Quote Originally Posted by Olorin I
I have read many of the comment in here regarding the state of CA's response to the perceived wrongdoing as well as the state of their level of commitment to the Multiplayer Community. I stand with those who argue that CA is generally unconcerned with the multiplayer aspect of the game. Their response to MP problems/concerns is slow and, usually incomplete, when it occurs at all.
All you have to do is observe the decline in the design of the multiplayer forum from STW to MTW to RTW to realize that CA has become less and less concerned with providing a good multiplayer experience in Total War. In addition to the reduction in foyer features, the game itself has become less balanced with each of those releases.

Prior to the release of RTW, CA claimed that RTW would perform as well as MTW. In fact, unlike MTW you can't play it over a 56K modem. They removed the latency display for each hosted game, and simply state that you have to have broadband to play RTW multiplayer. The "normal" unit size was also decreased by 33% while the number of units only increased by 25%. This isn't performance equivalant to MTW. In addition to that, if you loose connect to GameSpy during a battle, you drop from that battle. STW wasn't like that. In STW, you weren't connected to the matchmaking server after the battle launched. If the server went offline, you didn't know it until the battle was over. In RTW, GameSpy itself is a factor, and possibly the major factor for many players, causing lag during a battle. There is no technical reason to keep GameSpy in the loop after a battle launches, and it's detrimental to the performance of the game.

The efficiency with which you can play the multiplayer game has declined since STW. We went from averaging 3 or 4 battles per hour in STW to 2 battles per hour in MTW and now 2 or 3 battles per 2 hours in RTW. You now spend the most time to play the least balanced version of Total War.

So, CA will fix the foyer chat to prevent a lawsuit, but I doubt much, if anything, beyond that will be done to improve the multiplayer experience. That experience has declined in quality over the last 5 years. It has certainly passed below my threshold for how I want to spend my time.