I continue to be mystified by the individuals who pay to play a game that works poorly and then cheer when the working verison comes out much later.
Fascinating human behaviour, illogical, but fascinating.
Its obvious that you have never studied marketing or been involved in producing a new product. Potential markets can be split into segments and one of the most important is the group that will pay a premium to have the newest, cutting edge product, whether that be a game, a phone, a computer, an accounting system etc.
This group is prepared to pay extra (to allow the developer to begin to recoup "sunk" costs), will put up with deficiencies (because an untried product will always have them) and will even accept that the product may be a complete dud (because that this is the risk they take).
Reasons why this is so are speculative, with some thinking it is based on a need to always have the best, the desire to be seen by others as a owning a unique product, an urge to be first at everything etc. I have always tended to believed it to be at least partially a search for perfection, but that's me!
Anyway, the point is that it is not illogical or irrational. You just view the world differently than do those people.
To me, to not play a cutting edge game because it has faults, or to not spend a few dollars on a game because it is not up to some hypothetical standard (surely not error-free?), is also irrational. But I am far too polite to say so.
When I buy a new (as in just released) computer game (and I have been buying them for more than 20 years), I know I could be throwing my money away. In many case I have lost my money - I have a periodic clean out of junk games I have loaded, tried a few times and then deleted as crap. But I do this because I know the alternative is to never buy anything until everyone else has bought and played it, and time has allowed all its faults to become apparent. I am not prepared to wait - maybe you should.
Personally, I am having a ball playing HOI3. I am trying things out, learning the depth of the game etc, and anticipating my big "real" game when Patch 1.3 comes out. I have already had my money's worth in terms of hours of enjoyment - probably works out to be about 20c an hour - cheaper than most things. And that's not counting the hours of enjoyment reading cheerful, optimistic, positive posts on this forum. This is not a dud to be thrown out in a few weeks. I can see this game remaining on my hard drive for years.
