Good god CA and/or SEGA are shortsighted. They released Total Warhammer, and it's sitting at 59% user approval-rating on Steam (246 positive, 170 negative) right now. Why? Because apparently the game won't even launch for a decent chunk of the users. Crashes right out of the gate.
This sort of thing is exactly what the Beta-test is for. And obviously, the haven't beta-tested.
Oh, don't get me wrong, they have obviously played the game over and over to fix certain bugs, but they've only played it on THEIR machines with THEIR specs.
I haven't gotten around to playing the game yet,because naturally, even if you pre-load the game, it instantly has to patch for 30-min when you first want to play it. Of course, this might patch out some launch-issues, but that just reinforces my point; there shouldn't be any launch issues. If you ever have to patch something that critical on launch-day, you have fundamentally failed at game-design.
So, how has your experience been so far? Did you pre-order?
I "pre-ordered" 12h before launch, so I got the free stuff, attempting to minimize the benefit SEGA could draw from my pre-order (and thus the extent they can continue to screw us over), but in all honesty even that was probably in error. A not insignificant part of me wonders if even buying a game a week after launch (or perhaps longer?) contributes to the kind of mentality which leads to the creation of these broken games. "Oh, people will just pre-order/buy on launchday anyway. We can patch the obvious-beta problems then".
Edit: Fuck it. Starting a running review, updated as I go along.
Running on Win 7, i5 3.1Ghz Quadcore, 8 Gig Ram, Nvidia GeForce GTX670
* The game launched fine for me after around 2 min waiting time on the copyright-screen, where most crashes are reported (which is fairly usual for every CA-game. I think that's where they hide their loading-screens).
* On the first introduction-battle , I ordered my Lord to climb a rampart-ladder, and he disappeared into the wall and could not be commanded for the rest of the battle
* Total Way Encyclopedia is smoother than the last one. Feels less obtuse in how you navigate it. However, it also, for me, lags. When I hoover over abilities (say "Regenerating"), the text which normally pops up to provide information instead displays what I hoovered over previously, and sometimes never changes. Might just be my computer specs, we will see.
When I hit the "back"-button I got an honest-swear-to-god browser-error! "Unfortunately something has gone wrong, and we can not display the application".
This sort of thing is exactly what the Beta-test is for. And obviously, the haven't beta-tested.
Oh, don't get me wrong, they have obviously played the game over and over to fix certain bugs, but they've only played it on THEIR machines with THEIR specs.
I haven't gotten around to playing the game yet,because naturally, even if you pre-load the game, it instantly has to patch for 30-min when you first want to play it. Of course, this might patch out some launch-issues, but that just reinforces my point; there shouldn't be any launch issues. If you ever have to patch something that critical on launch-day, you have fundamentally failed at game-design.
So, how has your experience been so far? Did you pre-order?
I "pre-ordered" 12h before launch, so I got the free stuff, attempting to minimize the benefit SEGA could draw from my pre-order (and thus the extent they can continue to screw us over), but in all honesty even that was probably in error. A not insignificant part of me wonders if even buying a game a week after launch (or perhaps longer?) contributes to the kind of mentality which leads to the creation of these broken games. "Oh, people will just pre-order/buy on launchday anyway. We can patch the obvious-beta problems then".
Edit: Fuck it. Starting a running review, updated as I go along.
Running on Win 7, i5 3.1Ghz Quadcore, 8 Gig Ram, Nvidia GeForce GTX670
* The game launched fine for me after around 2 min waiting time on the copyright-screen, where most crashes are reported (which is fairly usual for every CA-game. I think that's where they hide their loading-screens).
* On the first introduction-battle , I ordered my Lord to climb a rampart-ladder, and he disappeared into the wall and could not be commanded for the rest of the battle
* Total Way Encyclopedia is smoother than the last one. Feels less obtuse in how you navigate it. However, it also, for me, lags. When I hoover over abilities (say "Regenerating"), the text which normally pops up to provide information instead displays what I hoovered over previously, and sometimes never changes. Might just be my computer specs, we will see.
When I hit the "back"-button I got an honest-swear-to-god browser-error! "Unfortunately something has gone wrong, and we can not display the application".