ORIGINAL: Obsolete
I'd like to point out a few issues that perhaps would help bring up numbers. I have to confess I don't play as much TOAW (though I am trying) as I'd like because I find some things so tedius. For axample, it's great that there is a T & D hotkey, which probably would be the #1 used hotkey and help people save TON of time and get more playability & interest. The problem is these hotkeys tend to always shift you to the next unit, and it's just damn tedious to keep scrolling from one screen to another and lose where you are all the time when you just wanted to do something quick and simple. No, we have to keep using the whole menu for everything, which is just so cumbersome.
There isn't many video run-throughs I've seen, and the few I have seen show exactly this, the very cumbersom use of the menu system constantly. This is NOT the way to attract new players, the graphics to be honest are not that great (not that it matters to me), but having a bad interface design can be attrocius.
Of course I have some really nasty gripes about other things too, like why is it every freiken time without warning, that free-bombard shot comes up, and then one of your units ALWAYS decides to move into the new hex, only to totally screw up your whole plans and settings. Ughhhh... I really am begining to HATE that free-shot thing, it's not a bonus, it's a huge penalty! Who gave my units an order to move out of their fortified and over-stockpiled position, only to leave it vulnerable to a acounter-attack!?? I never understood this 10 years ago, and thought for sure it would be fixed today. Anyhow, I'm going to cut off my rants for now.... I just hope some of these issues will be fixed soon, but it's been a decade already...
Just a last point. ( I hope)
Does Toaw have outdated features? Sure it has. It has a very outdated interface, for example.
In terms of rules set (the variables a game choose to model and how it models them), we can't call it outdated, even because I can't understand the concept of 'up to date rule set' outside the realm of market trends. Toaw can be tweaked and must be tweaked in relation to bugs and gamey aspects, but Toaw has the advantage of years of gameplay and tests, so that the game issues are already well known. Sure it may be surprising to see well known issues like ant units attacks being discussed along the years and not being solved, but I hope they still can be, as indicated by some other well known issues being solved by this future patch.
Sure Toaw can also be improved by a better naval model, air model and some strategic layer, perhaps. But this fact doesn't diminish the game value.
The fact is that I'm not a radical guardian of any game. I have, for example, played flight simulator for years and I'm thinking about putting it aside for X Plane, because X Plane does exactly the same thing, but better in what, for me, are the most important aspects.
In the case of Toaw, I would ask if someone can point me to a game that does exactly what Toaw does, i.e. reproducing all modern period (since 19th century) conflicts with a huge database of scenarios and being fun to play.
Once in a while I go after something like Toaw and check some reviews etc. If Toaw is not the only one of it's genre in the market, it sure is the best. If someone knows of a game that does exactly what this game does, but in a better way, please tell me. I would sure like to take a look.
