EDIT 2: Oh boy what a disaster, finally got into starting a new game, boy oh boy, CTD's (crash to desktop) like every 5 - 10min of playing, if even so long. This DLC should never have been released this year, they should have rather finished the DLC properly and bug fixing first and released next year. The state this DLC is in is worst than a BETA release, i cannot believe they released it like this. There are MODS that are way better and stable than this load of crap at 15 dollars. I am a big fan of Mount & Blade but i will not buy the next game they bring out without first waiting to see what others say and wait a year for patches and then MAYBE buy the game. They rushed this DLC and probably wanted to get the money before christmas or had to bring it out now because of schedule but this DLC should rather have been released next year. DO NOT BUY IT NOW, wait for patches and GOG customers who already bought it to inform you that the game is stable now.

EDIT: I just tried starting a new game, went through all the reading, choosing skills, designing character etc etc, guess what...IT CRASHED when i click on Continue, so i just spent 30 min for nothing and it was not saved so now i have to do it all over again. I AM REALLY UPSET, this DLC was clearly NOT TESTED before launch. Its a disaster and FULL of bugs. Do not buy it yet guys and girls. Wait for bugs to be fixed.

Well I go into game, wanted to change my resolution, game just froze when it brought up the list of resolutions, killed the task, go into game again, try changing keys and again game froze. Not really impressed by this at all. If its bug ridden already at this stage, how will the actual game play and bugs there.

Tried changing my settings and when i go out of game and go back its back to default, not saving the settings at all. (Running as admin did NOT solve this as well). Would like any help with this, thanks.

I am not really happy that the DLC gets released in this state. Lots of bugs already. HOW DOES THESE GUYS TEST BEFORE THEY RELEASE???

Will update once i get to play and not freeze trying to do setups in Options, if my settings i change stay that way. Regards all GOG people. :)

The game is awful as it is and totally broken, this was not released and advertised as an early access title and is clearly false and miss-leading advertising. Clearly the people that made the game did not even do basic play testing. Multilayer is particularly horrendous.

I can't believe that Taleworlds and the people that made the mod would do this to such loyal fans. I'd want a refund but since I brought this from gog I doubt it would happen. I do give kudos to gog for having the game easy to run and ready at launch- shame on the actual product though.

Can't you refund everything bought on GOG for 30 days after purchase?

The game content and the intended upgrades are substantial and really make the very barebones Warband game (which, just like the first M&B, always felt like it was an empty shell of a game waiting to be filled with content) feel like a real adventure game with living towns, etc. instead of emptiness and placeholders of the original game.

The DLC authors didn't go the expected route of simply polishing the Brytenwalda mod (worth playing, actually) they made previously and add a few better textures or other small trinkets to it. They've really went to town on the game trying to add more layers of content and push the engine far. Sadly they've apparently bizarrely avoided decent beta-testing/play-testing on multiple systems and this shows in the often crippling bugs in this initial release.

I'd not go nuts with the dev team just yet. I'll give them a chance to patch it and see how that turns out. If it runs without any more bugs than native then it'll be livable. Having lived through M&B since the earliest betas of the first title and right through to current, I know Taleworlds own releases in the past have often had bad bugs (WF&S had some nasty landmine ones in its RPG quest too) that were slowly patched and fixed...and rebroken - and that's with a barebones game compared to the more complex RPG-esque experience.

I wouldn't recommend anyone buy it right now but I'd also wait until the first patch(es) until making a final judgement as to ignoring it forever, etc., as the game behind the bugs is really good, I think. In a few weeks it could be very good indeed.

Hopefully doesn't end up quite the fiasco that Gothic 3 was, where it was a turd on release that was eventually by some miracle polished by the fanbase into a very decent game.

Submitting bug reports, system specs and save games to the developers will probably help them out.

Yeah lots and lots of bugs on the linux side of things :(
Though I am hopeful of possible patch of fixing things in the future..
On the upside the new patch for the main game did get the Game of Thrones [v 1.4] Mod working correctly now [in linux] :)

Well there's a silver lining...I guess a few people will be giving up on this DLC for now and going to try these mods instead. ;) Going to be hell for the devs for the next few days. It seems they're ducking out of the way for the first while, probably wisely thinking up a response and looking at the problems first.

Maybe ideal time for someone to make a mod suggestion thread? I've not tried the GoT mod yet. :)


EDIT: It seems the boss, Armagan, has apologised for letting everyone down with the state of the release and stated clearly that Taleworlds will be working on it to sort the problems. Now we just wait.

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,319843.0.html

Someone from the outside has had a detailed look at the code problems of the game there. I think the developers were showing their lack of experience with some of this (though them and Taleworlds seem to be reacting well so far to reports) and Taleworld's continuing problems wth Q&A when they publish material. It's worrying though when the problems sound to run so deep.

Wonder if they'll go back to the long open betas of the past, instead of closed development and then launching the ship full of holes?

I've had CTDs in the story mode. I'd suggest everyone waits until the game has had a patch or two before delving into it properly in case a patch breaks your save game. The custom battles seem to work fine, except the naval battles which have some issues.

Sounds like a terrible release all round. I expected more from the makers of that well received mod.

Everyone involved here has to take a share of the blame.

It looks like they're focusing all of their efforts on Bannerlord at the expense of Warband.

I'm speculating that development stalled/out-of-control perhaps due to complexity and they decided to release as-is to make a quick buck.

Taleworlds don't seem to respond to messages sent through their support page, the minor UI issue "missing strings" hasn't been fixed with the update and in all honesty I don't expect it to be - at least any time soon now.

Do Takeworlds consider Warband to be a dead/legacy product? No game can be supported financially forever - even so its rather cynical to bring the games to GoG and drop the ball.

There's so many issues with this release that I find it VERY hard to believe their claims that it was all working on their internal tests. There are basic things like missing textures that lead to glowing solid white horses, missing text or messages in early game story arc conversations the player pretty much has to see, etc. The only way to miss these is to simply not bother testing or looking at the release candidate. Those are errors in the code itself and nothing to do with compatibility, much like the total lack of LODs, loops and memory leaks and badly designed meshes causing bad performance (as highlighted in the previous link). These problems would have come up frequently on any real testing with open eyes. It's most likely the developers were pushed into releasing or the publishers simply shipped the version they had to hand in order to cash in on the Christmas release time games.

There's also long-running inherited problems with warband code and others have highlighted these problems only to be slapped down with "its hardcoded" claims (which were then modded by volunteers anyway(!!) to fix but even then the developers don't bother fixing it properly or officially) or instead simply ignored.

WF&S was also releaed in a bad state with quest lines that were simply broken and AFAIK are still left broken. If you choose certain paths you've got to check online guides to make sure you don't ruin your save game by breaking those quests due to bugs.

It's quite possible Taleworlds is treating Warband is a legacy product and cash cow to keep them going until Bannerlord arrives, but keep in mind that the buck stops with the publisher Taleworlds (they call the shots and if/when things are published), and that if their Q&A is so poor for this and contempt for customers so bad then their Bannerlord game will almost certainly be another broken mess and cash grab followed by hollow promises of fixes or the brush-off for customers pretending nothing can be fixed again.

The main lesson here is NEVER "PRE-ORDER" A GAME. Certainly don't trust Taleworlds or others to be different.

Yes it was a blatant rip off- the only 'viking raid' here is on your wallet- still it is interesting to see how dedicated some fan boys are defending it. I'd be very skeptical about the claims that it will be fixed and believe it when it happens- it's not just the bugs- the game is so shallow and boring they have literally just shoved a bit of old assets together and charged money for it.

I also really dislike how they are trying to pull peoples leg and claim the lack of armor and such is due to 'realism' when looking at historic articles it is clearly not the case.

No word on my refund application to gog yet.

It's sad but i would have to agree.
Game companies want the exorbitant revenue of first day sales and blames lackluster performance on piracy all to often and the whole industry needs to move forward into addressing the fact that we are customers not BETA testers.
Steam was the reason i stopped buying retail hardcopies (it was a minefield trying to find out if the game i would be playing needed online activation a periodic problem where I am; plus I refuse steams EULA as they have no rights to redact my consumer rights); it's shaping up to be a similar situation with pre-releases as the wealth of companies releasing BETA state products at full retail price points makes me tend towards waiting a year till the reviews and a substantial risk compensator (bargain basement price) assure me of their product.

I especially don't get how something simple (the track down murderer quest) obviously taken from the prior working state can now be broken by Viking Conquests changes (if you don't know this bug it's the one where no matter which option you take the murderer your suppose to kill never shifts from NPC state to hostile and therefore cannot be killed).
The product is surely terribly rushed yet they've had plenty of time working on it apparently by their 'coming soon' stance that set no limit on when it HAD to be released.

Grab the hotfix: http : // download2.taleworlds.com/mb_warband_viking_conquest_setup_1162_10_hotfix.exe

And update Warband to the latest version from here, under "Latest Version": https: // www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Warband/Download

I was as frustrated as you here, but I updated today, and the game is now stable. Also, the graphics rock (unlike before the update) and the story is great (IMO).

The graphics are bland, boring and have been bettered by many mods. Everyone in the game looks like a freakish WWC wrestler, including the "children". The story has been rather poor and the interaction very bad and superficial as it turns out if you try to step out beyond the devs little story the game just poops out until you go back in your box and simply watch the on the rails adventure they wanted to tell. The more I play it the more it's obvious they did very little to the base game and have been bettered by mods, before they even released or started this. What on earth was the budget or dev time spent on? They had plenty examples to follow, yet the content, features, etc. simply aren't there. This is almost a cosmetic mod. Most the game you'll feel you'll be playing vanilla Warband but with less variety than it to keep it interesting.

Bugs and game breaking moments still abound.

This is not a worthy addition to Mount and Blade. Play any of the mods out there, including Brytenwalda, A Clash of Kings, etc.

Multiplayer is a joke, even when that isn't bugged to pieces leading to game ending spasms in the player characters. Yes, they managed to bug out and ruin even the parts they barely touched. When it does work you're left with a very bland and generic affair that offers nothing much compared to vanilla, mods or the Napoleonic War DLC.

Don't buy this one. Wait and see how Bannerlord develops instead and play the mods in the meantime. Taleworlds made a mistake with releasing this. Everyone makes mistakes though, so simply ignore Viking Conquest and pretend it never happened. There's still lots of fun elsewhere to be had if you avoid it.

Yeah. The main quest line has many such bugs that show the lack of care and effort put into this. Outright stone walls in the main game quest line that show no effort in testing or playing. Not only that - if you try to deviate beyond the path set out for you the game simply breaks - either CTDs or refuses to progress until you go back on the path. Also encountered all sorts of issues great and small as well as seeing how filmsy the RPG story side is too (some points mentioned below but they are spoilers).

I've got to wonder just what the developers actually did as so much of this game is simply the base Warband game with a thin layer of cosmetic changes in parts and the Brytenwalda mod cut down and made more basic and jammed in. Same quests as vanilla Warband appear. Even the same text and replies from the base game in these quests and interactions! Smacks of laziness and the low effort put into this cash grab. You'll find far more variety, features and additions in mods/DLC elsewhere. Wouldn't have taken them much effort do do a bit of a rewrite but that was apparently too much effort for Viking Cashgrab.

The game features very little variety and to keep your interest in battles compared to vanilla Warband or mods. It doesn't add anything to land battles, duels or tournaments. You'll actually have less weapons, gear and variety in enemies to battle than the base game, so you'll get bored of it even quicker, if you weren't already unimpressed by it offering less than mods from the start. The sea battles were a nice idea, but clunky and never amount to much in the single player game.

The developers also mucked about with the character development and levelling mechanic and once again it shows up problems from lack of testing. Two handed weapon stat offered at character gen at start... but they've not bothered to include any two handed weapons in the shops (beyond a single rare item not available for much of the game)! That's right, it's basically a trap for you before the game even starts thanks to lazy game design. You make your character for that and you're screwed. Likewise for missile weapon player characters. Bows have been made worthless for the player or the followers. Weirdly the player is given at the starting village for very cheap (virtually free) a unique bow that is FAR MORE POWERFUL than any bow in the game and has no requirements to use it. It's the only bow you'll possibly use as all others will require multiple headshots on the lowest peasant to do anything and cost more anyway. You can't use bows on horseback at any point so plan your character gen ahead for this. They've made it so you can do more damage throwing stones than using bows.

For some reason you can block with short swords like a gladius...but can't block with a long seax, making them particularly crappy. No reason for this. Both are of comparable length. Once again, you should plan your character build for this. No throwing axes even. Can't let us have even that bit of fun other mods and games did.

These all hint at the constant limitation in variety and choices in this compared to the base game, leading to boredom and frustration happening even sooner.

This is a BETA product that they've released and told everyone it was a finished product and not early access/beta.

I REALLY wanted to like this and went into it with the best of intentions, hoping to be able to praise it, but instead I've got to warn others away from this DLC. It's such a shame.


***SPOILERS***

Examples of bad storyline writing/design -

The game insists I have a mother with me despite character generation saying I was raised without parhents. No explanation given how she reappered and how my character grew so attached to this sudden genie out the bottle that I had to quest around the world for this stranger.

The game instists that the rebel leader near the start says I have the traitor with me at his camp, even though I sent him away before speaking to the rebel leader, forcing the storyline to play out as was pre-determined. One of the many examples of the on the rails storyline and false choices and roleplaying this offers (a tissue-thin illusion of freedom, not actual freedom to roleplay is the theme with this game).

The game insists I escape or lose certain battles because it is scripted that I do, despite some of them being winnable. If you do win the game doesn't know what to do. You are forced to run away and it then carries on pretending you lost and that the big bad enemy is still out there and not at the bottom of the sea.

The list goes on and there's been many of such incidents but I've not been keeping a list, but you get the idea.

***SPOILERS*

Good Post Frezred, sadly I brought this game early. Like my previous posts I applied for a refund through gog but they have been completely silent on the matter and its now been a fair while. I feel I should be given a refund as should everyone who asks as the software isn't of merchantable quality and its applicable under gogs 30 day money back guarantee (game breaking bugs) sadly on the official forums people who are pointing things out and asking for refunds are mostly getting censored and their threads deleted and some people are referring to this as:

warbroken: viking Con-Quest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7cJuxwjmDg