Please don`t pre-order.

[stealth_nsk]

and no reason t opreorder BE. It can flop or Firaxis could go full Creative Assembly. CivV was near-unplayable after release.

And XCOM was nearly fully playable. That's not a point actually.

Surely it's better to see demo before preorder, but overall there are games you'll just buy anyway and unlikely will wait for about 3 months for discounts. So, preorder is not such big problem.

 

[Biologist]

I preorder only the games I know I will like even though they can end up far below what they could have become.

That's about the way I view it. I might, for instance, pre-order the next expansion to Starcraft II because I have enjoyed all the previous Starcraft titles/expansions, and I know what to expect; Starcraft's design doesn't change that much between expansions/iterations. I shied away from pre-ordering Diablo III on the other hand, despite it being from the same developer. I wasn't sure how the "always online" requirement and radical changes (e.g. item auction) would pan out. As it happened, "always online" was a debacle for the first few weeks due to poor server stability, and the auction has now been completely scrapped as a terrible idea.

Bottom line: don't just know what features will be in a game, get an idea of how well they'll be implemented, or how well they've worked in other games, before ordering.

 

[Sherlock]

This game taught me not to preorder

Word.

 

[mabalogna]

I will likely pre-order in September/October

Firaxis is the one developer I will blindly follow to the end of the earth. I've played civ since I was 8 y/o on my dads 486 laptop in the early 90's. 4X is my favourite genre, and no other title has successfully entertained me to the extent of the Civilization franchise. I trust 100% that no matter what I will get a great experience out of CivBE, and Firaxis is the only developer that I give that kind of loyalty to.

 

[rastak]

I will likely pre-order in September/October

Firaxis is the one developer I will blindly follow to the end of the earth. I've played civ since I was 8 y/o on my dads 486 laptop in the early 90's. 4X is my favourite genre, and no other title has successfully entertained me to the extent of the Civilization franchise. I trust 100% that no matter what I will get a great experience out of CivBE, and Firaxis is the only developer that I give that kind of loyalty to.

I would have loved to have played when I was 8......unfortunately Sid Meier was about 16 years old at the time.

 

[DocRock]

I think the real question is how long to wait after release until the most annoying bugs are eliminated.

Buying Civ 4 at release: shame on Firaxis. Buying Civ 5 at release: shame on me. Buying BE at release? No way...

 

[vahouth]

I usually don't preorder because my retailer does.
That gives me the time to see it's worth it plus the benefits of preordering.

 

[NASAROG]

I think the real question is how long to wait after release until the most annoying bugs are eliminated.

Buying Civ 4 at release: shame on Firaxis. Buying Civ 5 at release: shame on me. Buying BE at release? No way...

What happened with civ 4 at release? I don't remember.

 

[Karl0413]

What happened with civ 4 at release? I don't remember.

Same thing that happens at every new game release, bugs followed by patches.

 

[Lord Shadow]

Same thing that happens at every new game release, bugs followed by patches.

I remember even Civ3 had issues at launch which needed to be ironed out. Remember the old "spearman beats tank" debacle?

 

[SupremacyKing]

I remember even Civ3 had issues at launch which needed to be ironed out. Remember the old "spearman beats tank" debacle?

Now that is a walk down old memory lane. I used to hate it when I would see the animation of the turret blowing off my tank. Thank goodness those days are far behind us now.

Every game will have bugs at launch simply because the games are too complex for any developer to fix all of them with the time and resources they have. So not pre-ordering because you think the game won't be perfect at launch is silly. The good news about online distribution is that it is extremely easy for developers to patch a game now. So the real question is not if the game will be buggy (it probably will) but how good is the developer at follow through with fixing bugs. If the developer has a record of not caring about fixing bugs after launch then don't pre-order. But if the developer has a solid record of fixing bugs after release, then you have nothing to lose by pre-ordering, especially if it is a game that you are confident that you want to play. Firaxis has a good record of patching their games pretty quickly after release.

 

[DocRock]

Yeah, but you have to agree that especially Civ (maybe due to complexity) is really bugged and imbalanced everytime a new one is published. Both 4 and 5 tooks weeks, some say even addons, to make them really good.

I certaibly not pre-order and I will certainly (!) not listen to major site reviews, but wait for some feedback on this forum and some reviewers i believe in (like Angry Joe). Then we'll see.

I remember a Battle Ship being sunk by settlers.. That was a nice joke... Some decades ago.

 

[Darsnan]

Same thing that happens at every new game release, bugs followed by patches.

That's not true for console-only games, is it?

 

[SamBC]

That's not true for console-only games, is it?

On modern consoles? Sure it is. They assume broadband access to download patches there as well. Often you have to wait longer, because of the higher cost to the publisher of distributing the patches.

 

[Lheim]

I'll toss my voice in here to agree. Pre-ordering is a worrying trend, when it comes to considering consumer rights.

Any time a business asks us to spend money on a product sight unseen, we as consumers have a duty to be cautious. Caveat Emptor is the principle that applies, and we also have to bear in mind that computer software and video games as a market takes some well-relied upon customer rights away from us - we can't return products we aren't satisfied with; we have virtually no remedy for defective products or products that don't match their advertising except in absolutely extraordinary cases like.. oh, say, that old Simcity disaster where a merchandiser actually deigned for the sake of PR to allow refunds.

No other product acts like this. I can even get a refund if I hate a movie halfway through in the theater. And yet... like salivating dogs, for the sake of a few nebulously real benefits, we consumers show again and again that we're totally willing to throw away the only power we have.

With PR completely untrustworthy and the games review industry laughably in the pocket of game developers, the only thing we can trust is post-launch reviews by other players and certain personally trusted professional game reviewers. That's it.

 

[Sonereal]

Pre-ordering is a worrying trend, when it comes to considering consumer rights.

The consumer's right to buy things when they want is a pretty worrying trend TBH.

 

[vahouth]

I wouldn't mind preordering if that would mean that an early beta will be available that would help fixing embarassing bugs that might occur on release.

 

[Sonereal]

I wouldn't mind preordering if that would mean that an early beta will be available that would help fixing embarassing bugs that might occur on release.

Basically an Early Access?

Because that's too sensible an idea. Clearly closed betas and buggy releases are the way to go. Then again, given Civilization V didn't crash and burn and seems to have actually brought in a bit of cash (and I'm completely pulling this out of my ass, mind you), maybe they had the resources to actually test the damn game for the fun factor this time.

You know, the same way Crusader Kings 2, for all its faults, came out pretty decently because Paradox was sitting on bank from the last few successful games.

 

[vahouth]

Basically an Early Access?

Because that's too sensible an idea. Clearly closed betas and buggy releases are the way to go.

Exactly!

You know, the same way Crusader Kings 2, for all its faults, came out pretty decently because Paradox was sitting on bank from the last few successful games.

Well yeah, but then again as others have pointed out already, TWR 2 comes to mind. It's almost a year since release and they're still trying to fix the damn thing, eg. the major fix of siege AI early this week!

 

[Sonereal]

To be 100%, maybe even 1000% fair, what happened with TWR2 was a long time coming.