather a fundamental error for an IT specialist) Are the 2 SATA disks in a raid array (another basic thing that is relevant.) If you are such a specialist you will be aware that one of the common things we both have in common (I run an AMD system, Spec Below) is the software. Mine runs OK, your's doesn't ergo, it is likely to be the system. Simple. Pure logic. (Probably wrong but good first point)

(AMD Athlon64 5600+
3Gb Corsair800 memory(2x1gb matched, 2x512mb matched)
Asus Motherboard
Earthwatts 550W PSU
BFG Geforce 9800GT(512Mb) Graphics Card
2x500Gb Sata HDD non raid,
1x250Gb Sata HDD
1x160Gb Pata HDD
1x80Gb PATA HDD(OS Drive split 30/50)
Air cooled and stock speeds (OC Starts next week)

On a final note you are rude! Truly rude. I had no idea of your background, offered freely advice and assistance to you based on my experience and you turn round and shove that back in my face. Next time I won't bother!

Oh and I only suggested it MIGHT be a hardware issue not that it WAS there is a damn big difference there. I do find it odd though that the majority of those having issues are using Intel with XP now, call me odd but that looks like a link right there