Quote Originally Posted by Lord Yunson View Post
Sooo the bottom line was we are to blame for putting at risk the future of total war, because we voiced our dissatisfaction with a product they now admit was not in a good state at release.
That does seem to sum it up. The blog post was remarkably thin-skinned, coming from someone in a game company trying to communicate with their audience. There seems to be an implied expectation that people who have followed CA over the years, and bought previous games, should be good fans of the series. We should keep a stiff upper lip and suffer through the flaws on release; we should help to boost the ratings at places like Metacritic out of past loyalty and future expectations.

It doesn't work like that, not for me anyway. I like to support game companies that are consistent in providing good gaming with minimum hassles on my end. Life is too short, and there are other good games out there to play. Maybe not games exactly like the TW series, but good enough. I don't like being asked to be patient for fixes to make the game playable and fun, after spending my money.

I thought I was being smart by waiting to buy ETW until several months after release and two patch cycles. But 1.3 brought the constant DOW's, and it was only the last 1.4 patch that has made the game worth playing (IMO) on the strategic level.

I'm having some fun with it now, but this experience (and similar experiences with RTW, M2TW) will only make me wait even longer to buy the next major TW game. They have zero chance of getting me to buy a game on release day, if they can't break this pattern. I don't know how a game company can survive, if a significant portion of the "loyal" fan base, who eventually will buy the game, doesn't want to buy it in the critical initial release phase due to past history.

Quote Originally Posted by Dradem View Post
Ok they released it to early no doubt about it, probably due to pressure from SEGA. But also from a lot of the Fan base I remeber reading posts here and on the /shoguntotalwar.yuku.com (not to mention on other sites) that a lot couldn't wait for the release and where angry that it even got postponed for a few weeks.
That has no bearing on the issues (IMO). This is something that every game developer with a large following has to deal with. It just comes with the territory. The better companies learn not to get too specific about release dates until they're forced to, by notices showing up on retail sale outlets.

If the other game companies can handle this kind of pressure, then CA can too. This is the least of their problems.