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The wrath of buggy software
by Jolex Del Pilar

Monday, January 5 2004

Jowood's Europa 1400: The Guild has annoyed many a gamer with it's lacking multiplayer experience. But is this enough to ruin the game entirely?

Hi Jolex Del Pilar,

Just writing to you in relation to your review at VGLN.com concerning Europa 1400 : The guild. Although this game had great potential it sadly is so bug ridden as to be unplayable. The game has been out for over a year and a half now and it still is unplayable. You need not take my word for it but could try playing a full game yourself or call in to the jowood forum and see the extent of the problems. You would be hard pressed to find anyone who would agree the game is in a suitable working condition. I only mention this as I have had the game now since it first came out which was a long time ago and am slightly annoyed that a company who knows their game does not work continues to sell the game and chooses not to fix it. Your review is advertised on their site which encourages more people to purchase the game without telling them the full story. I understand that making games is a difficult buisiness and games will be released with bugs and often it takes time to correct them but this is a joke. I suggest you pay a visit to the forum and decide for yourself if maybe you should re-evaluate your review.

Just to run through a bit of history concerning the game.

Europa 1400 : The Guild V1.0

(Multiplayer) If two people choose the same type of business then one starts without any business. Obviously this is unfair.
(MultiPlayer) If two players choose the same insignia the game goes in to a loop where you are asked to change your insignia but you cannot.
The T&L.exe will crash every time without fail if one ends up in a court case.
Game crashes in 1450 often. (the 1450 bug)
When a character is about to die they enter a neverending death where they cant take any actions.
6. Save game corruption bug. The game crashes often which isn’t a problem since you can save the game but the save games become corrupted after a crash.

These are by no means all the bugs but just a few that I thought signify how badly the game was put together. Any sort of play testing would have picked up these bugs as they happen every time without fail except for 4. and 5. which happen often but not always.

After a year they decided that they would start patching the game. Heres what they accomplished.

Europa 1400 : The Guild Beta 1

Although stated on the fix list that they fixed a number of multiplayer issues and crashes what they actually did was remove multiplay from the game. It is there but the map screen to select a city to play on does not contain any cities therefore you cant host a game.

They did fix the T&L court bug though which was great and a number of other crashes.
Unfortunately they added a bug that stopped players from being able to build. So no more building of companies.

Im not going to go through every patch as well id be here all day

Europa 1400 – The Guild beta 1.5 beta 3 (their latest I think)

1 Now many of the crashes are fixed.

2 Still no multiplayer. Although still in the fixlist it is metioned.

3 Fixed up the build problem

4 Now theres a problem with elections.

Ohh by the way they 1. and 2. have never been fixed or even looked at

All this I don’t think really deserves a review like yours. Close to two years now and people still cannot play the game. That’s not just some people due to computer hardware configs but no one may play the game.

As stated they advertise your review along with others to sell their game. I suggest you don’t take my word for it but research it yourself by going to their forum and looking.

You could try contacting jowood support and seeing what type of response you get in relation to the guild. They will get you to reinstall all your drivers including your bios and a host of other things dragging you on for a few months knowing full well that none of this will affect the game in anyway. They may even suggest you install the beta’s knowing also they they will not make the game playable.

Thanks for your time.

Odin

Hello Odin,

First off, thank you for your very thorough letter concerning the problems with Jowood's Europa 1400: The Guild. I must concede though, that many of the problems you described above, I don't remember ever experiencing while playing through The Guild during my review of the game. While I did notice a bit of slowdown, especially during the late game when a lot more information was being processed, I never saw any hints of instability within the game. Admittedly, I never played a full multiplayer game, though I did test out the multiplayer feature. I think one thing we must remember here is that Jowood clearly marketed this game more as a single player experience rather than an online multiplayer one. While it is true, a broken feature is a broken feature, as in the case of many games, the solo experience can still stand strong even if the multiplayer aspects of the game are slightly dysfunctional.

With a game like The Guild, Civilizations II, or even traditional RPG's like Baldur's Gate, the lack of a multiplayer aspect isn't enough to hurt these games in our scoring system because our system takes into account what the "focus" of a game is. With The Guild, it's obvious the game is more centered towards the single player experience than the multiplayer experience. The multiplayer experience is more like cream, if it's good, then that's a plus. If not, it's not a huge detriment to the gameplay mechanics. Seen in that view, I see no reason to change my original score of 8.6, though I have posted your letter as a potential warning to gamers who are looking for a stable multiplayer experience with Europa 1400: The Guild.

--- Jolex Del Pilar