The Ubi/Nival alliance continues to fly with about as much understated grace as an awkward pink bird. Contradicting the promises of last week that the first patch will include updated AI, more maps, and a random map generator, Nival confirms that our first patch will now simply include a lot of ?????. Similarly, the map editor release has been pushed August, the random map generator sometime after that, and more maps shall not be known until a mystical bird named “patch two” alights upon our hard drives.

Personally, this doesn’t bother me as much as those who have been transformed into homicidal maniacs by it. Since Eric82 pointed out in the discussion following from my last post that the 20+ multiplayer maps can be customized for play against the AI, I think there is plenty enough HOMMV to chew on for the next couple of months. It just would be nice for Ubi/Nival to get their act together so as to stop misleading the community. Trust is a big part of managing a successful brand, and is a resource rapidly squandered when each week brings fresh contradictions and confusion. It happened during the beta test, it happened with the special editions, and now it’s happening with the patch releases. Honestly, hire a secretary.
The only thing certain at this stage is that Nival has ben paid enough to spend their time fantasizing over a bunch of Russian strippers who, disgustingly, have been paid to dress (and undress) in HOMMV regalia. Ouch…