Well, for what it's worth, I can't recall blizzard ever posting what they plan to fix in their next patch until the day the patch is released. Firaxis have done better than most companies I think by telling us the details before the patch is even out there.
I agree however a known bug list would be nice. Even nicer would be whether they plan to fix them and a priority. I don't expect the second for business reasons (and AFAIK no game company does such a thing), and even the first is fairly rare to have such an organized official document.
The market reality is it doesn't pay to admit your game has bugs, so it's unlikely to happen. I think it sucks too, but you can't blame Firaxis for not wanting to lose face (relative to other companies) by looking like they have products out there with large numbers of bugs. Bugs in software seem to be like mistakes in politics - everyone knows they happen, but for some reason it's considered really bad form to admit it when it happens to you. Look at it this way - if someone hears Firaxis admit their game has some nasty bugs, they might not buy the game, even if the bugs are later patched. Where as by not saying so I seriously doubt you, as an existing customer, are going to refrain from buying any Firaxis games in the future that you would have otherwise bought. Or even if you will, you're in the extreame minority.
At the end of the day, I've played quite a few games since civ 3 was released, something that I wouldn't have been able to do if the game wasn't released until the patch date (I probably wouldn't see it in stores here in Australia until nearly xmas in that case). And I suspect that the game would be of a lower quality anyway - since getting it out there to the populace no doubt exposed more bugs than a few more weeks testing would have.
Even if they had waiting, you would have bought the game when it eventually came out anyway, so you haven't lost any money over it. And so long as they do come good on the patch (which I take as a given), and continue to patch any outstanding or future issues, I really can't fault Firaxis' behaviour. I think they're giving us the best possible game they can in the timeframe.
As far as industry standards go, I think games are generally released with more bugs now than they were 5 or so years ago. Most likely because they're significantly more complicated than they used to be, and hence there are bound to be more bugs both before QA (more code), and after QA (more stuff to test). Unfortunate fact of IT is if you're on the bleeding edge, sometimes you're going to cut yourself.
Anyway, I've said enough on this topic, basically I think Firaxis are doing what I think they have to do from a business perspective, which is a good thing because it keeps them in business for future games (maybe even civ 4
). Even though it would bug me if I was a Firaxis developer and I had to keep the fans in the dark.
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Oi, I was going to pull the William the Bastard card but that would entail recognizing the Norman's existance...
