What were they doing anyway?

[Frewfrux]

The simple fact that Fraxis/T2's tech support keep responding with (basically) "Keep waiting, we are experiencing a higher then normal volume of emails/calls right now." seems to indicate to me that something somewhere went wrong. Either the software has more bugs then normal or they just fiered a bunch of tech support people.

 

[randallman]

Heh, I run CivIV on my desktop machine - an old 761 based AMD board, Athlon XP 1800+. It's had 2 power supplies. The most recent one has melted 3 pins on the motherboard connector BLACK due to some kinda arcing problem (Looks like this: http://www2.arnes.si/~mlivak/burned atx2.jpg ). The +5v went down to 4.2. I just cleaned the connectors and put it back together. Works fine now. I run an AGP 8x ATI 9800 pro w/ 256MB of ram and the bus only supports AGP 4x. I run 2 512MB ram sticks from 2 different companys, probably 2 different speeds too :0 Lastly, the motherboard chipset controller thingbob had a fan on it - that fan has bound up from crusty nastyness over the years.

I *never* crash to desktop or crash at *all* playing Civ IV. CivIV has been one of the most reliable games I've played in the last year. More so than GTA: SA, more so than Pirates! even. Yes, my system plays game fine even though its basically a disasterpiece

Dunno what the big problem for other people is

The problem is not just the combinations of parts that goes into a typical PC, but IMO there's a significant portion of PCs out there that are not stable, or will become unstable when stressed (like when it overheats, or receives bad power).
Lots of things will make any program crash, overheating chips will introduce errors into the calculation. Bad memory cells may not be accessed until you get a lot of memory usage (i.e. Civ 4). Bad power would simply corrupt your data. It's not like your mom & pop store, nor the big brand name computer companies would spend days stress testing the computer until you're sure it's stable.
If you compound an unstable computer with a not quite ready game, you'll get the rift between those who have minor bugs, and those who get CTDs. Not to mention it is impossible to write perfect code. (I've seen a technically incorrect Hello World that compiled) Also the fact is more often than not they simply don't have enough people familiar with the code and the time needed to really beta test everything.

 

[Efexeye]

... or they just fiered a bunch of tech support people.

Why, again, does being understaffed result in a higher call volume?

 

[Rowain deWolf]

so many different machines eh?

first off, theres two cpu companies: amd, intel
secondly, two video card companies: nvidia, ati

everyone is running windows XP

it wouldnt be THAT hard to test many of the configs

Thats a joke, or?
I hope it is, else you have just shown a complete ignorance about modern PC's and how they work.

 

[EvilFuzzyDoom]

...or the game would be like "Lords of Magic"--totally unplayable for everyone. (Now Sierra, there is a company that deserves ire for bugs!)

Ha! I knew it wasn't just me! That was a real piece of crud!

Issues-wise, I too am getting the CTDs of Doom. Few Blue screens, but consistent dropouts. I can't even learn how the game works properly, I'm so worried about it crashing If I hadn't been on holidays last week, I wouldn't have been able to play at all 'cause I wouldn't have had the patch!

[RANT]Figures that the one game I buy within a year of release (EVER) should be buggy as hell. Nothing from Blizzard (Which covers basically everything else I own ) ever gave me trouble. Not only did I have to upgrade my PC, but I have to do all kinds of messing around to try and get this thing to work![/RANT]

I haven't left the house in days! Help me!