Late Spring 2012 is too soon

[Camikaze]

A meteorology definition of when spring becomes summer is when the daily mean temperature over a week reaches 10 degrees Celsius.

Here in the Netherlands the summer starts on the summer solstice, around the 22nd of june.
That's the astronomical summer, and the most used term of 'summer' when speaking of dates.

But I think the whole idea with saying 'late spring' is to not make any commitments to dates. =)

Here March 1st is the start of autumn and June 1st is the start of winter. But don't 2K (and American in general) go with the solstice? I seem to recall that from last time around.

 

[Fern]

Impatient people will be happy that the expansion is coming out so soon, but people who want a title that'll live up to the Civilization franchise should find this worrying.

Considering the fact that this expansion is going to be released after about 1 and a half years after the game's release date, I would say it's a lil' bit too late. But better late than never!

About the quality, well, we only can tell once we get a copy.

 

[MadDjinn]

Here March 1st is the start of autumn and June 1st is the start of winter. But don't 2K (and American in general) go with the solstice? I seem to recall that from last time around.

Yes.

Summer 'starts' officially on the Solstice. Sure it's warm before then, but that's the official time. Which does mean 'late spring' can be June.

 

[forty2j]

Most companies would go with the quarter, rather than the season. "Late Q2" would mean almost the same thing, but be much less subject to interpretation.

In the USA, when we say summer.. well, the calendar says solstice through equinox (~June 22 - Sep 22), but colloquially we tend to mean Memorial Day through Labor Day (~May 28 - Sep 4).

 

[duckstab]

Most companies would go with the quarter, rather than the season. "Late Q2" would mean almost the same thing, but be much less subject to interpretation.

In the USA, when we say summer.. well, the calendar says solstice through equinox (~June 22 - Sep 22), but colloquially we tend to mean Memorial Day through Labor Day (~May 28 - Sep 4).

As most people around here probably know, I'm in the software business, and release planning generally does adhere to the Q1..Q4 convention. That can mean different things because some companies have their fiscal year start in the middle of the year. But if they're saying "late spring" they've probably just translated whatever term they use for the quarter that ends on June 30. Hence I'd expect a May or June release.

Also, a mostly irrelevant point. The Memorial-thru-Labor convention isn't universal, even in the US. It was pretty common when I was growing up in the northeast, but down here in Texas summer is something like May 1st thru September 30th meteorologically, but probably late May through late August culturally, mapping to the school year.

 

[Sherlock]

Will this be a retail box, or dload only?

Would be nice if it included the DLC.

 

[Manifold]

here are three new screenshots
http://www.gamestar.de/index.cfm?pid=1674&pk=47855&fk=94438&i=1

1. new civ the celts with a new unit the machine gun
2. Religion screen
3. Espionage screen

EDIT: ups too late

 

[bonafide11]

The truth is, the game will definitely have some balance issues and bugs when it first comes out. Every game and every expansion pack always does. As excited as everyone was for Beyond the Sword, it was plagued by balance issues and bugs at first as well. It took a few patches to fix it. Considering they likely only have a handful of testers, in a game as complex as Civ V, they won't figure out every little issue on their own. It's when thousands of hardcore users play it a ton and then find one common game exploit and share it with everyone else, who also abuse it then. While people joke that early players are free game testers, it's not completely inaccurate, and it's not Firaxis's fault either that thousands of testers will discover an issue that their testers won't. It's nice that Firaxis listens to the community and releases patches to fix those issues. But regardless of when the game is released, don't expect it to be a completely polished product on its first release.

 

[Morningcalm]

Hmmm....only 3 scenarios, when there are 9 new civs. I hope the new scenarios are more substantial in their changes to the game than the ones we've gotten through DLC, or we'll still be looking up to Beyond the Sword as an example of the best official scenarios for a Civ game.

 

[OrsonM]

I don't know whats the big deal, everyone knows in the entertainment industry that you announce things like 3 days in advance, tops. To tell people, you know, several months in advance in order to build word of mouth and expectation is just amateurish.

Every single big project in the entertainment industry has been announced in a similar rushed style:

Empire Strikes Back: About a week in advance people knew the new Star Wars sequel was coming. George Lucas however demanded that no information was posted on which theaters would screen the movie, to keep things interesting.

Aliens: James Cameron just told his nephew some stuff about the movie like 22 hours before release. Little Timmy Cameron was able to schedule one banging press junket that day (all his kindergarten classmates made it).

The Matrix reloaded: 15 minutes before premiere the Wachowskys placed a lemonade stand outside the theater with a sign that read "Lemonade and The Matrix Sequel, 5 cents"

Gladiator: About 3 weeks before release just one ad was placed for the movie in "Welsh Shepperds 74", a British snuff magazine. Director Ridley Scott was alarmed to find out the ad took an entire page, for which it was changed to a single line after Sheep Model credits.

Return of the King: Peter Jackson just broke into a screening of The Notebook, tackled the projectionist and replaced the movie. Results were mixed, with most people believing The Notebook to be a sappy drama that turned into an epic action movie somewhere in the middle.

 

[crazyundead]

I wished they had extensive beta testings and release quality products much later than announced, maybe 2K gaming should follow Blizzard's example.

 

[Arlborn]

As long as they don't mess it up they can take as long as they want by me, just as long as they don't mess it up.

I didn't get into Civ5 much(a busy year also contributed to that though) and this is exactly what I was waiting to finally get into the game like I did get into Civ4(hundreds of hours spent on it, not counting all the time spent on this forum) so I sure hope they don't mess it up. With that said, as others said a June release seems likely and considering that they may be working on this for months already it seems like a fine developing time for an expansion.

 

[dexters]

I wonder if the XP will include the DLC civs to catch late adopters up to the game

I also wonder what their DLC strategy will be going forward given we're getting so many new civs in the package.

More Civs right after XP might be overkill.

 

[Chibiabos]

Anyone else think the expansion is the reason the patches have ground to a virtual halt (less frequent and less substantive, with quite a few bugs seemingly ignored)?

 

[dexters]

Anyone else think the expansion is the reason the patches have ground to a virtual halt (less frequent and less substantive, with quite a few bugs seemingly ignored)?

That was kind of obvious that they had shifted resources away from patching sometime in the 2nd half of last year. We just didn't know when the XP was coming if at all.

 

[vexing]

...

that's some hilarious stuff.
we should find some more source images

Anyone else think the expansion is the reason the patches have ground to a virtual halt (less frequent and less substantive, with quite a few bugs seemingly ignored)?

what bugs?

 

[nokmirt]

They have been working on this for some time. I doubt this was just started. The hush hush about it makes me believe thats the case.

 

[forty2j]

I wonder if the XP will include the DLC civs to catch late adopters up to the game

I also wonder what their DLC strategy will be going forward given we're getting so many new civs in the package.

More Civs right after XP might be overkill.

Seems pretty clear that the vanilla DLC will not be bundled with the xpac..


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Louis XXIV]

Anyone else think the expansion is the reason the patches have ground to a virtual halt (less frequent and less substantive, with quite a few bugs seemingly ignored)?

They do have a large patch coming up according to recent announcements.

 

[Mivo]

I actually like short-termed announcements for expansions. Three months is long enough to build up hype and milk it for a while, but not long enough for people to think, "Okay, well, I'll check back in half a year." (And after a year of no announcement, the "Is the game dead???!" threads start.)

For a base game it's different, though I agree with the others that the time of an announcement rarely ever reflects on the time of already done development. Civ5's problem may not chiefly have been "not enough time", but "the wrong people".