Was Medieval 2 rushed?

[Aenlic]

One of the drawbacks to being an oldtime computer gamer, beginning way back with my first Altair, is that I remember when computer games were released bug free. I remember when beta testing was used to find bugs prior to release. In the area of online games, beta testing is just an advertising tool these days, and people willingly pay monthly fees to play "released" MMORPG's games while the programmers work out the bugs. We pay, in effect, to beta test. It's not so bad with the non-MMO's, because with most of them we get free patches and eventually the worst bugs are handled. It is perhaps even better with a game developer like CA which supports an active modding community.

Still, it's a shame that the days of relatively bug-free game releases are dead and gone. It's not likely to change. EA is the worst offender; but they all do it. We have to face the fact that once people started making considerable amounts of money on computer games, the corporate accounting leeches got involved and they now run the show. Add in the deleterious influence of the even more money-driven console game market and we're pretty much guaranteed to get bug-filled products now. Some are just in a beta status and can be fixed with a couple of patches. Others are in worse shape and would have been considered alpha status in the good ol' days of a few years ago. In the end, the corporate suits would rather release a bad product, knowing we'll still buy it, then risk their excessive salaries getting the product right before release.

All things considered, CA is the least offender in system which promotes the release of bugged products. At least the encourage our modding and listen to the community. They aren't perfect; but compared to other developers, it could be much worse.

[Xaziv]

Yeah, compared to other companies CA isn't that bad.

What makes EA so bad is... Not only do they horribly rush games, but there is a 90% chance they will never patch or fix any of the bugs in the rushed game.

There are only a couple series where they release patches, like Battlefield series, but all the rest are usually not patched at all and rushed.

There aren't many good game companies out there. All the good ones seem to be deteriorating... or they are small market game developers... CA, Bethesda, arguably Blizzard... and im probably missing out some others... are all relatively reliable... but all of them seem to be making a turn for the worst... with Bethesda abandoning the roleplay elements that made MW great, with Blizzard being stuck on p2p mmorpgs... with CA improving mostly graphics instead of content...

But yeah, it's not that bad. It could be a lot worse. If this were an EA game, it'd be released with 50% more bugs, and it'd never be patched.

Be greatful we are getting a patch.