Quote Originally Posted by Orda Khan
By far the most user friendly was that of Shogun, plus of course, there was the 'Chat room'. I fail to understand quite why they felt the need to change
I think the reason things changed from STW to MTW was the move from the EA server to the Activision server. Activision's GameSpy provides no serverside support according to Gil Jaysmith which means everything you see on the screen and all the features have to come from within the game itself. Some of the features of the STW foyer such as chat rooms I believe were coming from the EA server. In MTW, the game would have had to make the chat rooms. I believe CA tried to make chat rooms in MTW, but couldn't get them to work. The decline in the foyer design from MTW to RTW is a bit baffling except I don't think Gil Jaysmith designed it. It looks like someone less talented programmed the RTW foyer.

Since there is a patch coming for RTW/BI, I'll wait for that and give multiplayer another try after it comes out. I really want to like the game, but I have my limits on the amount of time I'm willing to spend per battle and the amount of imbalance I can tolerate. Spears are definitely working better in RTW/BI. I'll live with the somewhat fast running speeds, and use the more efficient drag & drop to move groups which will help. I don't have connect problems to GameSpy and I don't experience very much lag even with large units. BTW, large units is what I'll be looking to play. Gil Jaysmith even went so far as to suggest huge units as the way to increase fighting time, but the lag is too much to be practical, and it appears that fighting time has increased in RTW/BI anyway.