Well, here's a novel solution to the problem:

SEGA could invest the peanuts it would take to fix the known serious issues! OR

CA could just factor the cost of the patch material into the X pack. We're paying the whole freight on that one, so money is no excuse at all. The coding has to be done anyway. The only expense would be for QA and patch delivery construction. They could tap the hundreds of willing players on this and other forums to get all the beta testing they could possibly want-- for FREE!

OR

CA could work OT and fix this on their own. Devs are salaried, it's not like they'd be working for nothing. Other companies (e.g. Blizzard) do this all the time without crying it will break them, or they need money from the publisher.

That's 3 solutions in less than 5 minutes of thought. You know what that tells me? It tells me there are WAYS to solve this, just not any WILL to solve it.

There will be a patch. It's just a matter of whether we call it an expansion pack or not, pay for it ourselves or not, and get it soon, or sometime in "late 2005".