500 people are already playing Rome II

[craziii]

damn it, I want a preview copy too

[Payai Dunai]

suprised its not like twice that many considering all the reviewers and staff and others at Sega

Maybe Sega did something recently to drive people away from covering the game.

[MathiasOfAthens]

[Spartacus041]

Those 500 are the beta testers.

[-Concrete-]

More likely it's testers/reviewers imo.

What's the obsession with being first? People at CA have been playing for quite a while. No one outside CA will be first. And how childish is it to saw that the law required equality, so you should get to play the game. I can't afford an Aston Martin, does that mean no one can have one because then we're not equal?

You're joking but I think a lot of these mouthbreathing whiners would actually ban nice things unless they are given one for free.

[Ballacraine]

No, the game still has to be distributed physically.
Traditional development still exists in this franchise.

I realise that, but it is not the biggy it once was because of the ease of patching & updating.

Balla.

[Spartacus041]

More likely it's testers/reviewers imo.

Not trying to be a smarty pants but I'm pretty sure you're wrong. I know a thing or two about the gaming industry () and the few days preceding the release are when they release games on steam to a select (usually 500) few people for beta testing.

[c.ryo]

What I am personally afraid of regarding the no Beta / Demo release of Rome II is that when we get the game it will be full of bugs and problems. Similar scenario we had with ETW, NTW, S2TW. Unless ( because its the same engine ) developers worked hard to optimise the work of the game on all stages of development we might get a buggy release. Hopefully not...

[-Concrete-]

Not trying to be a smarty pants but I'm pretty sure you're wrong. I know a thing or two about the gaming industry () and the few days preceding the release are when they release games on steam to a select (usually 500) few people for beta testing.

.....so testers?

[Spartacus041]

Yeah

[Sherm]

Bulè

[Osbot]

Not trying to be a smarty pants but I'm pretty sure you're wrong. I know a thing or two about the gaming industry () and the few days preceding the release are when they release games on steam to a select (usually 500) few people for beta testing.

Of course they do, no big secret, nor should it be a shock. A game is about to be released over a digital platform. They need to actually make sure everything is working so they have people running through the entire lock process.

[Baleur]

Yes, it is akward how 0.9% have played FIFTY multiplayer battles, and 1.9% have killed 100,000 enemies.

They probably havent, i'm pretty sure some devs can just "cheat" to trigger the ingame triggers that unlock the achievements, just to check that they work as intended.

What I am personally afraid of regarding the no Beta / Demo release of Rome II is that when we get the game it will be full of bugs and problems. Similar scenario we had with ETW, NTW, S2TW. Unless ( because its the same engine ) developers worked hard to optimise the work of the game on all stages of development we might get a buggy release. Hopefully not...

NTW was full of bugs and problems? In my experience it was the most smooth TW release to date. Ran great, played great. From day 1.