So...I've been waiting for Skyrim for months. I tried it when it first came out (preordered my copy) and then put it away to wait for Christmas break after my school was done. It informed me it needed to download a patch, and I allowed it to.

Now, browsing on the interwebs, apparently Bethesda has broken the game and it will be broken for at least a week or two? (Assuming they fix it the second time).

I'm very sad, and worried. I don't want to play 40-50 hours to find out if I can keep playing past that point, and I already saw some quest bugs and major housing bugs when I tried it before.

I don't know why I posted this. I just feel a little cheated, and a little sad, considering how long I've been waiting and how excited I was, that they most likely won't have fixed it until I'm back to working all day.

Do you think it's appropriate for game developers to not properly test their games? Apparently a representative from Bethesda acknowledged that they should have tested their new patch better. I don't understand why developers think it's alright to release broken games and then be careless with patches.

almost 50 hours in..

no bugs so far... AT ALL..

not before patch.. not after

Unfortunately, that's how games are shipped. At least on the PC it's comparatively easy to patch up the holes.

Bethesda's better than most companies about their patching. Everyone here at work who has been playing it has had no trouble - though they're all playing on XBOX360. Give it a shot. There were a bunch of gamebreaking bugs in Morrowind and Oblivion both, and I played through them with no problems until I finally went and tried to reproduce the bugs I'd read about.

Bethesda and buggy, broken games? Well, that's a first.

I haven't played much myself but all my friends are mental about it and I haven't heard anyway experiencing game-breaking bugs yet. Just play it, you're bound to be in for a good time.

blah, this game could be bugged to hell and back, and it would still be the best game of the year, or at least a GotY candidate.

but in fact Skyrim is pretty much Bethesda's most bug-free release to date.

Thank you, guys, GOG always seems to make me feel better. It's just - I've got it on the PS3, and I know Fallout / Fallout NV were bad on the PS3, so I'm scared that I'll start playing and discover I wasted $60. (Not to mention my initial decision to buy a PS3 was spurred by inFAMOUS and Skyrim both being on the console. It's looking like it would have been MUCH smarter to go with an Xbox).

Almost 60 hours, no bugs, no crashes; it's all nice and smooth.

What happened for me was that it stopped working for me after the patch, but this was due to a mod that stopped it from loading properly. So I took the mod off and it worked just fine. so don't worry it should be good to go.

I've played 110 hours (I stopped playing 2 weeks ago)
And I can safely say that the only bugs I encountered involved my outdated display driver. (whoops)

Should be fine.

too many hours (seriously way too many)

and a total of 1 issue. it crashed once......

To be honest Skyrim is probably one of the lesser bugged games from them in awhlie. not bug-free but surprisingly almost no mission breaking game bugs to be found.

Just compare it to Oblivion and Fallout

Demons Souls
Valkyria Chronicles
Yakuza
White Knight Chronicles
free online service thats less annoying
Possible Persona 5
Ability to purchase PS1 classics and PS2 games.
LittleBigPlanet
and many others that I forgot about.
I think PS3 is the way to go. ;)

Although I'm not big on inFAMOUS.

Bethesda games are always buggy as hell. I really don't see the fascination with them. I enjoyed Morrowind pretty much, once I discovered mods; but it wasn't just awesome. And I thought Oblivion was a colossal waste. Boooring! Nothing much good to say about a game where you must exercise considerable restraint to not become so uber that you totally crush the game.

I haven't even thought about buying Skyrim. I probably will some day, once the modder's have had their way with it, and if there is a gaming void that needs to be filled.

I think the only reason you see a lot of people complaining about issues with the patch is because people tend not to speak up if nothing goes wrong. I'd imagine the stories you're reading are the minority (although I still feel sorry for them that their game isn't working).

But I haven't had any issues before or after either patch was installed (beyond a bit of choppiness due to the breaking of the large address aware fix from the first patch). No crashes, only a little clipping, one awkward freeze during a conversation with the Winterhold archmage. Nothing serious.

Besides getting ridiculously lost in Blackreach. That place is huge.

Problem with the patch is the removal of resistance values. Not everyone has backwards flying dragons but everyone is screwed because of resistance failure. Since it doesn't break your game in a similar way to a CTD people think it's okay.