Nearly 11 years later, Julian McKinlay finally explains WHY

[D@gget]

FULL ARTICLE HERE

The infamous Rome II AI guy, Julian McKinley, finally explains what went wrong with Rome 2. Answer is: pretty much everything, from the beginning.
As a result, he received disgusting treatment from the community, including this site. Things got so bad that the admins had to step in, to the frustration of some rabid individuals.

We all saw the disaster of Rome II's launch. The interesting thing is that he goes into specific game features and technical aspects that only an insider can give insight into. It also shows how little CA has changed since then.

Personally, the circumstances of Rome II's development has been the franchise's greatest mystery to me. Finally seeing how the things that went wrong were endemic and the fault of the same people who gave us great games in the past gives me a certain sense of closure. It's also must feel vindicating for Julian to finally speak out and add to the voices that exposed CA's flawed but profitable way of churning out products.

Please give it a read, it is as enlightening as it is infuriating. Lots of quotable segments, too.

[alhoon]

R2TW still has a ton of players though. Compare it to other games in the franchise that have much less people playing them even though they game after R2TW.
While the launch was anything but perfect, after several years, the game is good.

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

It's an interesting article to be sure. In the end the devs did get the ability to actually patch up the game later and the game has a shelf life beyond its expectancy, but that is no relief for the state the game launched in. Nor does it recuse the issues that rose for later titles, not much seems to have changed from what is described. Time will tell how it ends.

[AnthoniusII]

That article proves that our critisism against CA/SEGA in general had a basis. We had pointed out all the key features the former developer reveals after 10 years but all those that we made that critisism were liers and "enemies" of the game. Instead many modders that wrote good reviews for the UNFINISHED game were treated as heros but when their lies exposed they simply disapeared.