Just to get it out of the way: In theory, this is a promising game with a lot of potential. Please read why in praxis, it's anything but.Just to get it out of the way: In theory, this is a promising game with a lot of potential. Please read why in praxis, it's anything but.
I've been playing - sorry, TRYING to play - March of Empires for almost a month now, and I must say, I've never played such a defective beta in my life. Just take a look at the bug reports on the Gameloft discussion board - the game's more bug-ridden than a sleeping mat after a night at the banks of the Amazon River.
The most glaring issue is that depending on factors that completely elude me, you might not be able to log in for hours, maybe even a day. Take today: In 11 hours I tried about 30 times to log in, four times successfully, if only for a couple of seconds. No, it's not my connection, I wish it was. So even in those four instances I couldn't do anything. You're getting attacked? Tough, watch helplessly because you lose your connection as fast as you got it, which leaves everything else to your imagination, and maybe they'll let you log in tomorrow to sweep up the debris.
The in-game chat is practically NEVER working, I've watched it work maybe five, six times in a month of daily playing (or trying to play). The mail system fares better, but not by much: Sometimes it lets you send mails, sometimes it just doesn't, so communication is always a crapshoot. Not that that would be in any way important in a cooperative war game like this, of course not. And even if it works: The filter used to be so absurdly touchy that it censored most of what you wrote, which means, "OK, I'll be there in a minute" could turn into "OK, *** be t***e ** a m***t*" on a bad day. As of now, there's been a notable improvement, but as far as I can tell, it's the only one I can see. After a MONTH and two patches the gameplay bugs haven't even been adressed.
Upkeep, income, trading, mining, troop size, march times, all buggy as hell. Stuck notifications, "boosters" that do the opposite of what they're supposed to do and make your life harder instead of easier - you're practically paying to get worse conditions -, game concepts that sometimes work, sometimes don't - that makes the "strategy" part so much more exciting because you never know if the feature works -, not being able to reliably communicate with your co-players, and a forum in which you're always told to file a report via a needlessly complicated in-game system, to which you will never get a meaningful reply anyway, other than "Please re-install the game, we're sorry we can't save your progress." I know people who have sunk a lot of money into this game - and lost it repeatedly due to game-breaking bugs. You think Gameloft compensates them? Think again. Nothing. Complete radio silence on the developer's part. Any why is that? The right-after-launch players are pi**ed off anyway, Gameloft HAS their money, and they're unlikely to invest more after such a catastrophe. The company doesn't have a good track record of effectively patching their bug-fests anyway.
Somehow, they still find customers. Please don't be one of them.… Expand
