Back when game developers were required to complete games before they released them. Back when if they left a glitch in the game when they released the game, it stayed that way. Back when developer's took time to finish making the game before putting the game on shelves. Many people would say that the cultivation of the internet is one of man's greatest triumphs, but in this regard, it most certainly is not. Nowadays company's are just pushing games out as soon as they can to start making money, figuring they can just patch whatever needs to be fixed later. And it's a shame, because when you buy a game, you buy it to play it, not to get stuck 30 minutes in because of a simple overlooked trigger failure, ultimately causing you to wait a week for them to release a patch for it.
Elemental - War of Magic is the golden example of how bad this has gotten. This game was released in a condition where it would crash every 5-30 minutes. Even when it's not crashing, the framerate is extremely choppy considering how poor the graphics are. The campaign isn't very user friendly, and half the time doesn't tell you where you're going. There are also other smaller bugs that could have easily been addressed. They didn't even bother to put their multiplayer servers online for release.
