I was all happy when I finally picked up a video game for the first time in years, popped some Medieval: Total War in and was getting ready to drive my enemies from their lands, hear the lamentations of their women and everything else when my virus scanner pops up and says that I have a virus.
Hm. This is the first one I’ve received notice of since I switched to XP Pro. I check out what it says and it’s coming from the game I’d just installed (and was then playing).
So, I shut down the game, ran the full scan and nothing came up. I read the description of the virus to see what would have happened it it had gotten all up in my system, but it’s a really, really lame one from 1994.
My question is: what do I do?
Do I keep the game and pretend that that sort of thing is normal? Do I return it and hope Best Buy will take pity on me? Do I tell Activision and threaten to sue?
Given a) how much of a time-sucker that game is and b) how much it sucks (or at least how un-fun it is), I’ll likely just uninstall it and say my $20 was wasted, but I’m wondering if I can at least get the cash back. I read the EULA and it’s just the standard, “even if it turns out that there was some particularly malicious virus on the disc meant specifically for the purpose of destroying your computer, you agree, by installing this (BEFORE YOU KNEW ABOUT THE VIRUS, MIND YOU) that you won’t hold up liable for any damages. PS, we’ll also have it connect to the internet and see if the demo version can’t get past your spyware blocker.”
Jagoffs. So, what next?
You’re saying you got a virus from a store bought copy of Medieval Total War? Somehow I’m not buying it. Either you pirated it or the virus was there before and was just undetected until it attacked your game.
As for not liking MTW did you try turning your fun button to on before playing it? Really if you like RTS games then you can skip most of the turn based stuff. If you like turn based game playing you can skip the battles. If you like both there’s tons of both. If you don’t like either you shouldn’t have bought the game. 
I have no idea where the virus came from. The reason I thought the game came infected with the virus is 1) I’ve never gotten the message before 2) the virus was firmly in the directory of the game (although subsequent tests on both the system and the file in question have come back negative). I was ftping (uploading) some stuff at the same time, but that had finished by the time the virus came up. Perhaps it came from there, perhaps not.
You will also note that I stated both the amount I paid for it and the place I purchased it which would disqualify your pirated statement (although I appreciate the sentiment…wait…not in pit…control self…).
I did have my fun button on, but it was switched back off when the nauseating tedium button was switched on in its place.
Well considering I think it’s nearly impossible to get a virus from a store bought copy of MTW it was reasonable to assume
- you got the virus from somewhere else and just blaming the game because you didn’t like it
or
- you were being misleading about where you got the game from.
No need to take offense about it.
Um I’d lean towards perhaps.
Well considering how many different ways there are to play the game it’s hard for me to figure out how you had no fun at all…but to each their own I guess. I hope you have better luck with the next one you buy.
::pokes head briefly into thread::
Could it be a false positive?
We once got an “infected file found” warning when running one of my kids’ games on our computer. We had run this game before with no problems. I contacted the vendor and they said that certain versions of that virus scanner were showing up a false positive for this game. We tried a week later, when the virus definition had been updated, and the error no longer appeared.
Another possibility is that your virus software caught the virus, and cleaned it up, which is why it’s no longer registering the problem.
Regarding legit software and viruses - it’s rare, but it can happen if something slips through. I don’t have a cite but I read of this occuring a few years back - hundreds / thousands of copies of something shipped before the company discovered the problem and stopped shipping the disks.
Well, against my better judgement, I ran the game again and haven’t seen the virus return. I was probably overly concerned because when I installed the demo on another computer, the spyware detector went off and said it was trying to install some adware. Another thing that seemed odd was that upon starting, XP’s firewall popped up and asked me if I wanted this program to access the internet. Given that the firewall will let just about anything access the internet without asking, I was slightly perturbed.
Why I continued with the full version is beyond me.
Re: this game being a lot of fun: I played one run through of Vikings and it was OK and started on the full version and boy was that one step better than watching paint dry. It appears that one has two choices: 1) mindless drudgery in the political/trade realm which apparently consists of a lot of waiting around or 2) battles in which there are apparently more and more complex modifiers than 1st Ed AD&D, so many that it doesn’t make sense to even bother with trying to figure them out. I read a little tutorial on www.totalwar.org and while I’m glad that this level of detail is fun for some people, I want to believe that accurately capturing the flavor of medieval warfare is something more than an exercise in probability and statistics.*
- I’ve started doing some reading into medieval warfare and if it turns out that this is the underlying theme of all war, then I’ll conceede the point. I don’t, however, recall reading anything about this in Sun Tzu.
Re: perhaps RTS/empire builder games aren’t for me: I loved Master of Orion II and think the Monkey Island trilogy (never could figure out how to control the character in the last one) was the best ever, so perhaps this game isn’t the best. I’ll give it another try though.
Re: taking offence:
“I have purchased this game legally.”
“You are a liar.”
What’s not to be taken offence at? :wally
It all depends on what you like about the game. For instance, I love/loved MoO II as well, still have the disk and play it every once and a while. I’m a builder empire player. I like building a giant something and then watching it run. Sure, invading is fun, conquering is fun, but building something up is where it’s at for me. Thus, you can imagine I played without Tactical Combat. Yep, no designing ships or watching battles for me. I hated that part of MoO I.
Depending on what kind of player you are: builder, explorer (I’m explorer 2nd behind builder), conquerer, warrior, etc., there is probably a game out there for you. I like RTS for a while, but get tired of them quickly. I love SimCity and Civilization games.
So what do you like? There are games out there for you. Might I suggest some websites to help your search:
GameFaqs
PC Gaming Review
GoneGold
On the question of the virus, I think it’s likely fun with dueling programs.
Do I know you? You’re just words on a screen and a complete stranger to me. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that you knew you’d be suspected of pirating (which is a no-no on this board) when you got a virus from your download so you said you bought it somewhere or you misinterpreted where it came from. So what I said was
I can be pretty thin skinned sometimes but you have me beat by miles. If I ever wanted to call you a liar I would call you a liar. I wouldn’t say things about maybe you got it from another place and didn’t detect it.