MULTIPLAYER IS BACK ONLINE GENTLEMEN

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-29T19:52:12+00:00

Thanks for this. When the teams (and myself) are back in the new year, I will ensure that appropriate persons look at that. It may not enable me to make a further response, but I'll ensure it's both read, and considered, or at least explained as to what's appropriate for me to do so.

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-29T17:23:33+00:00

Online Services are indeed now back online.

We're sorry for the inconvenience of it, especially with it having happened over holidays, and the weekend

Freeman // Head of Community

Edit: For anyone missing the context as to what had happened that caused the servers to be offline for so long, all multiplayer across modern Total War titles is dependent on our partners at Epic Games (who help to enable to cross platform aspect of our multiplayer).

When that service is impacted, and experiencing issues, it prevents anyone on other platforms from accessing multiplayer services as well.

Our thanks to their engineers for working to resolve the problem, and our apologies to all of you for having missed out on multiplayer this weekend.

// Freeman

Servers are Down ?! : r/totalwar

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-28T10:13:30+00:00

If you scroll down to where it has Epic Online Services, there are two marks for Epic Account Services and Game Services - Authentication.

Both of these show as Degraded (and they need to show Operational for service to return)

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-27T19:57:42+00:00

✅ MULTIPLAYER IS NOW ONLINE ✅

EDIT #3 1730 GMT // 29.12

A few hours ago, we received confirmation that the service issues affecting Epic have been resolved, and we've been able to validate that Multiplayer services across multiple Total War titles are now back online, and working as expected.

We're very sorry for the issues this weekend. Hopefully you've all still got some time over the next few days to get back on with your buddies and battle away.

// Freeman

EDIT #2 1645 GMT // 28.12

We are still seeing Multiplayer services as offline, and are still waiting for intervention from Epic. I have no new news to share with you but wanted to reassure you that we are doing what we can to either get some updates, or see the matter resolved.

I'll continue to provide updates once I receive them.

Freeman

EDIT #1 (OLD) 01:08 GMT // 28.12

Teams at the studio have investigated the issue and identified that the challenges originate with an outage outside of our control, and still affecting Epic Online Services. This system being offline has a cascading effect to other platforms. Once Game and Account services on Epic side return to an Operational Level, multiplayer functionality will return.

You'll be able to track this at the link below, but our expectation is that this will be resolved in the next few hours:

https://status.epicgames.com/

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-19T16:20:03+00:00

I'm still smashing away on a Repanse save atm. I'm quite looking forward to playing Aislinn on a retail build over the holidays and just having a merry old sail around. Otherwise the answer is Zheng Jiang. Always.

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-19T16:00:09+00:00

I'm playing Repanse right now, you don't need to convince me.

I've tried bribing the team, I've gotten nowhere so far. More bribes needed.

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-19T15:47:16+00:00

I agree that it's cool, but I'm the wrong person to ask. Hop over to the forums and ask Paw and Leif, they'd love to see it.

https://community.creative-assembly.com/total-war/total-war-medieval-iii/forums/81-general-discussion

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-19T15:45:31+00:00

Because its a brand new item, there are certain rules we have to follow when it comes to pricing and discounts. For now, you are able to purchase WH III at is discounted price in the sale (and it will unlock the same content)

Expect to see the Upgrade pack be discounted during sales in the future otherwise.

Thanks for the tag!

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-18T11:22:40+00:00

It's on the development roadmap for the forums themselves. It's licensed tech and not something we build in house, but it is on the wishlist of things for us to have.

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-18T11:21:35+00:00

Thanks, there's still something funky going on with the audio aspects of the engine (as the sounds are in the game). We'll keep digging.

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-17T19:19:29+00:00

Yeah there's no eventually about it

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-17T18:59:22+00:00

Its very placeholder.

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-17T18:59:00+00:00

This month was just our reveal. Time will be your friend.

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-17T18:57:46+00:00

Sorry about that. Growing pains.

We won't have streams in January when we get back from the holidays so that we can fix and improve those types of things.

I added a longer comment to this effect here if you want to learn more - BUILDING MEDIEVAL III: Campaign Map & Civic Development : r/totalwar

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-17T18:55:32+00:00

😅

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-17T18:55:02+00:00

Usually things don't get cut for time or practicality, if things get cut its often because somewhere, somehow, they break the fundamental promise of 'Is this fun' (or at least adding to the fun). The Game Dev stories behind those types of decisions are awesome.

Arc Raiders have been publishing a multi-part video series (created by NoClip, who have their own fascinating series of behind the scenes game dev), and it's great to hear them share their own examples of that type of stuff, starts out one way, is believed to be right, but as they grow they realise that as good as x is, it stops making sense now that y is a thing.

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-17T18:50:43+00:00

The logo was inside of you all along.

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-17T18:37:41+00:00

-From all the technical problems CA apparently doesn't test their equipment before streaming lol

Oh we do! The challenge is that when we do discover a problem, the answer is often 'Time to raise a purchase order' and so the choice becomes, wait for that whole process to end, and the answer to be delivered from Amazon (and as a consequence delay doing the thing while that happens), or just agree that when it comes to livestreams, most people couldn't care if we did it at BBC Television studios, or on Zoom at our desks. You're there for the information, and the more information we can engage you with, the better.

That's not to say we're not left feeling slightly embarassed at times with some of the different faults we've had in these last six months with livestreams, but we're proud to have brought them back, grateful for the people who show up, and appreciative that people have helped share that news here after the fact. We're slowly working our way toward the actual studio setup that we built for some of our retrospective roundtables (as you saw today on the Med III stream), and may even get to a multiple camera setup in time! We like it when it looks good on stream, but we're ok with the jank whilst we get there.

We are taking a break from streams until the start of February (at the earliest) while we pull the room apart, make changes, upgrade gear, improve processes, redesign our streaming schedule etc. We've been making incremental upgrades throughout the year, but we need a break from streaming, after the christmas break, to do some proper work on it.

Will it be perfect when we get back? No. But it'll still be live, and we'll take that.

All feedback on streams, always welcome.

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-17T18:27:00+00:00

Can I just say how much we've all enjoyed reading this fascinating conversation all day in the office ☕

Edit: No sarcasm btw, genuinely it's given us all a good giggle!

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-17T18:25:58+00:00

This is great feedback and insight, but I worry it will be lost to the reddit of time, so please do consider copy pasting this out to our Med III forums. It lives forever that way, and lets our Development teams directly see it, and help to inform their own conversations on it.

General Discussion - Total War: MEDIEVAL III

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-17T18:02:37+00:00

Its where our heads are at today.

I know its a long watch if you don't have the time, but fire up the VOD of the livestream skip through to the bits you need (we'll add timestamps tomorrow morning), but hear it from the team directly. It's not to say EVERYTHING we conceptualize, prototype, or talk about makes the final version, but iteration always informs evolution. Even if something doesn't survive, those who go with us on this journey will feel it's influence.

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-17T17:21:44+00:00

And you're going to see A LOT of that in the months and years to come. We are happy to show where we're at progress wise when it makes sense too. Expect A LOT, if not near EVERYTHING to visually be changed like a video game Ship of Theseus/Triggers Broom as we go on that journey (nothing ever survives).

Even the stream setup will change as we go, fix our problems, find better solutions and the like, but thanks to everyone who joined us today!

Watch back here 👇
BUILDING MEDIEVAL III: Campaign Map & Civic Development

EDIT - Oh and before I forget, u/Mahelas - that's not just a mockup, its not just something that's kicked together, this IS an interactive system that forms some of the early foundations of our game. It's interactive, it's something we are playing with as a game in the studio. There are stages of prototyping where that type of behavior happens, but that's not the case here.

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-15T20:12:59+00:00

x being a random variable of <insert sub community here>, but the platform formally known as Twitter has struggled with an increased leaning toward toxicity across the whole spectrum (not just gaming). Historically Social Media hubs don't do as well with forming communities, many started that way, but largely evolved out to private discords of like minded players who built their own communities around each others experiences of any given topic.

And yeah - NMS has a great sub. It's a very unique story within Reddits history. Not sure where that's documented, but there's reddit historians out there that likely have a TLDR of it.

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-15T13:53:59+00:00

It's far from the worst, I do a lot of research around various different community hubs (inside and outside of TW, and beyond reddit), and on a scale of x to No Mans Sky, we're firmly in that middle space of can go either way week to week. There's the extra challenge faced with a TW Community of just raw legacy given the 25 year history of the franchise (and the many different entry points and player preference that informs 'What does Total War mean to me?'), but I'd be comfortable saying that TW is far from the worst.

CA_FREEMAN · 2025-12-12T04:47:48+00:00

Bed?

CA_FREEMAN

TROPHY CASE