Isn't this wrong?! FULL of bugs!
 

I'm just wondering.. Isn't it wrong from PB to release a game so buggy, so unstable in their first known world-wide franchise.. I bet a lot of people have tried it by now, and I'm sure their experience wasn't that good, as most of their impressions would be "obivilion-wannabe". So, I wonder, how much would it have costed PB (Or JowooD for that case) to wait one more month, and ensure that the users really appriciate what they bought, not get his save games gone due to some bugs/errors while he had wasted 20 hours on them, to eventually abandon it.

Well, some people like it - some people don't. Personally I'm liking the game very much (much more than Oblivion for example) and really can't understand all those people who cry their eyes out about the game being "unplayable", "horrid", "worst game ever" etc.

Is it really so full of bugs?

Well personally I've had 3 crashes in 40 hours of playing. I would of course have preferred to have none at all, but I've played many games that crashed much more (both Morrowind and Oblivion falls into this category btw).

Performance is fine on my system, which is AMD64 3200, 2GB ram, Geforce 7800GT. I had to do some manual tweaks to the .ini - which I admit is rather unprofessional from PBs side.

Lately I've been experiencing a graphics glitch with the water, which again is very annoying - but it doesn't kill my game experience at all (most of the time I can't see any water anyway because the world is so huge). Also the lens flare bug is annoying.

I have some quests in my "active" list that I don't know how to finish - or that I thought I finished. In some cases I can see that I cannot possibly finish it because I've killed the quest giver for some other quest. This doesn't annoy me much - it was the same in Gothic2 and it doesn't seem like it will have any impact on the main plot.

Well, that's it really. For me the above is not something that makes the game "horrid", "unplayable" or "bad" in any way - it's simple some small annoyances. On the other hand - the game itself is *much* more fun than the generic and boring world of Oblivion. For me that counts for much more than a few bugs..

- Kasper

The project was already delayed and there is no guarantee that the game would have been in an acceptable state one month later. At one point, you just have to stop taking big risks and go ahead. Money-wise, I think they're doing okay from what I've heard of Gothic 3 sales. Hopefully this means they're keep working on it and eventually produce a top product.

The game is definetly excellent in my opinion, but I agree with x-Danger - Gothic 3 is their first widely known game, and it's bound to attract a lot of new players, not just the hardcore gothic fans. They should at least have removed any main-quest-crashing bugs like the NPCs-fall-through-the-world-bug, where main characters are suddenly gone. The only way to fix this is using Marvin mode, and I suspect most casual players(especially those new to the gothic series) won't bother with Marvin.

I think they're going for a more bug-free version when it's released in the US, where Gothic will most likely win the most new fans(as it's widely unknown in the US, but fairly big in Europe already), provided the game is in a good state when it's released.

I'm sure all the hardcore fans would like it, better said love it. But the newcomers.. (Who are going to guarantee their buisness for years ahead)

The thing is, I'm sure PB would have loved to wait longer (even if they were quite overworked from what I read) if they could. There were probably very pressing (probably financial) matters that spurred them to go ahead. At least it's better than seeing the Gothic 3 project cancelled altogether because releasing it with a less stable financial situation would pose to be too great a risk. Releasing/publishing a high-profile game costs a lot of money, too.

I agree. Postponing doesn't always make things better. Of course I would have preferred to have a bugfree game too.

About the "full of bugs"-thing:
Not everyone experiences many bugs. Everybody will experience things like balancing problems, lensflare, but I haven't got any crashes or performance problems whatsoever.

Could be a reason for Aspyr to wait about a month before releasing it in the US. Include the first two patches will probably make a big difference.

I see the major risk in damaged sales potential for a sequel. Happens all the time: Game A is good but buggy and sells well. Game A+1 is way better and stable but doesn´t sell because part one scared the customers away.



The game was beyond the point of no return. Delaying it anyway would have cost, among others:
- wages for PB
- wages for a few people at JoWooD, Deep Silver, Aspyr, Atari Nordic, etc.
- wages for the QA
- a lot of money to buy new ads
- a lot of money to buy shelf space
- maybe contractual penalties for pulling out of contracts (replication slot, special promos with retailers

I guess it would have been between 500k and 1M in the first (or last, as you see it) month and another ~150k EUR for the following month.

It´s doing way better than expected in the German market. G3 defended its no. 1 chart position against the new Battlefield. I think they have a pretty good chance to break even in their home market alone.

Well, that's nice. Unfortunately reputation means a lot in the games business. I hope this whole thing doesn't damage PB so much that it'll be hard them to keep their heads above water. We do need game developers like PB and Bethesda. ;)

That one in particular was mentioned by JoWood/Cliffhanger Producer Michael Paeck in that German interview at Krawall. Shelf space is heavily contested this fall due to a lot of high profile releases (WoW: BC, FSX, DMoMM, Gothic III, NWN II, some Warhammer games, FEAR add-on, Anno 1701, Company of Heroes etc.). Delaying Gothic III last minute simply wouldn't have worked because the retailers are fully booked. A game like Gothic III needs lots of space (at least in Germany, Austria, Switzerland) due to the high demand so the stores don't run out of copies too fast. There was no way for them to just cancel the shelf space contracts last minute. They wouldn't have gotten the same deal two weeks later due to the high competition this fall.

PB should have know months ago they were far far behind schedule and not given a release date. By hoping they got it done and aggreeing to a release date backed them in a corner and hurt their rep. I also don't know why they are adamant about not using public beta testing. Any software must be tested and tested on different setups to locate bugs and help insure a quality experience. Testing on one or two machines is not testing. The multitude of hardware combinations, other software installs, other drivers, other .dll's etc. can not be reliably tested on a small sample of machines.