An interesting development

[Emperor[1G]]

My clan and our community have completely abandoned the Total War series over this. Well, that and the fact bugs and a crummy interface/bad servers were not improved upon by the expansion. The several members and myself who bought the game feel very cheated. Given the chance over, I would not have bought the expansion, nor Rome TW vanilla either. The headaches and frustration visitied on us first by the game and then by the developers lack of foresight has ruined whatever kind of loyalty I felt towards CA. I won't even start on Sega. I bought RTW on the basis of your past games of Medevail and Shogun. I bought the expansion in the hopes that this was an isolated incident, the "bomb" game some companies make from time to time. Instead, you (CA) proved you simply don't care about your customers, or take pride in the product you vomitted onto the shelf.


Before you trumpet the accomplishments of Blizzard, you may want to look at whats happening to them. Much like CA's developers, in World of Warcraft the game continues to decline as the developers ignore the pleas of the community and its paying customers. Look at the census numbers of players, you'll find that WOW has lost 28% of its North American player population since September. Thats staggering for a first year MMO. Granted it still has millions of players, but the rot is setting in.

Secondly is Warcraft 3, the current RTS for Blizzard. Again, looking at their own Battle.net census, you'll see between December of '04 where a little over 1 million games were played, there were fewer then 225,000 played in December of '05, and you can see the stready decline month by month. Its not because there's other RTS's out there competeting, because there isn't. Its because Blizzard screwed with the game and changed their match making system on the ladder, turning away tens of thousands of players who were tired of being pitted against the top ranked players game after game, with balance issues still severly out of whack. The ONLY thing I like that Blizzard has over CA and everyone else is the BattleNet, WHEN it working properly.

The lesson is too many companies are making games with the thought in mind we'll like them because they TELL US to. i.e. Square-Enix and Final Fantasy 12, Blizzard's World of Warcraft, Creative/Sega' Rome Total War, etc. Gone are the days when companies made games people wanted to see, or adapted them to the wants of their players.

[Mooks]

Dont forget about Ensemble studios and AOE3, the game producers completely abandoned everyone that made the game, leaving once-loyal costumers pissed off. Theyre multiplayer doesnt work for a decent percentage of costumers, and even if it does work the servers dont half the time (Can you beleive ESO servers were flooded by a mere 5k people? the games got out of synch and at the end of the game their victorys didnt count)

Seems theres a plaque going around...Devolopers abandoning their games, in the hope that everyone will buy it and the expansion without complaint.

At LEAST RTW has patches coming out, and i think the single player is awsome, even if the multiplayer chat got f*cked up.

[Tomisama]

Not to darken an already dismal picture.

But you do all realize that quite possibility SEGA only bought Total War to avoid some nasty legal wrangling over the release of SEGA’s Spartan Total War.

That when the name conflict was realized, it was then resolved by simply gobbling up the embarrassment (probably cheaper that the lawsuit and adverse publicity).

If that is the case (which I hope it is not), we have little hope of ever moving forward to get things fixed, and have better Total War games in the future.

----

In comparison with previous editions, Rome was, and continues to be (for different reasons) a disaster for multiplayers. A community of hundreds of (quite possibly over a thousand) avid multiplayers has been lost, which is a shame for them, but even more of a shame for the manufactures.

I say that because of the belief that I have, that a thriving multiplayer community is the best advertisement a game can have, even for people who don’t play multiplayer. When single players see a healthy multiplayer community, it has got to be the “best” endorsement for a game's purchase. The logic being;

“if all of those people are having that much fun, It must be a great game”…

[NihilisticCow]

But you do all realize that quite possibility SEGA only bought Total War to avoid some nasty legal wrangling over the release of SEGA’s Spartan Total War.

Wasn't Spartan Total Warrior developed by CA though?

[Grey_Fox]

Theory is wrong. Spartan Total Warrior was in development long before CA went into negotiations with SEGA. Frankly I'm happy that SEGA now has CA since now we have had patches 1.3, 1.5 and 1.6 released, something that would not have happened under Activision due to it's one-patch policy per game (that means expansions would not be patched either).

The games might be developed by CA, but it's the publisher that actually sells them.

[Tomisama]

Wasn't Spartan Total Warrior developed by CA though?

Yes that is correct. Please forgive my ignorance. I was speculating on possibilities, with no in-depth knowledge. I will be sure to do my home work in the future.

Theory is wrong.

In that case, I am happy to be wrong. I too was initially glad to hear that SEGA’s involvement. But believe that they are, and will be operating only in the same capacity as Activision and Electronic Arts before them, with little or no concern with the development and maintenance of the actual games.

But I would love to be wrong about that also

[UgliElmo]

I decided to add my two cents worth in that thread at the .com:

"The online community has never been given much priority with CA.

With each new TW game the MP community fell lower and lower on CA's priority list. The initial RTW MP game was proof of exactly how low on the priority list MP had dropped. It had fewer features, old problems from the past, and a really bad lobby interface which didn't attach usernames with CD-Keys (which is the main reason for chat being removed). Without the CD-Key-to-username, players cannot be banned from the server, nor can they be permanently #ignored or #banned from games since all they have to do is log on with a different username. This is very interesting, since MTW also used the Gamespy servers, but had the ability to permanently ban and ignore players from the MP lobby. Why would this have changed for RTW? Cost issues? New programmers?

A vast majority of the old STW/MTW MP community left once they tried RTW's MP and found it to be lacking. A vibrant MP community was deemed unneccessary and unimportant since CA's target market had changed. I am sorry to hear that the new tarket market group of MP players (who replaced the old MP community) are already having to deal with the reality of where MP stands in the overall CA TW grand scheme of things.

If you believe things will change for the better: They will not. Ask anyone who has been here since the STW days and they will tell you the truth (if you have any doubts) about the history of the TW MP and CA.

Some would agree, the only reason MP was included at all was due to the fact the game would not have gotten very good reviews, nor sold as well, if it had left MP out entirely. It has been said the MP community is a small percentage of overall sales of the TW series, but it is used as a major selling point when marketing the game. This "small percentage" mindset is why RTW MP does not receive the attention the current MP community expects. There has never been, and will never be, an interest shown in the needs of the MP community."


CA needs to be reminded every now and then they ignore the MP community at their own peril. Eventually their games will stop selling, since they haven't added anything to gameplay since STW. I think it is a dead franchise, on its last legs. I am not sure if they have lost their best programmers or if they have just decided to milk the game until everyone shows their displeasure by not purchasing future TW games. THAT is the real way to get their attention. If it doesn't effect the bottom line, it isn't important to them.