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who are these people who write a review?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 190 / 357
Date: August 19, 2002
Author: Amazon User

How can somebody write a review of a game and give it stars when they haven't even seen it??? If you absolutely HAVE to write something on a computer, and don't know what else to do, DON'T REVIEW SOMETHING! Instead, write a letter to your grandma. She misses you.

Sheesh.

And Amazon: if you delete this one, you have to delete the previous one.

This expansion pack is obsolete!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 63 / 65
Date: December 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

PTW should be recalled from the shelves and destroyed. It serves no purpose now that "Conquests" has been released. Read on and save yourself some money and frustration....

The "Play the World" expansion pack was originally released in 2002 and it was generally considered buggy and incomplete. Patching fixed many of the bugs but the multiplayer portion still left much to be desired due to poor original design. Unfortunately, these design flaws were deeply rooted and could not be fixed by further "free" patches (it just wouldn't be economical) and so the developer went to work on a new expansion pack called "Conquests".

Now, in 2003, with release of the "Conquests" expansion pack, the "Play The World" (PTW) xpack has been rendered utterly obsolete, since Conquests includes all of the 'good' stuff from PTW (and none of the 'bad'!). Conquests also has many new features (new civs, new wonders, new techs, new units, etc) and much better multiplayer support.

My advice to anyone considering buying this PTW xpack is: DON'T!

You're much better off getting the "Conquests" xpack instead which, at the time of this writing, is the same price as PTW!

In summary, the "Conquests" xpack:

a) includes everything in the PTW xpack except the bugs and flawed multiplayer support

b) has a bunch of new stuff: civs, techs, units, wonders, etc.

c) costs the same as PTW!

Good luck.

More SLOW, BUGGY BETA JUNK from Firaxis. NO STARS.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 20
Date: November 29, 2002
Author: Amazon User

A year ago, Firaxis rushed to market Civ 3 - an underdeveloped and incomplete beta game so buggy and filled with bad concepts it took over half a year and four patches just to get it somewhat playable. It still remains very flawed, both as a game and as a simulation of history. It was a big let down as a successor to the great Civ 2.

Now we have "Play The World", a Civ 3 expansion that contains much of what should have been in the original game such as Multiplayer - but Firaxis could not charge us extra if it did that. They do give us more meaningless superficial graphics and leader heads, for those who care.

PTW is another abject failure - more beta buggy junk from Firaxis, with MP so bad it slows the game to a crawl, when it doesn't crash. Firaxis had to have yet another patch out even before the game hit the stores. That is INEXCUSABLE, and shows more lack of play-testing, and more disdain for the consumer. Even though certain online forums, such as CFF and Apolyton, act as shills for Firaxis, most of us no longer have any faith in Firaxis, and we will remember to avoid that company in the future.

We get a few minor single-player features, that also should have been in the original game, but these aren't much. Multiplayer? MP doesn't work well at all even after their patch. It sometimes crashes the entire system as if you hit "restart".

The game's interface, single or MP, remains sluggish causing delays; it is also cumbersome and incomplete. Many of the complaints people had with Civ 3 are still around, such as not being able to cooperate with an ally in times of war. PTW just adds a few little things on to an already flawed Civ 3 while giving you a lousy MP experience - what was supposed to be the main reason for PTW. You get a lot more bugs and problems than anything useful.

Oh yes, for just tacking on a tiny number of single player additions that should have been in Civ 3 in the first place, the expansion is expensive - [$]. You do need the original game to play it - but you'd better also have Civ 3's latest patch or it won't work!

No thanks, Firaxis. Find another...

Civ 3 Play the World is an unstable, laggy, bugfest

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 19 / 21
Date: November 09, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Absoluety abysmal code. The game does not work - the lag is incredible even with my cable modem and the game is so unstable I've not been able to "play" for more than 15 minutes without a crash. It is the worst bugfest I've ever seen. If you read this review and don't believe me, check the online gaming websites. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Are you people CRAZY?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 23
Date: November 16, 2002
Author: Amazon User

If you DON'T own the game DON'T review it. You people who have given 4 and 5 stars have obviously not played it. After you buy this game, you maybe able to download the patch, which by the way, isn't even on the official site yet. You'll have to get that from gamespy, which is at least an hour wait for an open servor. By the way don't use gamespy arcade, because the game can't launch from there. (Don't ask me why) After, you finally download the patch and install it you might be able to play it, but don't count on it. The program may crash 5 to 10 times beforehand. (The whole program is extremely unstable) I wouldn't even think about gettin this unless you have dsl or cable, the lag will make you physically ill.

This game does not work

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 17
Date: December 03, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game/expansion simply does not work.

I'm not going to talk about the single player additions, because you can download most them for FREE on the Internet. People will buy this expansion because of the multiplayer experience.

This review incorporates the new patch out (1.14f) that is supposed to get the game to work. It does, for about 10 minutes. Then the game gets so slow it becomes tedious to play (and only with 2 human players). Units move slow. Combat takes forever (even without animations) and communication is difficult/impossible. For example, when you try and type to another player, PTW doesn't word wrap and you lose half of what you say. Voice communication is not built in, like in Alpha Centauri. You are supposed to use something called Microsoft DirectVoice. Don't know anyone who uses that. Granted, the 1.14f patch is MUCH better than before, but they will need a 2.00 patch before this game is enjoyable to the casual player.

Sometimes when you are playing, the game just errors and bombs - forcing a hard reboot. You can recover from this, if you know the people you are playing with and can call them on the phone. If you are playing strangers online, forget about it, the game is over for you. When does it do this? Random times. Unrepeatable.

I have never been in a game with more than 3 human players. I haven't even seen a game with more than 3 humans START successfully (it always crashes or doesn't allow all the players through). There is no auto update ability, so you have people trying to play unpatched PTW, PTW v 1.04, and PTW v 1.14f. So getting the game to start is a 30-60 minute effort.

There are other features that make this game difficult to play multiplayer. Features that are in single player no longer exist in multiplayer - such as research notifications don't pop up. Cities don't request build orders. Units don't always automatically center, so you don't know if the computer wants you to move or not. Manual moves are so slow that you basically need to use G to move or drag and drop - meaning exploring is difficult and unpredictable. Combat is not fluid. You'll move a unit to attack, (in simultaneous mode), and the attack takes 1 minute to resolve.

The company seems proud that they were able to get multiplayer to work - a little. Seems like since that's what we're paying for it to begin with, it's little to be proud of. They brag about direct IP (a feature added in the latest patch) because they can't get their internet matchmaking system to work well - note: not GameSpy's fault.

I'm sure this game will eventually be patched up so it's a little more playable, but by then it will probably be in the discount bin and already written off by many gamers. So don't purchase this as a gift for someone. It will only frustrate them for the holidays. Wait until the game is ready to be bought, and then the enthusiast will purchase it him/herself.

Don't take my word for it. Check other reviews. This game is ranked so poorly by professional gaming magazines (GameSpot, GameSpy, etc) that it's amazing stores will even stock it.

Highly provocative!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 49
Date: September 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I have the original CivII and III, and I have wasted all to many hours on this wonderful game over the years. I find it really annoying that a standard feature in virtually every new game these days (multiplayer over the Internet) is released as an Expansion Pack. That's really all there is to it. Sure, they throw in some other stuff to, but they are really just trying to sell the same game twice, just like they did with CivII. I haven't made up my mind whether I'll buy it or not, but I certainly don't like this trend.

REDEFINES MULTIPLAYER FUN as...no fun at all!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: November 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

To be brief, the additions (to civs, units, techs, structures, interface and editing features) are generally welcome, but in an ... expansion called the Play the World the multiplayer is the key to its value - and in this case next to worthless.

With tweaking and patience you can get multiplayer to work, but so slowly that if I had an ant farm on my desk it would surely breed and expand more speedily than my multiplayer civ. I cannot say the computer crawls along in multiplayer, for that would imply continuous visible movement. Its more like trying to follow the conversation of a stuttering narcoleptic napping between each syllable. A pity, really, for Civ 3 is a fun game and it would be thrilling to clash with a truly sentient other (read: a friend you'd love to whoop).

Not what it was supposed to be!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 10
Date: November 03, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game expansion as soon as it was released and now I'm sorry I did, for it turned out to be a total waste of time and I have already uninstalled the game from my computer and returned it...OK, the single player mode works perfectly and it was nice seeing some new faces (eight to be exact) among the world leaders, though I would have expected the Celts to be listed amoung the barbarians, not as a new civilization. Also, if you are a Muslim, you might have been offended to find the Arabs and their holy cities (Mecca and Medina) represented, since only Muslims are allowed in those cities and the idea that they may be subject to conquest or destruction by enemies would thus be blasphemous to any Muslim. But the most troublesome aspect of the game is that the multiplayer mode simply DOES NOT WORK!!! Every time I tried to join a game online, the game crashed, and every time I tried to host a game, I found that I was the only player that got in, with not even any AI opponents to fight! How could Firaxis have screwed up so badly when the original Civilization III was such a great hit???...

Say after me "Medievil: Total War" - No competition!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 21
Date: November 14, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Am I the only one that thought that Civ3 outright sucked? Civilization and Civ2 were Earth-shattering for me. Then "Call to Power1 & 2" became favorites. Civ3 just seemed like a huge step backwards. Anyway, along comes Medievil: Total War. MTW is actually two games in one. It is a military/dictatorship strategy game on the one hand. Expect intuitive city management and troop creation menus. However, it is also an awesome combat engine. You can lead your troops DURING a battle. You can decide if it makes more since to have your longbowman fight melee style or leave that to your spearmen (which I strongly suggest). Everything about MTW is polished and intuitive. Comparing MTW to Civ3 would be like comparing Halo (the coolest game ever for those of you that haven't played Halo - drop what you are doing and get it) to Quake1 - they are both "first person shooters" but Halo has taken it to a whole new galaxy. Do not waste your hard earned money on Civ3. MTW is an intuitive addictive strategy game that won't let you go.

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