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Does this game work out off the box for you? No! a stunning 47.33% of the responders answered! MP is nearly unplayable someone claimed! Are we talking about Civilization V? No! These are comments about Civ4!. Just after it's release the Civ IV Forums were flooded with complains and cries for help. Was Civilization IV a tragedy? Not at all. After a slow start many (if not most) considered Civ4 to be the best Civgame ever! Even one of the most skeptical Civ-Fans, yin26, in the end had to Eat the Civ4 box as he promised to do if Civ4 would live up to his high expectations!
How did Civ4 become such legendary iteration in the series after such a slow start? The answer is: Patching! And not only patching, also the expansions, Warlords in 2006 and Beyond the Sword in 2007, expanded the game into something great! What may that say about the Civ5 support in the future?
Now we have Civilization V and many complains are filling the forums again. Will Civ5 have a future nonetheless? Let's learn from the past! Let's learn from Civ4. Can we trust Firaxis and 2K Games to deliver? The answer is YES! In 2005 Civilization IV was released. The game was released on October 25th 2005. The first major patch was released on November 23rd (v1.09). The game continued to received patches until July 20th 2007!!. That's a stunning 2 years after it's release!. v1.74 was the 4th huge patch for Civilization IV. (1.52 on Dec 23rd 2005, 1.61 on April 13th 2006). The famous SDK and Pitboss server were released with the 1.61 patch.
Before the first major patch was released, Firaxis released a note about the upcoming patch in which Firaxis gave some info about what to expect. Similar but not as detailed as the Civ5 patch update we got from 2K through Greg Laabs this week.
In 2006 the Expansion Pack Civilization IV: Warlords was released (July 24th) and in 2007 Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword (July 18th). While Warlords was considered to be a minimal addition to the basic game, Beyond the Sword was hailed as a huge expansion, introducing corporations, espionage and many new civilizations and scenarios. Patching didn't stop with the release of these XP's! Beyond the Sword shipped with a patch for the dated 'vanilla' game! This latest XP received patches up till October 6th 2009!. That's 2 years after it's initial release and 4 years after the release of Civilization IV. (This patch included a change that removed the need for the CD or DVD to play the game!)
Does this mean that Civilization V will also be supported for many years? That the problems and bugs in Civ5 also will certainly be fixed? No, not for sure. In the Gaming Industry the past doesn't give any warranties for the future. We can conclude that 2K Games and Firaxis have deserved a lot of trust from the Fan Community though. It is impossible to expect gaming companies to release perfect bugfree games out of the box in this day and age, especially for Personal Computers. Companies have to deal with share holders and must make, after all, profit. The gaming industry can earn credits by supporting a game till it's finished. And that's what we will do again!
Many civfans bought Civilization V while knowing it would not be perfect immediately. But we bought it with the knowledge that Firaxis lived up to our expectations and 2K would fund patches. And in the meantime we enjoy the game nonetheless. And not only Civilization V! Also Civ4 is still being played by many!
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Guild Wars 2 World Premiere
I got the opportunity to play the first publicly playable version of Guild Wars 2 the successor of ArenaNet´s very successful, fee-free action RPG. Its publisher NCSoft provided a 45 Minutes Demo Version of the starting area with 4 available classes. Already on the character screen there was something new: You are asked how you master difficult situations, weather you are from a noble family or from the countryside etc. Depending on what you choose there are different introduction movies and people behave differently towards you, so it already feels like an interesting option for individualizing your character.
Combined with great graphics, a very natural environment (the way NPCs run around, events take place and your character moves) and a lot of story in the first 30 minutes this leads to a game drawing you into its world right away.
WoW Cataclysm
A similar test was possible for the next WoW expansion Cataclysm featuring the return of the dragon Deathwing. Unfortunately with Cataclysm being an expansion with no new classes available the starting areas of the new races, Worgen and Goblin, weren´t really what I wanted to see. Still the little impressions I got confirm a continuation of the constant improvement during the last years, that kept WoW in business with uncharacteristically rising numbers of players since its release.
Starcraft II
The game has already hit the shelves, but considering the hype and initial sales records I just have to drop a few words. While probably everyone by now has heard about the balance and strategic variety and depth of the multiplayer, the singleplayer campaign that only became available to the public with release (beta tester could only test mp) provides a really epic experience. With all the cinematics and animated videos I just got the impression of watching a film and playing a little in between.
Esports
I also took the opportunity to pay a visit to the ASUS European Nations Cup Finals in Warcraft III, watching professional teams from Russia, Ukraine, Denmark and Germany compete for the title and 9350€ in price money.
Ruse
And at last I took a random dive at one of the modern style real-time strategy games. Great graphic effects and atmosphere – and ability to move 4 tanks over the map shooting automatically and after conquering a position for my headquarters being able to place two kinds of buildings in pre defined positions. Not exactly the kind of game complexity loving Civilization players like – simplicity isn´t always better.
And of course the most important thing of any tradefair:
Index, Day 1, Day 2, Preview, Interview, Gallery, Nuke, Combat, Other Games, Best Game
...January 28, 2011, 19:45 -
Needs a bit expanded, but first I need the Apolyton Civilization 5 (P)Review subsection
http://mycheats.1up.com/view/supergu...ilization_v/pcJanuary 26, 2011, 17:01 -
I lost terribly in a grinding end. I played the Ottomans at the east end of a large continent with England, Russia, Greece, and America as neighbors. There were others, but they seemed to be on the other side of the continent (Germany, Japan, Iroquois, etc). Standard size, wet, 10 civs, 20 city-states, and Prince level.
...January 18, 2011, 19:01 -
Does this game work out off the box for you? No! a stunning 47.33% of the responders answered! MP is nearly unplayable someone claimed! Are we talking about Civilization V? No! These are comments about Civ4!. Just after it's release the Civ IV Forums were flooded with complains and cries for help. Was Civilization IV a tragedy? Not at all. After a slow start many (if not most) considered Civ4 to be the best Civgame ever! Even one of the most skeptical Civ-Fans, yin26, in the end had to Eat the Civ4 box as he promised to do if Civ4 would live up to his high expectations!
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How did Civ4 become such legendary iteration in the series after such a slow start? The answer is: Patching! And not only patching, also the expansions, Warlords in 2006 and Beyond the Sword in 2007, expanded the game into something great! What may that say about the Civ5 support in the future?October 14, 2010, 05:25 -
[...] Civilization V makes for a very odd testing scenario. There are no corridors to run down, and shooting the enemy doesn't result in anything more than two little characters poking at each other on a map. As a result, we had to break our testing down into two parts. To beat down the CPU, we actually timed how long it took for the game to complete the AI's turn. This was an amazingly taxing calculation on the CPU that was easily measurable in the tens of seconds and highly repeatable. Video card testing consisted of moving across the same map at the most zoomed-out setting, which dropped frame rates by more than half and proved to be quite consistent. Both tests were performed on a late-game scenario that had numerous computer AIs vying for superiority on a large map. Smaller maps with fewer AI opponents didn't stress the system nearly as much.
...October 3, 2010, 11:57 -
• Wired Magazine Posted Sept 17... Rating: 8/10
• The Escapist (With Video Segment) Posted Sept 17th... Rating: 5/5
• Destructoid Posted Sept 17th... Rating: 9.5 -- Superb
• ShackNews Posted Sept 17th... No Rating Given.
• Joystiq Posted Sept 17th... Rating 5/5
• G4 Posted Sept 17th... Rating 5/5
• Gaming Nexus Posted Sept 17th... Rating 'A'
• Game Informer Posted Sept 17th... Rating 9.75/10
• GameTrailers Posted Sept 17th... Rating 9.4/10
• Computer and Video Games Posted Sept 20th... Rating 9.3/10
• PC Gamer Posted Sept 20th... Rating 9.3/10
• Cheat Code Central Posted *unknown*... Rating 4.7/5 -- "Must Buy"
• IGN Posted Sept 20th... Rating 9/10
• PC Gamer Posted Sept 20th... Rating 93/editor's choice award
• ars technica Posted Sept 21th... Rating 'buy'
• gildia (polish) (Translation) Posted Sept 22th... Rating 9.5/10
• 1UP Posted Sept 22th... Rating 'C'
• games.on.net Posted Sept 22th... Rating 4.5/5
• Blast Magazine Posted Sept 22th... Rating A-
• computeractive Posted Sept 21th... Rating 5/5
• Stuff.co.uz Posted Sept 24th... Rating 9/10
More reviews will be added later. Please help by placing review-links in the comments.....September 17, 2010, 16:45
Units being disbanded are giving too much gold. Scouts generate 40% hammers to gold. Disbanding has to change, the question is change to what?
Making them equal yields the fun effect of fighting a war with your wealth stored in units and then recovering your wealth when the war is over.
Making disbanding yield less than wealth makes sense from a game balance point of view.
It was the wealth function that was screwed up, not the disbanding.