How did the suicidal Generals get past the testers?

[TheDuck]

I dont think that is an exactly fair statement. We are talking about a 'feature' of the game that sends AI general galloping off through their own lines, miles ahead of his own troops, straight at the nearest wall of spears. Repeatedly.

Not only is this completely a-historical, it makes zero sense.

We are not talking about a broken tab, or some other minor glitch, this is a major problem that ends up killing a good proportion of the 'characters' in the game. Couple this with the fact that CA trumpeted this game as a revolutionary combat engine and the point still stands that this should not have been missed through (im assuming) multipe checks.

In theory I agree with you, but we live in a very real and very harsh world where I'm prepared to cut CA some slack.

All companies work on cash flow.. and game companies only generate cash-flow by having newer games out there being sold. Sometimes you don't have the luxury of 'getting it absolutely right' before release, because you have to actually pay your people.

I don't personally know whether CA has had this issue or not, but I'm certainly prepared to cut them slack in this area.

To my mind most instance where game companies release buggy software come under this heading. If you were running a game company you wouldn't knowingly release bugs because you would know how much it would anger your users.. but if you are faced with not releasing software to hold it back for more bug fixes and that meant not paying your folks, what would you do?? I'd personally choose to try to make the best of it, release the software with the known bugs and pay my folks. Yes its a risk, but sometimes those risks pay off.

Given all the wonderful positives in this game, and the fact that there are very few truly bad bugs in it, I'm prepared to cut CA a big amount of slack in this area. You might want to consider it too. Its not a 'big buggy mess' that some folks on this board are whining on about.. It does have bugs, surely.. but so did MTW and STW when they first came out.

(and btw, if you hadn't picked up on it... I work in software.. not games, but software never the less.).

If they don't fix some of the issues via a patch, I'll complain right along with you.. but its still not that much time after release.. so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and wait to see what they do to make things right.