I am very glad about the fact that the beta patches have been released. With the 1.15, C3C at least is playable.
As it seems to be Tavis who is responsible for that decision, I absolutely agree to his decision and appreciate it!
Nevertheless... In the previous postings a lot of the posters seemed to claim that we as player community have to be thankful for the release of C3C. And after it was so obvious that it was buggy, we additionally had to be thankful that they released patches.
Others state that their are deadlines, and that you cannot make a 100% bugfree game.
But, nobody should forget that some people had to pay good money for this game. Seems to me, that some posters didn't have to pay - at least not their own money.
To make a game bugfree (or to do everything to make it having as less bugs as possible) is not a personal favour of the companies involved in the developing and distribution process, it is the least what the customer is expecting.
The announcement that the final release of the 1.15 patch will last for some additional weeks due to problems with the localization is just an infamy.
Atari obviously has the structures to do such a localization process, since they did it in the past. Most of the localization has already been done, since C3C is available in non-english languages. With some good project management, this task could be done in days, not weeks. Of course, first the patch has to be finalised. I severely doubt that this is the case.
The pure fact that they still have bugs in the game, in the documentation and almost everywhere in the game proves that they have severe problems on the programming side as well as on the side of project management.
We should take notice, that they are just not able to meet their deadlines. They just cannot do it. They lack the ability to do it. That's the very poor truth.
I am playing the game, because there are some very good basic ideas in it, like culture, ressources, UU's and the very basic concept of the building of a civilisation (but the later is not a new concept at all). I for sure don't play it because of the ingenious implementation.
And I will wait, before I buy the next addition to Civ3 or a Civ4.
I am tired of the banana principle: "Let's have them give their money to us, and then perhaps sometime the product may get ripe"
The whole computer industry is based on this principle. We spend our money, and if we are really lucky, maybe at a certain point of time, the product will work in the intended way.
Dear God, we are paying THEIR salaries! It's not them who are doing us a favour! We as customers should learn our lesson!