Ever since late summer the CA PR department has had his share of bad days. I assume that no meeting in their office or on the conference calls has made the situation easier for them. I call it bad luck as much as it is good luck ...any bad luck can be changed in good luck if you know how to manage a new unexpected situation and convince the fans to really love you as fresh NDAed beta-testers.  The last event they faced is that the MTW2 demo has leaked by mistake to all the subscribers of one PC Gamer news site and by the time they called in the cover-up team the demo was already on the torrents. This will probably upset other PC sites because they can only release the demo as planned after a month from now - I think. Not to mention that the excessive purge of the demo topics on the official site has probably "convinced" those members to share it.

 

Who knows in the end what really happened - the idea is that rumors spread and fan sites only close/edit (not delete - twc.net) topics about the demo's location so more and more people find out about it. Also from the feedback I see on the forums it seems that the demo works slower that the demo I played at the convention even if it looks real enough.

 

So now... I really started to feel so sorry about those guys in CA PR that - me being a man of God I will like to wish them in a very religious way - better days and happier times.

 

What do you think? Is this bad luck or a hidden&secret PR campaign?

Edited October 8, 200620 yr by Cain

hmmm i think it was just a big stuff-up they shouldnt have given it to PCgamers subscribers like that. and if they did the should have know thes would happen so... it ether someone stuffed up there job or its a big PR plot

hmmm i think it was just a big stuff-up they shouldnt have given it to PCgamers subscribers like that. and if they did the should have know thes would happen so... it ether someone stuffed up there job or its a big PR plot

 

To take over the galaxy loll.

 

Btw what exactly "big stuff-up" means - never heard the expression yet

it means that they made a big mistake.

it means that they made a big mistake.

 

Aaaa... got it - because they sent the Demo one month earlyer for "safe" keeping instead of 1-2 days.

yeah i mean thats just dumb unless they meant to do it i bet someone got fired for that

I still think this is very unwise ... yeah - "train&force" indirectly your fans for one month to use or associate torrents with your product - real smart.

 

Btw - Here is the Readme:

 

Medieval II: Total War DEMO README

 

Last Updated: 2006-08-15

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Refer to this document if you encounter difficulties with one or more

aspects of installation or running the Demo of Medieval II: Total War

game. Many of the most commonly encountered issues are covered here.

 

If you experience any problems please make sure that you have the

latest drivers for you PC installed.

 

www.microsoft.com/directx/

www.nvidia.com

www.ati.com

 

Please be aware, this software is a demo and is not representative of

the final product, product features are subject to change and

revision without notice. The software wherein is incomplete and is

provided with no warranty of any kind.

 

_____________________________________________________________________

 

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

 

- English version of Microsoft® Windows® 2000/XP

 

- Celeron 1.5GHz Pentium 4® (1500MHz) or equivalent AMD®

processor.  The processor must support SSE2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSE2

 

- 512MB RAM

 

- 8x Speed CD-ROM drive (1200KB/sec sustained transfer rate)

and latest drivers

 

- 700MB of uncompressed free hard disk space

 

- 100% DirectX® 9.0c compatible 16-bit sound card and latest

drivers

 

- 100% Windows® 2000/XP compatible mouse, keyboard and latest

drivers

 

- DirectX® 9.0c

 

- 128MB Hardware Accelerated video card with Shader 1 support

and the latest drivers.  Must be 100% DirectX® 9.0c

compatible*.  Nvidia® GeForce 4 Ti 4400 or ATI Radeon® 9800

are the recommended minimum hardware.

 

- Monitor must be able to display 1024x768 resolution or

above.

 

* Important Note: Some cards with the chipsets listed

here may not be compatible with the 3D acceleration features

utilised by Medieval II: Total War. Please refer to your hardware

manufacturer for 100% DirectX® 9.0c compatibility.

 

______________________________________________________________________

 

INSTALLATION & SET UP ISSUES

 

DirectX® Installation

 

The Medieval II: Total War installer will automatically launch the 

DirectX® 9.0c redistributable installer.  If you already have this

version or a newer copy of DirectX® this will be detected and the

update will exit with no changes made to your system's DirectX® files.

 

You can manually install the latest version of DirectX® by going to

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx and downloading the latest

version available.

 

______________________________________________________________________

 

VIDEO ISSUES

 

Monitor Display

 

Monitor display goes black when the game resolution is set to a value

that the monitor cannot display. The game can only detect the video

modes supported by the graphics card not the monitor. Should you find

you have set the resolution and cannot run the demo, in order to reset

the resolution open the medieval2.preference.cfg file found in the

demo installation directory in a text editor.

 

Change the following lines to match below:

 

battle_resolution = 1024 768

 

 

 

Crossfire

 

Users of Crossfire configurations need to disable crossfire to run

the game.

 

______________________________________________________________________

 

GAMEPLAY ISSUES

 

Tutorial Battle Advice

 

When playing through the tutorial, if you complete the requested

action before the advisor finishes speaking, the advisor will be

interrupted and will move on the next piece of advice. To ensure that

you hear all of what the advisor has to say, listen to the advisor

before performing the required actions.

 

Please note that you will not be able to hear the advice again once

you interrupt it unless you restart the tutorial.

 

______________________________________________________________________

 

WINDOWS® SPECIFIC OPERATING SYSTEM ISSUES

 

Windows 2000/XP

 

If you are running Windows® 2000 or Windows® XP, you must have

Administrator rights to properly install and play the demo.

 

 

______________________________________________________________________

 

LEGAL INFORMATION

______________________________________________________________________

 

© 2006 The Creative Assembly Limited. Total War, Medieval II: Total

War and the Total War logo are trade marks or registered trade marks

of The Creative Assembly Limited in the United Kingdom and/or other

countries.  SEGA and the SEGA logo are either trade marks or

registered trade marks of SEGA Corporation. All rights reserved. All

other trade marks and trade names are the properties of their

respective owners.

Edited October 8, 200620 yr by Cain

looks cool now if i could just find the link to the censorred then i would be happy

Edited October 8, 200620 yr by Cain

Serach for "medieval 2 demo" on censored it should be there...

I do feel sorry for the CA guys but their general attitude to fans has also left a certain amount of bad blood which made an incident like this much more likely, if not inevitable..hahahahaha, the demo! ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

Edited October 8, 200620 yr by Cain

Serach for "medieval 2 demo" on torrentspy.com it should be there...

I do feel sorry for the CA guys but their general attitude to fans has also left a certain amount of bad blood which made an incident like this much more likely, if not inevitable..hahahahaha, the demo! ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

 

I wonder what excuses they will use this time ... I bet the excuses for us will not work with the CEOs, general managers and most important the real shogun - SEGA Japan - you do know that they have to make a status report each week for the "big boss" - SEGA offices do this worldwide anyway - don't know about CA.

 

CA PR knew about this leak/PC Gamer mistake from last week and the only thing they do was to close topics and gues how legal or ilegal this demo is. But they are also payed - I think - to show initiative when doing damage control ... not only close topics/ban like some noob moderator and push the fans on torents.

 

In the end I feel sorry for all the CA developers who feel that they are not well enough represented in their own community. They did a great game and the rewards will exceed their expectations

 

CA SEGA ! Release the demo MONDAY! ASAP - Wakeup people! I wonder if anyone from them will see my S.O.S message here.

 

thelucius I will have to censor a bit your post

Edited October 8, 200620 yr by Cain

censored

Edited October 8, 200620 yr by Cain

Aren't we supposed to hide those links and show respect to the devs instead of being greedy fools?  ???

whether we admit it or not, we're all greedy fools.........it's just natural

 

i hope ati radeon 9200 is supported......... :-\

you can download the demo from fileplanet and 3dgamers legally now

 

edit: and now i have links

 

http://www.fileplanet.com/168834/download/Medieval-II:-Total-War-Demo

 

http://www.3dgamers.com/dlselect/games/medieval2/medieval2demo.exe.html

fileplanet is a rip off go to gamershell.

 

http://www.gamershell.com/download_15886.shtml

ehh i use 3dgamers anyway. you get faster downloads there without having to pay or even make an account as the case would be(through you do get faster downloads with an account)

Boys use filefront. Even easier than the other ones you mentioned.

I have played the demo battles and must say that it's more than 1 step up from Rome.

Rome is now obsolete. I used to me a modder of Rome and even created a big mod. Now that I have seen MTW2 I have definitly choose to leave Rome forever. Perhaps a RTW2 will come in the near future.

while filefront may be easier its no better when you can only get 6kb/s

 

but yeah ive played then too even if i cant beat the battle with the HRE(ive only tried it once though)  the battles are good the best thing about it is that i can play it with max settings with no lag or anything else thats bad. ;D

So slow? Strange. I always get maximum power like 70/80 Kb/sec.

Do you have to pay for your account LOTS??

 

lol, LOTS...