Has anyone been to totalwar.com recently

[Old Celt]

voigtkampf,

I respectfully submit you are wrong. There are many venues in life that show what only a few determined individuals can do when they work together. It is true that only CA can produce the next TW title. But we certainly don't NEED them. It will take years for them to build the next one, and in the meantime, other companies will build off the technology and beat them to the punch. We as consumers will have other choices.

I'm not some 13 year old kid. CA has chosen to insult the users who have discovered their game bugs on this and other forums. They have refused to stand behind their work. You act as if it is unreasonable to expect good customer service. Also, since I program for a living, I feel the conduct of CA is a slur on the integrity of ALL programmers. I'm not willing to excuse them any more.

I started out on this forum firmly in support of CA and soon found how wrong I was to give them the benefit of the doubt. At this point, they have already committed PR suicide, and the ratings at Amazon and elsewhere will soon reflect that. Only SEGA can salvage this situation, if they care to, by hiring some "commandos" to fix the code and put their PR department into action to keep their reputation from going where CA's is headed. I watched an organization I belonged to take the same tact CA has. It only took about 25 of our customers to decide they didn't like the policy, and the company shut its doors less than a year later. My supervisor was fired for demanding the company properly stand behind our work. I know for a fact that if the right people complain to the right places, it gets results.

[nokhor]

there is a fine line here, and i think some of us are beginning to cross it. this is becoming less of a cry for justice 'let's force CA to do the right thing' and is becoming more of a cry for revenge 'let's hurt them economically because we know we won't be getting another patch' that's perfectly understandable if you guys feel that way, but i don't think the org should be used as your staging ground for your reprisals against CA. create your own forum and hound them from there. i think if things continue along their present course here, threads will begin to be locked and deleted, some patrons will begin complaining about the despotic moderators and eventually people will get banned. all i'm saying is respect the org and what it stands for, and take your war someplace else.

[a_ver_est]

We Shell Overcome?

Well, I wouldn’t be holding my breath on that bet.

And as for ElmarkOFear-sama, he is an old dog and highly respected on the TW scene; he is no underdog, and never will be.

When he says “don’t waste your breath”, he says so because he knows the way things will unfold, not because he is covering anyone. I know it too, and I say he is 100% right. I would love to be wrong, but I know I’m not. I’d be happy if people could prove me otherwise at some point, but whatever you do in process, don’t hold your breath.

But VI patch was released only after a heavy community pressure, is it correct ?

Which is the difference between both situations ? well, I think that the current protest actions are more aggressive, too aggressive perhaps.

[ElmarkOFear]

@Elmark
I can understand you being an apologist for the ridiculous behavior of the .com mods, as you say you have experience as a mod and know how it feels to be abused. We all know there is improper behavior on every forum that needs correction from mods. But the actions of the mods on .com go far beyond what is required. They are quite obviously moderating to an agenda, probably because of angry e-mails from CA staff. I think they teach you in Mods 101 that you edit or delete individual messages, rather than locking whole threads over one or two problem posts.

The Mods are really unhappy when they get compared to Nazis or other fascists. There's the Godwin's Corollary, etc, and the enforced political correctness that says, "If you mention that in any way, your point and your posting are invalid." Well that's simply not true. If someone can make a valid comparison between how the Minister of Propaganda or Baghdad Bob treated things, then I don't see how that is a violation of the forum rules in any way other than some people just don't like it. It sure is a lucky thing for people like you that FREEDOM OF SPEECH is not enforceable on your precious forums.

Very interesting reading here celt. You feel you have the freedom of speech to say anything you want on a corporate-owned forum and that you expect nobody to take any action. First you call me an "apologist", then you group all the mods into the same category by stating the mods are "ridiculous", then you throw out a nice conspiracy theory by stating they are "moderating to an agenda", then make the "Mods 101" comment, and lastly go into a description of how it is ok and relevant to refer to someone as a Nazi and/or Fascist. LOL

You either did not read my long post describing, in detail, the way the .com mods work, or you believe I am lieing to everyone. Your belief seems very clear as to what you believe with the "people like you" comment.

I know it hurts to realize that what you feel, say and do, will never have an impact on CA's business decisions. You are not the first. There is a whole veteran TW community (both SP and MP) which left due to this, myself included.

The best suggestion I have heard so far was posted, I think, by Pode, who said to go to Amazon.com and other internet sites which allow reviews of the game and flood them with the load/save game problem. This way you COULD impact sales of the game. Here and at the .com you will not affect sales, because most people who come here have already bought the game, or enjoy RTW. The only way to get a business to pay attention to you is to somehow hurt their bottom-line. CA (or any business) will not listen to you unless they feel this will happen. You end up looking badly every time you continue to make the same arguments and jump on anyone who states otherwise.

Striking out like this is not a very mature way to handle things. The only time the MP community ever had the developers actually listen to problems found in the game was when they gathered together a list of bugs and annoyances for the last RTW patch. There was no direct conversation with CA, CA did not promise anything, and the list was gone over by the MP community, very carefully, and reduced to a workable 100 or so problems Interestingly, most of the known irritating MP problems were supposedly taken care of (This I would not know personally, since I sold my game, as stated previously). Still; most of the old TW MP community left due to the new direction the series has taken and not due to game-breaking bugs. Unfortunately, it appears the Save Game bug was not found at this time. Since it was the MP community who made the list, the list consisted of issues important to the MP side of the game with a few crossover game play issues which affected both MP and SP.

TURBO: Unfortunately, CA WILL continue to "do a shoddy quality assurance job and refuse to patch game altering bugs". This has been proven over the past 5 years again and again. Many have tried to get things changed, and used a lot worse tactics than what you guys are using, to no avail. CA won't budge. As stated above, Podes Amazon.com idea would have a greater affect on getting the attention of CA than continually stating the same argument over at the .com. As for your account being deleted. There are only a few capable of doing such a thing Killemall would have that ability, Eradosan would have it, otherwise the only ones who could delete an account would be CA staffers. It was probably one of the above who did it, not a moderator. The moderators do not have that ability. Most of them are new now (Obake, Wart, Tarrak, myself and a few of the other veteran mods have left) This is the point I was trying to make. By grouping everyone together you are stating a "guilt by association" which is not the case. The moderators, especially the new ones, were respected members of the .com community and liked by a majority of the patrons. Their personalities have not changed and they did not ask for the job ("You ask you do NOT get" is the unwritten rule there) and they surely did not want to get involved in this save-game bug mess. However, they have to represent the whole community, and not just one section. This is another reason why the spamming of the same topic at the .com has been dealt with in a harsh way, with the closing of both good threads and bad. The mods are too new to be working an agenda as Old Celt suggested earlier. However, they are not experienced enough, nor confident enough yet to edit individual flames, and sometimes just close down the whole topic. Even if they did only edit the cursing, name-calling etc . . some would still throw out the words "Nazi" and "Fascist" and think that it was their right. There IS Freedom Of Speech at the .com, patrons have the right to say anything they want there, but CA also has the right to what they want to allow on their site and patrons will be held responsible for what they say when it breaks the agreement they had to agree to when registering to participate on the site. They should have read the rules of the forum before they clicked "yes". Nothing they say can validate their abuse of any patrons and/or mods or any of the rules of the forum. This could be likened to someone yelling "fire!" in a crowded theatre. Or "This is a hijack!" on an airplane. The right of Freedom Of Speech only goes so far and will not protect him when the FBI comes and thumps him on the head. Plus the patrons of the theatre and plane will undoubtedly encourage the FBI to thump this individual a couple more times just for good measure.
I doubt CA is worried since things such as this have been tried for longer periods of time and using much nastier means, in the past and have never affected CA's decisions.
Trust me, I hope you have a greater success than the community has in the past. I was trying to save you the time and trouble of finding out the hard way, what DOESN't work. You can try if you like, but I think you will end up being more frustrated than ever. I got tired of trying, and decided to best show my dissappointment by not playing RTW, selling my game back, and not buying any expansions. Once the TW series gets back to what I like in a game, I will be back, but not until then.
The only bad thing is, the online friends I have made over the years here in the forums make it difficult to just leave. I still enjoy the banter, and meeting new patrons and discussing ideas of what would make a great game. It may not accompiish anything, but it is an enjoyable pasttime for me.

BEL: Anyone who posts links to any No-CD sites, promotes any pirating of games, posts they are playing with a pirated copy or insinuates they are going to do such a thing is removed immediately and most often results in a permanent ban for that username or IP. There are few exceptions. It is stated in the rules of the forum, when you registered. That is probably why you were banned. Pirating is the one thing that will get the ire of the developers and it was probably MikeB, BOFH, or TheShogun who banned you. Also, it is much easier for CA to ban than it is for you to reregister a username, even if you DO have a non-static IP. Eventually, CA (not the mods: They cannot ban) knows you will wear down and either use a name which does not break any rules or will leave the .com entirely. Once again, you can try, but it will be to no avail. All it does is aggravate some innocent by-stander moderators for a short while, and may begin turning them into the very things everyone so readily accuses them of.

Good luck on getting this save-game bug fixed. Maybe it will be in the expansion, but if you can get them to make another patch, I will be most surprised.

PS: I noticed that my Civ3 Complete game has a switch in the options menu for each game which allows players to turn off and on a "random number generator" save feature. With this turned on, it will save the random number with the save game file and the game will always battle out the same when you load it up again. Since CA doesn't seem to think this issue is a big deal, how about trying instead to get them to offer this type of switch as an option on the expansion? That way players could determine for themselves how they want to play the game. To me, more options, are always a good thing.

[SpencerH]

I think that if the industry percieves that the market is there then we will see more (and better) strategy games. Firaxis (for example) hasnt made a tactical strategy game for a long time, but what will happen if Meier 'dusts off' the ideas behind the civil war games (which were every bit at good as STW and MTW IMO, given that they were earlier games than the TW series).

Previous TW games may have had no competition from the imitators, but RTW hardly comes up to the previous high standards. I agree that CA doesnt 'need us' to stay in business, but I'd say that if they dont stay at the top of the tactical-strategy niche and enter a more general RTS world then they will need to compete with many more developers who will turn out games every bit as entertaining as RTW.

[Voigtkampf]

voigtkampf,

I respectfully submit you are wrong.

I sincerely hope that I am; then again, I’m certain I’m not. I’m a genius! Time will tell, but by the time time tells, we’ll all have forgotten this issue all together.

It is true that only CA can produce the next TW title. But we certainly don't NEED them. It will take years for them to build the next one, and in the meantime, other companies will build off the technology and beat them to the punch. We as consumers will have other choices.

I played recently Civil War Bull Run that was basically the same type of the game as Medieval is; mediocre, at best. There can be only one TW, both in terms of copyright license and spirit. No one else can even appropriately copy the spirit of the game, aside of the mods being made for them, of course.

I'm not some 13 year old kid.

I never implied otherwise nor did I intend to be disrespectful towards you.

You act as if it is unreasonable to expect good customer service.

It is not realistic to expect anything more after the 1.2 patch is what I am saying.

I watched an organization I belonged to take the same tact CA has. It only took about 25 of our customers to decide they didn't like the policy, and the company shut its doors less than a year later.

I know for a fact that if the right people complain to the right places, it gets results.

But what do you exactly expect from them? They made the game, they produced the first patch, they brought out the second patch. That’s it, boys and girls, take it or leave it, nothing more goes. I feel like thousand patches won’t fix Rome and make it feel for me the way Medieval and Shogun felt.

I still wish the CA all well, I respect them and I’m grateful for the STW and MTW, but Rome has let me down. Never mind, that happens. If I were commanding at CA, I would pull ranks and “hold fast”; in matter a fact they are doing it right now. It is not financially excusable to embark in another patch production, what is done is done, cut.

Your efforts are in vain and are both doomed to fail and further widen the current gap between CA and TW fans.

But VI patch was released only after a heavy community pressure, is it correct ?

Which is the difference between both situations ? well, I think that the current protest actions are more aggressive, too aggressive perhaps.

CA has already produced the patch for Rome, two of them in fact. That is the difference; we already used up the magic patch option.

[ElmarkOFear]

Spencer: I hope you are right, I have liked almost every game Sid has ever created. I still play a lot of them too. :)

a_ver_est: The VI patch came about as the normal 1-game, 1-patch way of doing thing CA has always had. They also made one patch for STW/WE (Mongol Invasion). The only true second patch for a TW game was made by a community group, which did not go over so well. I can tell you the reasons if you like, just PM me. I will not go into it in this thread though.

Old Celt: You seem to have missed the whole point of my previous threads or did not read them through. I am probably the most dissappointed person here when it comes to CA. I resigned the admin position at the .com over it, I even sold my game back to EB Games (for a loss) after one week of play. I have complained since day one of RTW's release on the direction the series has taken, the type of gameplay it promotes, the shoddy MP lobby and the lack of game features (which were in previous games and now removed or forgotten in RTW). Even after I quit playing and quit admin'ng, I helped here, by suggesting to the people who were putting together the list, how best to present their issues to CA. From what I have heard, most are please by the number of issues CA helped with. They did not deal with them all, but they did deal with quite a few. Even CA was pleased with the way the list was presented, and THAT is a small miracle right there. What it proves is: there is a right way and a wrong way to present problems and that CA will only address problems it wants to. You cannot force them to do otherwise. I don't like that model, but I have learned it is impossible to change. You are preaching to the choir when it comes to your feelings towards the way CA handles things. However, it is WRONG to harrass, call names, and be a general nuisance to the non-employee, unpaid, volunteer moderators at the .com. If you think you are somehow going to get CA to make changes by doing this, you are mistaken. They care as little about their mod staff as they do about this community. CA is concerned with CA. This is the way of most businesses today. I don't like it, I think they should be more open to the community's wishes, but until you can hit them in the pocket-book they won't listen. The only way to do that is to not buy their games, which a lot of people seem unwilling to do.

I am sure that some at CA are laughing over the fact that people are spending hours upon hours playing, testing RTW for this save-game bug, and talking hours upon hours in the forums about RTW and getting very emotionally involved. They probably consider it validation that their game is entertaining enough to keep people's attention for such a long time. I can see the next box cover ad for their new expanison: "Rome Total War: Invasion of the Huns Great graphics, compelling single-player campaign, and enough obvious bugs included to keep you interested in the game for months on end! As a bonus, we have even included some special Easter Eggs: Not so obvious bugs, in which you will have to spend an extreme amount of time in finding and then spend even more time trying to get us to fix! Something for everyone!"

[*Ringo*]

Elmark, your fingers must be bleeding by now! Any chance your next post will be a few sentences before you befuddle my brain even further!

[ElmarkOFear]

hehe I actually enjoy discussions such as this. :)

I think they offered me the mod positions, first at the .org and then at the .com, to try and keep me from spamming! hehe

[HarunTaiwan]

Old Celt was fully supporting CA in the beginning. I think it speaks a lot that he's changed his mind 180 degrees.

As consumers, we have wonderful new tools to make corporations pay attention to our concerns.*customer reviews and ratings. The Economist this week has a whole article on this.

Anyone who tries to lay a guilt trip on me sayings it's "revenge" is wasting their time. In the non-software manufacturing world, you can't get away with these things. Let me know if any of you would refrain from SLAMMING a company that made a poorly designed or malfunctioning clothes iron.

Yeah, the game is great: my review says so. But the service is lacking. Why am I using a home made Bug-Fixer to correct the Scarred General "feature" among other things?

Or, if we all want to be forgiving and merciful, please make sure to be the same way when my company ships something with poor powder coating that's a bitch to assemble. I would love to be in the room when we see a CA developer cut me some slack if I put the wrong screw type in a hardware packet, etc. He won't call the 1-800 number asking for a replacement, will he? He'll go down to the hardware store and take care of it himself.

End of rant. It's still a great game - I just wish they'd committ to correcting the error in the XP.

[*Ringo*]

Any chance your next post will be a few sentences...

Thanks, just about managed that one!

[ElmarkOFear]

Harun: If you read the previous posts, you should see that nobody is trying to make you feel "guilty" about complaining. Every post appears to being stating, that the person is not happy with RTW, and not happy with CA. I have not seen where anybody is trying to argue that. What is being discussed is the way some are trying to get changes made. This has proven not to work over the past 5 years. You are correct in stating the wonderful new tools available to consumers. As stated previously, Pode's idea about going to Amazon.com and other sites which allow reviews of games would be a good way of getting to the consumers before they buy. The .com, .org, and .net forums are "after the fact" and too late in the purchase process to have any effect on CA's bottom line. BTW: Who is being merciful? Have you read thru the previous posts? Show me where any say to be merciful, and/or forgiving of CA. Shame this isn't the Old West, we could Tar and feather em, and string em up on the old Oak tree south of town.

[ElmarkOFear]

LOL Sorry Ringo: I just couldn't help myself!

[HarunTaiwan]

No, we don't want any mercy.

But we do want the punishment to involve scythed chariots.

[ElmarkOFear]

Lol

[player1]

Player,

Your welcome! You can blame my immature behavior all you want, as for the several thousand other threads they closed, I'm sure you'll come up with some apology for that too. I stuck to the thread they created, in the buried Rant and Rave section and I ranted about the company's announcement made that same day. If he didn't like a comment (like the fake newsgroup name I posted) he could have felt free to delete it or edit it out, just as easy as what he did. Instead, killemall had to rub his e-peen and act all sweet and engage a conversation with a guy he banned. If you don't see the fact that he was equally responsible for that conversation, you're insane. He just thought he could get the last word, and as it turned out he was wrong.

Yes, I'm insane, thanks for the insult.

[Old Celt]

@Elmark,

I did make a mistake of generalization with regard to "those people" at the .com. I did NOT intend my meaning to be that all the people in mod jobs are behaving in a ridiculous way. As you pointed out, some of the people doing the most drastic things aren't even mods, but hold other positions. So my apologies for lumping things together inappropriately.

You may be right that a campaign of customer complaints may not get CA to do the right thing. We can but try. CA is under new management now, so SEGA oversight could possibly make a difference. As happened with one of my former employers, the old CA management probably sold their interest in the CA, and so they just might move on or retire having made their money, and not wanting to deal with annoying pests like me.

@Nokhor,

This isn't a "war" from my perspective. I'm exercising my right to complain about something I paid for and didn't receive. If other like minded people decide they want to suggest other places to make those complaints or what not, then that's their choice. If you dislike the contents of a thread, then I respectfully suggest, you just don't read it?

@Player 1

Don't worry Player, I'm crazy too. I live in my own little world, but that's okay 'cause they know me there!

[player1]

Don't worry Player, I'm crazy too. I live in my own little world, but that's okay 'cause they know me there!

cheers

[Odin]

I have monitored this discussion closely on several boards. The concensus seems to be that RTW has been a marked step back for the series. I own STW, and MTW and loved each of them. However I dont own RTW. Why? Because of issues like this.

The gaming industry is full of companies who pump out games, get customer feed back, patch and rinse and repeat. In the end the customer spends more time testing then playing, and its a loosing proposition for a consumer.

I dont purchase games until at least 6 months after release, this way most of the strengths and weaknesses are out in the open. The game reviews further this issue along with lack of testing on thier end, and simplistic macro reviews that give you a flavor for the game, but not the subtleties.

In the end, the only way to make companies improve the release quality of thier games is make your purchase conditional on the quality of the product. RTW came with a lot of hype, and being the new shinny game on the bloc consumers ran out and bought it, no questions asked. In the end its the consumers fault for these issues.

why would CA change anything if you buy the games anyway? It all comes down to consumption, you dont buy it, they will listen, you buy and the transaction is complete, your recourse has been waived (save for your moderated ability to complain on thier boards....).

Do the right thing, wait until you make your PC purchases, dont give the benefit of the doubt and allow companies like CA figure out how to regain your business.

Enevitably CA will do an expansion for RTW, will you buy it straight away?

Its like complaining about baseball players salaries being to high, while you have a baseball cap on, and your local team's jersey on your back.

We are all part of the problem, your consumption is the most powerful tool you have to garnish what you want, never ever forget that.

[ElmarkOFear]

Well said Odin. And you did it in less the three pages like I tried to! hehe :) Now I can go back to my old, spammy ways.

Old Celt: You will find, once you able to get to know some of the .com mods better, that most of them are very decent individuals. There will always be a few who rub patrons the wrong way, but it is more difference of personalities between the participants than a blatant attempt at silencing everyone. Of course, you will run into a mod, every now and then, having an extremely bad night, who may not act in the most level-headed manner. Ahem! . . I remember having one patron get under my skin once by challenging my ability to stop him from spamming and cursing in the forum, so I deleted every post he ever made in the .com forum, and then deleted his username and banned his entire IP range for a night (Unfortunately, when you range IP ban someone, it can also ban the innocent patrons of the forum too who just so happen to have connected to the internet with one of the ranges.) From this, I learned not to go overboard and especially do not do any mod commands when I am feeling emotional (Though it DID get rid of whomever it was, until he could calm down.) hehe In the end, we are all human and subject to the whims of our emotions, except for maybe Killemall (He IS a lawyer in real-life after all!)

***Don't get me wrong, I like Killemall as an online friend, but I do not always agree with his aggressive style of moderating. I must admit it DOES get the job done though, but sometimes at the expense of alienating some patrons who were just blowing off steam and would normally obey the forum rules. I mark it off as a difference of moderating style. I am sure he feels the same about me sometimes as well. ***

I keep in touch with a lot of the old mod squad over at the .com and if some of you would like, I would be willing to ask one of them "why?" when you feel you may have been subject to a harsh penalty. I can at least find out why you were banned or had your posts edited. (Turbo: What was your username over at the .com? Nobody I spoke of could see where you were banned or even remember a Turbo username. If you would like an explanation of why you may have been banned, PM me with your username and I will get back to you in the same manner.) You will find it is better for everyone involved to settle things privately through PMs than to publicly go into the forum and post there. As long as I don't flood the .com moderators with PMs or emails, I am sure they will be more than happy to give me the information for anyone. I was always happy to give second chances and to unban patrons who had let their emotions get the best of 'em, as I am sure most of the current mods are. No reason for everyone to be getting angry at the wrong people. Save it for CA. hehe

[Midnight]

I'm beginning to feel utterly powerless here.

I am disgusted with CA's treatment of their fans, who have gone to (and are still going to) great length to point out what is, IMO, an obvious flaw. They won't listen. They've shut the door, and appear not to care.

I can say I won't bother with the x-pack, regardless of what they do with it, now. I can say I won't buy another CA product, but ultimately I'm insignificant. It doesn't matter. They can get away with what they like, and treat their loyal fans (I've followed CA since MTW, and bought RTW straight away on the basis of their previous offering) like dirt, and what can anyone do?

What is the point when they refuse to listen?

[Odin]

I'm beginning to feel utterly powerless here.

I am disgusted with CA's treatment of their fans, who have gone to (and are still going to) great length to point out what is, IMO, an obvious flaw. They won't listen. They've shut the door, and appear not to care.

I can say I won't bother with the x-pack, regardless of what they do with it, now. I can say I won't buy another CA product, but ultimately I'm insignificant. It doesn't matter. They can get away with what they like, and treat their loyal fans (I've followed CA since MTW, and bought RTW straight away on the basis of their previous offering) like dirt, and what can anyone do?

What is the point when they refuse to listen?

Dude, what you can do is not buy any more of thier products, as you said. It might seem like you as one guy cant make a difference, but how many other guys are there out there like you who think thier one voice means nothing?

What if all of you didnt buy the expansion, or any other CA product?

I suspect it would matter a great deal, and would be taken note of and addressed, otherwise CA can kiss its profits goodbye. Remember your purchase is your power, they want it bad, and once you give it to them the only incentive they have to keep you happy is the hope you will buy more.

The cycle of consumers buying poor release quality games has to end sometime or we will always be stuck with issues like the save game thing. It starts with guys like you saying "I wont buy thier games any more". Your voice matters as a gamer, and your opinion counts....

Particularly when you back it up with your wallet.

[ElmarkOFear]

Midnight: It is not completely lost. Though more difficult now.

The MP community had some success in getting things addressed in the first patch, but they worked extremely hard on gathering the list together and weeding out "personal preference" items from actual game problems. The list was gathered by a lot of the .org patrons (find out who they were) and this would be a great place to start asking questions on how to present the save-game problem in a manner which will make CA more likely to consider the changes. Do not expect it in a patch for RTW, but it MAY be included in the expansion or later on in future releases if it can be presented in the right manner and if CA is convinced it hurts gameplay.

[Puzz3D]

I bought Rome shortly after release because Best Buy put it on sale for $40 (usd) and included an exlusive RTW soundtrack CD. I went ahead and bought it even though I didn't like the demo, but I was genuinely appalled at the state of multiplayer. Even after the v1.2 patch, the gameplay is such that I won't play MP, and now it's apparent that the SP game is seriously compromised by the latest revelations. The best part of the game is the opening screen with that lead in music. It's very inspiring and makes it easy to believe that RTW must be the best game ever released for the PC. Well, it isn't by a long shot, and it's clear that the players can't fix it no matter how much they mod. They can't fix the strategic game, and they can't really fix the tactical game either.

After the initial release of a game, CA relies heavily on players identifying problems. After the patch, they are much less receptive to this because they don't want to keep making patches. The discerning player is out of luck because his gameplay concerns are drowned out by the majority who are mostly concerned with CTD's. CA did a very good job in making a stable game, and without that no one would be concerned with gameplay issues. It could be that CA isn't allowing or can't allow themselves enough time to produce the games which is a fundamental problem and will affect everything they produce. Every Total War game they've produced so far has had gameplay issues that were never ironed out.

A Best Buy sale isn't going to be enough to get me to buy a CA game next time. I'm sure CA has some projection on how well the add-on should sell. If it doesn't meet that projection, it will their their marketing department doing the reassessment rather than the AI after a loadgame.

CA may want to consider changing their name to Creative Disassembly if they are going to continue along the path of dismantling the gameplay in the Total War Series.

[Pode]

For the record, HarunTaiwan originated the excellent idea of the Amazon (and other) reviews. I was simply very vocal about spreading it across other fora. One of the mods here felt that the .org shouldn't be used to promote such a strategy, and so locked HT's thread and it's related follow-on thread. I can respect that call, even if I disagree with it. I think that was what HT was upset about below
Back on topic, the Amazon review suggestion was not greeted kindly by Kill54 over on the .com. I've bent over backward to discuss things reasonably without backing down, but I expect I'll get a warning regardless.

[Puzz3D]

I've never advised anyone to purchase Rome. In fact, I've advised 3 people over the last few months who I saw holding the Rome box in Best Buy not to buy it, and they didn't. It's not too hard to talk someone out of buying a $50 game.

[Colovion]

I've never advised anyone to purchase Rome. In fact, I've advised 3 people over the last few months who I saw holding the Rome box in Best Buy not to buy it, and they didn't. It's not too hard to talk someone out of buying a $50 game.

I told a few friends to not buy it as well. I'd been setting this game up for glory the months I lauded over it on this forum. When it was released I was really embarrassed to find that I couldn't even recommend it to anyone else and retain a clear conscience. I was playing World of Warcraft and for some reason RTW came up. Someone mentioned how they loved MTW. I told them that if that was the case they better not get their hopes up for RTW, as they hinted towards purchasing.

It's an incredible oxymoron. Fansites driving new fans away.

[ElmarkOFear]

Thanks for the correction Pode. I am an old man and forget things.

A very good idea Huran! Also, Puzz and Colo seem to have the right idea as well. I have warned many of my online friends from other games, that they might want to avoid this one, if they were expecting another STW or MTW. I also told them to avoid RTW MP at all cost. Now it seems, I must change it to include SP as well.

[SpencerH]

My sig at poly has a line "CIV is dead, long live the next generation of strategy games, Rome Total War". Needless to say, it generated some 'tough' comments from a few fellow civ'ers. After playing RTW I added the line "Dont buy the beta version though. We deserve games that are finished when they go 'gold'."

[ElmarkOFear]

I put this Xbox sig in right after I played the RTW Demo and it appears to have been prophetic, since Sega is taking over the helm and they are producing the Total Warrior game.