Any chance we'll have the patch by tonight for this weekend?

[Nazrack]

Any scope on the time of arrival? Friday... Do they work weekends, so maybe Sat. Mid March, etc. I'm sure they have a deadline they're working towards.

[Lusted]

No they don't work weekends from what i know.

And all we know is that the patch is in final testing, so whenever that is finished is when we will get the patch.

[HoreTore]

Who works on weekends? :p

Was hoping for the patch today myself, but it seems like we'll have to wait to at least next week...

[Barry Fitzgerald]

More broken promises...

Last year the said end of feb...its now march. Sure a few days no big deal you say..but I shelved this game before xmas as it isnt playable..properly anyway. My last ditch hope is that patch 1.2 will fix many areas....

Darn game is just broken without it........

[Quickening]

As tragic as this sounds, I put off going to stay with my girlfriend over the weekend thinking that the patch would be ready by today at the latest. I can't be much longer surely.

[Foz]

What time is it wherever the patch team is working, anyway? Something like... real late Friday probably?

[Quickening]

Didn't we get the last patch on a Saturday?

[Lusted]

The testing team is in Europe, so its 3.47 GMT atm. THe dev team is in Oz, so any problems that come up in final testing have to be relayed back to them.

More broken promises...

And i wonder why CA only said aiming for Late Feb once? Maybe because of people like you?

Didn't we get the last patch on a Saturday?

No it was a weekday.

[pike master]

now lusted i specifically recall you saying you would feel us in by the end of the week on the rest of the patch list. is there any thing else you have heard or can you find out anymore as to what they have added on.

[Lusted]

I know about several fixes in the patch not on the list, mosty related to modding, but no i have not heard anymore about a full fix list. You'll find out when the patch is released.

[Quickening]

I know about several fixes in the patch not on the list, mosty related to modding, but no i have not heard anymore about a full fix list. You'll find out when the patch is released.

Well Im grateful for your input and CA's work. Im not complaining, Im just eager as hell to try this patch

[Daykeras]

I'm sure they've gone home for the weekend, so we'll hopefully see it next week. Bummer, really wanted to start a new campaign.

[SMZ]

More broken promises... Last year the said end of feb...

ok... I'd like you to tell me what you're going to be doing 3 months from now - and if you aren't doing it, well then, you're just a dirty lying scoundrel =/

nobody can foretell the future, the date they gave was a goal they were working toward and a general idea of the release date.... a couple of days isn't a "lie", it would take a couple of weeks to even have reason for disappointment and a couple of months to have reason to accuse them of "broken promises"

As tragic as this sounds, I put off going to stay with my girlfriend over the weekend thinking that the patch would be ready by today at the latest.

lol... you mind if I sig that? not tryna insult or anything... that's just my laugh for today =]

now lusted i specifically recall you saying you would feel us in by the end of the week on the rest of the patch list

comeon guys... don't start in on him too - I wouldn't want to admit I knew anything if I had to always carefully censor my comments to make sure nobody would have something to hold over me

[Hollerbach]

More broken promises...

Last year the said end of feb...its now march. Sure a few days no big deal you say..but I shelved this game before xmas as it isnt playable..properly anyway. My last ditch hope is that patch 1.2 will fix many areas....

Darn game is just broken without it........

And people wonder why game devs are hesistant to give info that seems perfectly reasonable to the community. This ^ is why, anything said gets taken as gospel and be damned if you don't deliver!

[chilling]

I hope the patch team go and have a relaxing weekend. Be back on Monday refreshed and ready to go, in the hope that we get the patch before next weekend.

Throw another prawn of the barbie for me.

[pat the magnificent]

They probably discovered some new bug caused by the patch and they're working to fix it. Waiting a few days is better than getting stuck with whatever the bug might be for the next few months.

I'm not saying that I enjoy this extra waiting, to the contrary I'm basically hating it. I don't want more bugs. I just want my game to work (and be harder).

[Mega Dux Bob]

And people wonder why game devs are hesistant to give info that seems perfectly reasonable to the community. This ^ is why, anything said gets taken as gospel and be damned if you don't deliver!

Not to mention people complaining that a game is broken because it was rushed out and then demanding the fix yesterday in the same breath. Sounds like some of the posters here are in management with that kind of logic.

[Ice]

As tragic as this sounds, I put off going to stay with my girlfriend over the weekend thinking that the patch would be ready by today at the latest. I can't be much longer surely.

[Philippe]

The following comment is not based on any insider information. I have no connection with either CA or SEGA.

I get the impression (based on casual surfing) that the patch is nearing completion, as opposed to actually being finished. The reason I think this is that the list of fixes in the blog does not seem to be all-inclusive, which suggests that work is continuing. Given the internal complexity of M2TW, I really hope that they take their time about releasing the patch. Especially since it may be a while before we see another. RTW needed half a dozen patches, and I don't see any reason why M2TW would be any different.

So if that is the case, I hope that when they think they've finished the patch they take a few days off, forget about if for a while, and not release it. And then go back and check it all over again with fresh eyes.

Doing that, of course, will probably turn up new issues that need to be fixed, but that's the nature of the beast.

I would also assume that after the patch is actually finished (and I really, really hope they don't rush it out), it will have to be turned over to QA at SEGA. I don't know how it works in this specific case, but at other companies that often means extensive testing to make sure the security of whatever software protection is in place hasn't been compromised. And the legal departments of anybody whose logo is displayed when you first fire up the game will have to be convinced that the patch doesn't undermine their advertising. Nothing to do with the game, but depending on the beaurocracy involved this kind of thing could take weeks.

So I really don't think it would be a good idea to cancel any weekend dates with your girlfriend this month in anticipation of a rumored, imminent release that hasn't been committed to by both companies. Given what's involved you really don't want an early delivery, and she probably needs to spend more quality time with you anyway.

[Lusted]

I get the impression (based on casual surfing) that the patch is nearing completion, as opposed to actually being finished

Wrong, the patch is finished - its in lockdown so no more fixes being added and its in final testing. That's what Caliban has told me so i can only assume its taking them a while to test to make sure all the bugs are fixed. I don't know why the fix list wasn't complete, but it wasn't because the patch isn't finished.

[Barry Fitzgerald]

The testing team is in Europe, so its 3.47 GMT atm. THe dev team is in Oz, so any problems that come up in final testing have to be relayed back to them.



And i wonder why CA only said aiming for Late Feb once? Maybe because of people like you?



No it was a weekday.

People like me paid for a game that doesn't work properly...I think paying customers deserve better than that..don't you?

If you bought a car and it broke down would you be singing the praises of the garage who sold it to you? not likely..

Anyway this is old ground...CA had better nail it real good on this one..or their rep will surely have suffered. It has to a point already..

[Lusted]

People like me paid for a game that doesn't work properly...I think paying customers deserve better than that..don't you?

Yes, hence we get PATCHES. But asknig thme to rush it will result in a rushed patch, and oh look MORE BUGS! Give them time to test it properly and make sure the patch doesn't introduce new bugs.

[Husar]

People like me paid for a game that doesn't work properly...I think paying customers deserve better than that..don't you?

If you bought a car and it broke down would you be singing the praises of the garage who sold it to you? not likely..

Anyway this is old ground...CA had better nail it real good on this one..or their rep will surely have suffered. It has to a point already..

Well, to be honest i thought people like you had already left the series after Rome because back then the reputation was not existant anymore. Don't really know how it could become worse after it didn't exist anymore.

Or maybe I'm just masochistic because I can even live with the bugs in Boiling Point...
Actually, I was quite happy at how playable Medieval 2 was on release, games that don't crash every few hours can be really nice these days and CA even bother to fix the issues we discover.
As long as they fix it in the end, there is no point in complaining, mistakes happen, and everyone who knows something about programming should know that. There is not a single bugfree piece of Software out there except maybe if it has only 20 lines of code.

[FactionHeir]

Quite a few of the old games (i.e. pre 1998) are mostly or completely bugfree. Back then, releases were brought out without bugs and they didn't need patching mainly because a buggy program would mean the end of the company (modems weren't even mainstream back then, so no way to distribute patches except through the odd game magazine)

[DesertEagle]

Quite a few of the old games (i.e. pre 1998) are mostly or completely bugfree. Back then, releases were brought out without bugs and they didn't need patching mainly because a buggy program would mean the end of the company (modems weren't even mainstream back then, so no way to distribute patches except through the odd game magazine)

QFT my friend, GFT!

Back in the day (dear god, I'm getting old when I can say that and actually mean it), computer games were released FINISHED because the crutch of fixing it later didn't exist. A company lived and died by the code that went out their doors on release day.

Too many times these days companys (and this is aimed more at the pubs, not the devs) are too money hungry and think, oh we'll just fix it later, get the playable game out and we'll take that money and tweak it closer to what it should have been in the first place down the road..

But at the same time, how many times have you older gamers like myself wondered... What games that were craptacular back then might have been salvagable if they were patched and tweaked and fixed?

In a way the poor companies are damned if they do and damned if they don't. If you wait until the game is absolutely perfect you have Duke Nukem: (On Hold) Forever. If you release it early, you have to patch and have people screaming at you for shoving the game out before it was ready, but also wondering why there isn't a patch ready one day later.

[HoreTore]

While that's true, complexity and size also plays a part. While it is true that designers ten years ago put a lot more effort to bugfixing before release, it's only logical that larger game = more code = more bugs.

The more complex a thing gets, the greater the chance of a bug. But designers today don't really care if bugs come through the release, as they can simply patch it, and they know that people will still buy as long as it's at least playable. Ten years ago, designers didn't think that way.

[Werner]

I hope your joking.

As tragic as this sounds, I put off going to stay with my girlfriend over the weekend thinking that the patch would be ready by today at the latest. I can't be much longer surely.

[Dead_Like_Me]

they already gave a clue that this weekend will not bring with it the patch.

i guess that next week it might go out ... some people think it will be this week
which i doubt since they didn't released yet extra information.

so a week to wait is ok till then quite jumping this kind of posts.

[Foz]

Quite a few of the old games (i.e. pre 1998) are mostly or completely bugfree. Back then, releases were brought out without bugs and they didn't need patching mainly because a buggy program would mean the end of the company (modems weren't even mainstream back then, so no way to distribute patches except through the odd game magazine)

One of the biggest game company success stories of that time, Blizzard, disagrees with you. Warcraft released in 1994, and is currently running at version 1.21 due to numerous patches. Diablo released in 1997, and is up to version 1.09, again through numerous patches. Even with the relatively small size of games back then, bugs of various sorts always ended up in games. That you sometimes couldn't notice any is not sufficient evidence that they are not there: it just means whatever errors are in the code didn't do anything major to the game.

Now consider the amount of data we're talking about. Games in the pre-1998 era took up what... maybe 100 MB of hard disk space? And that would've been considered a VERY greedy game back then IIRC. I remember at one point having a HD that was only ~60 MB. Contrast that with this latest installment in the TW series. According to wikipedia, it requires 11 GB. Even if we round that down to 10 GB, comparing it to a 100 MB game means it is 100 times the size. Does it have 100 times as many problems? Not a chance, or you'd never even get it to load.

Then of course there's the matter of feasibility. Due to the games being 100 times the size now that they used to be, it is a given that you will start out with more errors in the project than you would've pre-1998 (the rate of lines per error can typically be assumed to be a constant in programming, meaning more code is expected to have proportionately more bugs in it). To chase down every single bug before release, though, is simply not a possibility. Even if you assume that projects of old were bug-free after testing (which again they almost certainly weren't), you'd have to predict that the testing period required to do that now would be 100 times as long in order to accomplish this feat. If we go with a low-end estimate and say that testers back then looked at the product for only 1 week (seems unlikely) to spot errors, then we arrive at an already-ludicrous current-day testing period of nearly 2 years required to release a bug-free product. This number grows even larger if those companies spent more time on testing, or if their testing had not removed 100% of the bugs (because in that case, the actual testing period for error-free code is longer than the time they actually tested for). If any companies spent that long testing, guess what? Their games would be old news before they even released, long since outpaced by technology. And that's assuming they could somehow survive that long to even release the game - odds are they'd run so far into debt that games would never even come out.

The simple fact of the matter is that technology and game size are growing at a much faster rate than anyone's ability to limit or remove bugs, which means that unless some miracle breakthrough happens that changes the error removal portion of the process, this trend of more bugs at release will invariably continue.

Oh hey, just noticed... THIS IS MY 500th POST!!! WOOHOO!!!!!

[dopp]

They said late Feb or early March, assuming no bugs are discovered during the testing process (which can delay the patch for several more weeks). They're actually a little ahead of schedule if you take the more conservative estimate.