Calm, yet dissolusioned, rant - by Remus Shepherd          EverQuest is coming out in March.        You see, I get excited about games well in advance of their actual debut on store shelves. I heard about Myth:TFL just a couple months early, but the concept floored me. And of course most of 1998 was spent in rapt anticipation of Myth II.        But I only get excited about new games when the ones I have lose their appeal. While I was playing Myth:TFL, I didn't look for other games to play for almost a year. Then Unreal came along and sparked my interest for awhile, but folded to the promised allure of Myth II.        Now I've had Myth II for one month. One Month. And I'm already looking for something else to occupy my time.        The single-player game was fun, but I've nearly finished it. (And 'The Forge' isn't fun, but that's another rant.) Multiplayer is horribly lagged -- typing is intolerable, and games with >300 ms ping are unplayable. And the map editors -- The Reason I Bought The Game, and The Things I Said Had To Be There Or I Would *Not* Buy The Game -- don't work. The bugs and crashes are so prevalent that it is not possible for me to create one new map, or edit one new unit.        While I'm sure Bungie will patch things eventually, it's too late. My attention has wandered off. And that's what this rant is about.        PatchWare -- software that barely works on release, but that the company intends on patching to completeness in the future -- is not a sensible strategy for a software company. Such programs may fill a company's coffers in the short run, but the bad feelings they leave behind seriously diminish the life of the game, and ruin the customer's impression of the company. MythII is PatchWare. I'm sorry I was suckered into buying it in its current, incomplete state. And where I once held Bungie in high esteem, it now appears that they're no better than any other second-rate PatchWare producer. Last year I would have purchased any title Bungie made, sight unseen; now I'm going to have to insist on seeing a demo of their games before I can be sure that they even work. This lack of consumer confidence translates, for the software company, into poorer sales in the future for their other games. That's why PatchWare is not just unethical, it's a bad business strategy.        Worse, Bungie has lost my attention. Now they're back in the queue, trying to get noticed like all the other companies whose games I'm not playing.        I'm sorry my disillusionment is lashing out like this today. I hope that this is just an unfortunate stumble for Bungie in a long line of polished products. I hope I do stop to take a look at their future offerings. I might not have the time; I might be playing EverQuest.          BACK TO MAIN ARTICLES PAGE