Civ3 EXPANSION PACK!!!!

[notyoueither]

My guess is that 2 months before release Firaxis was still hoping to get an extension out of Infogrames.

At some point it became October 31 or never. At another point it became clear that MP wouldn't make October 31. When those two points became reality they should have put the notice on their web site. It is possible that that was 4 to 6 weeks before release.

[OldCharlie]

Originally posted by GP

I'm willing to take Mark's word that they did post this a month before the game...I don't remember but seems reasonable. But think for a second, how long was MP OUT OF THE DESIGN? Do you seriously think that they pulled a major feature like that a month before game release. It seems much more likely that it was pulled considerable before that...so that beta testing, game balancing etc, could be done with the beta design.

I agree. Think about how long it takes to create, print, package and distribute a million manuals. To change the scope of the game in a major way and redesign and repackage within 30 days of the scheduled release date would be pretty hard to imagine.

However, I think they were very kind to give us the prelim info on the game and I always took their words to be more of what they intended than what they promised. Some of the best companies (Blizzard?) can miss a release date by more than a year. At least we got it about when they said we would.

I'll bet the follow on XP was already on the schedule when the original release was made. Maybe the patches used up so much of their time that the "predestined" XP is behind schedule and therefore the most natural place to put and test the MP. Might really complicate things to release a MP patch just before an XP. Think of all the redundency.

[notyoueither]

Well. I did some digging myself.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26042

'Holy S***! NO Multiplayer Until Spring!' was posted September 7. Whoever Mister Pleasant is, he released the information over 8 weeks before release of the game. My money would be on him being a Firaxian.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=28736

'Gone Gold' indicates that the game went to the publishers for final production on about October 8.

It would appear that Firaxis did let people know that there would be no MP well in advance of the code being finalized and the game being 'finished'.

[TCO]

You are a bit confused. Mr. Pleasant found out about the no MP BEFORE they told us. They were not circulating that info at the time. And in fact, they refused to confrim or deny Pleasant's info (which tunrned out to be accurate).

Pleasant was NOT a Firaxian.

[notyoueither]

Why would MrP show up as a guest? Strange. Anyway...

I reviewed most of the MP thread. It occurs to me that MP for the initial release never was planned. I would appreciate it if someone could show me where Firaxis or Infogrames ever said it was.

In fact, from the MP thread there were a couple of useful snippets.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3interview_morris_913.shtml

'Civilization III: Jeff Morris Interview'
- CivFanatics: What is the current status of multiplayer?
- Jeff Morris: We're still working out all of the details around multiplayer and will give you more information later.

September 13. A statement from a Firaxian that contains no promise of anything. In fact it was received as quite discouraging.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26042&perpage=30&pagenumber=5

lockstep
I posted this already in another thread, it´s a quote from civfanatics.com (September 8):
'According to Jeff Vitous of WarGamer.com, an Infogrames representive told him that Firaxis didn't start working on multiplayer until early August.'


I seems to me that the members of the Civ community on line read massive amounts into the statement made by Sid about interesting concepts with MP. In the absence of valid information about what that meant, members of the community worked themselves up into a lather of hope, hype and misinformation founded on false expectations.

As for the lack of chatter from Firaxis... yes, I've noticed that many people are varying shades of enraged by the hit and run nature of Firaxis' communications. Firaxians themselves have held up the MOO3 debacle as support for their closed policy. I would say that the development of Civ3 could be given as an extreme counter example of how to mismanage public expectations through neglect.

Firaxis probably lacks the resources for the full time management of communications on forums such as these. The publisher could probably do it, but they don't seem to care at all.