Launched too early?

[Pyerun]

My brain is screaming at me...

From all the complaints I've read about "Sid Meier's Civilization IV", I ask myself: "Was this game launched to early?"

and "Why was Firaxis in such a hurry?"

I live in Spain, and have been melting my eyes in front of the computer screen watching those wonderful screenshots and reading all the previews, where this game got 5/5, 9,5/10, etc... How come this game got such a high punctuation when it's full of bugs and errors? Did Firaxis send all the previewers a bug-free version of the game? How come other Civ-fans didn't get this bug-free version?

I'm starting to wonder... Shall I buy this game that is full of bugs at a price that rounds the 50 €?

Why couldn't they wait another year?

-Pyerun

 

[Mercade]

Why couldn't they wait another year?

Various other threads deal with the (commercial) reasoning for releasing the game now. There is a small - but vocal - minority of players who have some issues running the game. Many are playing happily. No amount of testing is going to make a complex software product perfect. There is no reason for repeating that whole discussion in this thread.

In Spain you'll get a single DVD with Spanish documentation, so no worries. Go, buy the game, and enjoy. Of buy from an on-line source like play.com for € 26.50 incl. delivery (see link in my signature). Otherwise, wait a month for the first patch(es) and then buy the game at a discount.

 

[Skedastic]

How did you determine there is only a "small minority" of people who have problems with the game?

 

[JiggleTheHandle]

The reviewers have gaming computers and understand how they work.

 

[RIT Beast]

I'm a computer scientist and it took me an hour to get the game running. That's just not right. Of course, once I did, all previous frustration and concern rapidly departed, but still.

 

[Dida]

I am also a computer scientist, and it took me about 3.5 hours to get my game to work. In the end, I had to apply a crack to it to make it accept my DVD. The game itself is okay, but I feel many areas are unpolished and needs more work. Looks like Firaxis is fond of releasing half finished product at initial launch and then releasing the other half in an expansion pack.

 

[Cironir]

Well, I am not a computer scientist and it took me thirty seconds to get my game to work.

 

[croxis]

Only the people having problems are posting. Why would anyone post if things are going well? Prolly too busy playing anyways

 

[Alistic]

Only the people having problems are posting. Why would anyone post if things are going well? Prolly too busy playing anyways

Yup. On top of that this is the same as every other game release under the sun. Pull up forum posts from release dates of any pc game and you see the same posts. Almost word for word. Even the stupid lawsuit posts are all the same.

 

[Jeffrey]

I am running the game pretty well, it's slow for me but that's because my machine is over 2 years old (Civ 3 was too slow for me when it came out too) but I'm pretty happy with the game overall.

I'd rather have a few bugs that will get ironed out on this game, than a perfect game of Civ III

Cheers,
Jeffrey

 

[RIT Beast]

Well, I am not a computer scientist and it took me thirty seconds to get my game to work.

Hehehehe, I think someone dropped the extra 30 bucks for an inferior graphics card (geforce).

I am also a computer scientist, and it took me about 3.5 hours to get my game to work. In the end, I had to apply a crack to it to make it accept my DVD. The game itself is okay, but I feel many areas are unpolished and needs more work. Looks like Firaxis is fond of releasing half finished product at initial launch and then releasing the other half in an expansion pack.

Did you use disk 1 as the playdisk?

 

[Alistic]

Lmao 3.5 hours to not figure out the disks are incorrectly labled.

 

[RIT Beast]

Only the people having problems are posting. Why would anyone post if things are going well? Prolly too busy playing anyways

I understand your point, but this is a very major problem with the release. I've been pc gaming since the DOS days when you had to edit your autoexec.bat and config.sys for every game you wanted to play, and this is the most trouble I've ever had getting a game to work.

I am running the game pretty well, it's slow for me but that's because my machine is over 2 years old (Civ 3 was too slow for me when it came out too) but I'm pretty happy with the game overall.

I'd rather have a few bugs that will get ironed out on this game, than a perfect game of Civ III

Cheers,
Jeffrey

I agree with you Jeffrey, for all the hassle, this game is probably the best I've ever played (excepting X-Com, but I'm an X-Com fanboy).

-Brendan

 

[warpstorm]

"Why was Firaxis in such a hurry?"

The simple answer is that they had to release it on that day if they wanted paid for their years of work.

FWIW, it worked for me out of the box.

 

[petey]

The mislabelled disk was mildly annoying, but doesn't really qualify as a major bug.

The game ran perfectly when I installed it, but I only had a 64Mb graphics card, so it looked crappy. I upgraded to a 256Mb one and the game wouldn't run, but their site had detailed step-by-step instructions for how to get it going. This took an hour and then it was fine.

More annoying than with most games, but not really anything worth delaying the release over. Everything else I've seen seems to be working fine.

 

[humboldt]

This game is definately not Computer Scientist friendly. I recommend that all Computer Scientists have the kid next door install the game for you.

 

[necrosmith]

Hmm...
I think they probably released it at about the right time. They needed to get it out in time for the Christmas season, and there were going to be bugs regardless of when they released it.

Probably launched at the right time. They definately couldn't afford to wait on it.

 

[necrosmith]

Yup. On top of that this is the same as every other game release under the sun. Pull up forum posts from release dates of any pc game and you see the same posts. Almost word for word. Even the stupid lawsuit posts are all the same.

QFT
(Quoted for Truth)

 

[Shakes]

"Was this game launched to early?"

Absolutely not. A few people are having problems. Why delay the release over that when many, many people are enjoying having the game in their hands as we speak?

 

[!scorpion]

The reviewers have gaming computers and understand how they work.

Actually reviewers get paid to write positive reviews.