Gothic 3

Bugs

At release, Gothic 3 still contained a lot of bugs. Even three official updates did not solve all problems. A community member from the official Gothic 3 board of the publisher's forum, Hans Trapp, made the first unofficial (fan-made) bug fix. His so called "Fire Chalice Bugfix" fixes an unresolvable main quest. It was released on June 7, 2007 and started a huge wave of fan-made bug fixes, which ended in the semi-official "Community Patch" which was supported by publisher JoWooD Productions Software AG.

The previous Gothic 3 gold master was called back because of the amount of bugs that were still present. On Sept. 26, 2006, JoWooD Productions Software AG let the public know that the new gold master for Gothic 3 was officially finished and in production:

Liezen, Österreich, 26th of September 2006; Thousands of fans have been shocked after the message: “Gothic 3 is not gold anymore”. Rumours about delays, current situation of development and quality problems circulated trough the community and fans became much more nervous each day. JoWooD Productions, Deep Silver and Piranha Bytes attach great importance to on a very good quality which suits the expectations of the fans. Due to this reason the version has been optimized till the last second. Now it’s done: Gothic 3 is ready and in production. The game will be released on the 13th of October.

Game engine

The graphics engine used in the game is called GENOME and was developed by Piranha Bytes. Gothic 3 is the first game to use this engine.

PC Powerplay

The German magazine PC Powerplay gave the game an unenthusiastic review of 67%, mostly because of the bugs, and used the headline "Why Gothic 3 is a huge disappointment" on their cover. According to their own account in issue 12/2006, they received an angry phone call by JoWooD's marketing director (shortly before the magazine's distribution) in which he threatened to withdraw all advertisements and to convince all other companies of the gaming industry to do the same. Later JoWooD's lawyer threatened to take out a restraining order to stop the distribution of the magazine unless they blacken out the headlines of the cover. Later the threats were driven back to a compensation lawsuit. The German online magazine 4players.de, which awarded 68%, reported of a similar reaction after their review.

References to the game

The game was parodied in two episodes of Die Redaktion (The Editorial Team), a monthly comedy video produced by the German gaming magazine GameStar. They were published on the DVD of issue 12/2006 and 01/2007 respectively. The first one is an indirect parody about the many bugs in the game.

Awards

• 4Players
  • 2006 – Most Buggiest Game of the Year
  • 2006 – Biggest Disappointment of the Year
  • 2006 – #3 Best Voice-Acting of the Year
• GameSpy
  • 2006 – Biggest Disappointment of the Year (PC)
• GameStar (Germany)
  • February 01, 2007 - Best PC Game in 2006 (Readers' Vote)
  • February 01, 2007 - Best German PC Game in 2006 (Readers' Vote)
  • February 01, 2007 - Best PC RPG in 2006 (Readers' Vote)

Information also contributed by AHO and Sicarius.