Football Manager 2009

[Scott McFly]

Correct, the authentication servers are being turned on just before midnight on Thursday night. Here's the post from the SI boards:

Hi,

Here's the release SEGA will be putting out this afternoon with regard to activation times and retailer street dates.

Thanks

Ben

"SEGA Confirm Football Manager 2009 Activation details

SEGA have today confirmed that activation servers for Football Manager 2009 will be turned on shortly before midnight on Thursday 13th November in time for the release date of Friday November 14th across Europe.

Despite the unprecedented anticipation for Football Manager 2009, SEGA would encourage retailers not to break the Friday 14th November street date so as not to disappoint customers who will be unable to play before the release date.

Buyers of the game can activate with one-time entry of the unique code on the back of the game manual by one of three methods

1. Register with STEAM and input the code during installation. This method has the benefit of automatically patching and updating the game.

2. Activation without additional software installation is available direct with Uniloc.

3. For those without an internet connection a local telephone number will be available and presented within the installer for customers to call and register the code. Where possible this will be a local toll free number.

Once the game is registered through any of these three methods the game will be activated and available to play. No further activations will be required unless the user specifically deactivates the machine it is installed on.

Activation for the Australian market will taken place at 6.00 EDT (Sydney) 14th November.

Markets with later release dates such as the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia for Football Manager 2009 and Worldwide Soccer Manager in the USA will have servers turned active for midnight before their respective releases.

About Football Manager 2009

Football Manager™ 2009 is set to feature a vast array of all new features including, for the first time ever, a full 3D view of the world famous Football Manager™ match engine. Football Manager Handheld™ 2009 for Sony PSP is also set for release on the same day and sees the debut of a 2D match engine for the handheld franchise.

Football Manager™ 2009 for PC and Apple Macintosh, and Football Manager Handheld™ 2009 for Sony PSP are both set for release on November 14th.

There's people in parts of Europe who've been sold the game early and can't activate it to play it. Which is fair enough since the release data is the 14th.

[stokeriño]

It's all fair enough, although I imagine if you were to reinstall the game a couple of years down the line (like on a laptop or something) - ostensibly on some kind of retro buzz - and it was like "lol, I need the internet to know it's past 14/11/2008 to let you play", that would be fucking irritating.

Edited November 13, 2008 by stokeriño

[Scott McFly]

It's all fair enough, although I imagine if you were to reinstall the game a couple of years down the line (like on a laptop or something) - ostensibly on some kind of retro buzz - and it was like "lol, I need the internet to know it's past 14/11/2008 to let you play", that would be fucking irritating.

I'm guessing the authentication is more for anti-piracy rather than to check if the game's release date has passed.

[Farmer Reil]

Man, this referee is a blatant Middlesborough fan. I'm Team Bath, and my last reserve game is against the 'boro reserves. I've managed to get my shit together in '09 to the point where I can do reasonably well now in LLM, and I go into the game expecting a good performance ending in a 1-0 or 2-0 defeat.

It gets to the 64th minute and it's still 0-0 due to my relentless closing down of wingers and hard tackling. Boro get a penalty; it's going to happen sooner or later when you tell players who can barely tackle to get stuck in... and my loanee 'keeper saves it. Then saves the rebound. Then the referee gives a completely fucking pointless second penalty, with Robert Huth (lol, remember him?) scores. During the aftermath of the first. One of the players after the game was 'outraged', so I stuck up for him and said it was a bollocks decision, and got fined... after a friendly? ¬_¬

Also, anyone been invited to a 'Trial Day' yet? I'm not sure if they exist in reality, but they're a cool idea. Basically, loads of unattached players get together to split into a few teams and play matches against each other, and lower league managers get invited to the games. You can either attend in person, send a scout to watch, or both. I managed to find a decent-looking young rightback and a really solid (relative to my team) defensive MC, the latter of which has slotted right into my first eleven.

After a few more hours gameplay since my previous hyperbole-laced post, I've calmed down a bit. There are some evident bugs, which will hopefully be sorted on release day, but not as many as last year for sure. The 3D match engine is meh, and I've already turned it off (unfortunately it still has to load the data for it, so you get an annoying 'Setting up match' box for a few seconds before each half starts, and again after tactical changes). I've already switched back to 2D Classic view, and I wish there was a way to tell the game I want to use that mode all the time. It keeps defaulting to 3D view before each game and I have to go into the 3D view anyway to change it, which makes no sense.

I think one of the main factors in my dislike of 3D view is time. I usually watch 2D matches with the speed slider at about 75%; fast enough so that players don't stand around doing nothing for ages without being so fast that you can't tell what's happening. This works brilliantly for me. 3D matches at 75% speed, however, look hilariously bad. Not in the 'weird shit happens' sense, but to see player's legs moving that fast just makes me crack up and the game loses all of its immersion factor. ¬_¬ Whereas little dots moving that fast looks perfectly fine. So it's not so much that the 3D engine is bad (there's acres of room for improvement though), it could be FIFA-quality, and I still wouldn't use it. Although at FIFA quality I'd probably turn it on for really important games...

I miss sarrows. farrows and barrows have changed, but are still essentially the same, but sarrows have disappeared entirely, which is odd as I used them quite a bit in certain situations (4-3-3, where I want my outermost MC's to cover the flanks a bit, or if I have an AML/FC type player (like Henry used to be) who can run down the flank but plays up front, I sometimes used a sarrow to make him do that more). There's no instruction to do that for individual players, only the whole team. I don't want to play wide, because my widemen suck assssss. I want to play narrow, through the middle, but have my playmaker and sole good crosser of the ball run down the right sometimes. Unless you're lucky and he has a PPM for that, you can't do it any more.

The media interaction is improved, vastly. Sure, it's still essentially the same questions over and over with slightly different wording, but it takes longer to feel like it this time. And the 'interviewers' do try to base follow-up questions on your answers to previous ones, even if it is a little crude and sometimes hilarious. "You've said that you feel your team is strong all over the pitch, this seems to imply you have a particular favourite player?". Sorry, but wtf? It implies the complete opposite, moronface (that was my actual reply, thanks to the text box). But the press conferences are a step in the right direction, and the way players react to different things is cool too. It certainly 'feels' like you're more involved with the team now, and things you say have an effect. When good things happen, it feels a more like you did well, and when bad things happen it feels a lot more like your fault. Rather than a Supergoalie and an Unstoppable Last Minute Equaliser Because The AI Says You're Not Allowed To Win This Game. It feels a lot more responsive to your tactics. If your tactics suck, your team will suck.

The downside to this is, 'a quick game of FM' is pretty much impossible nowadays. Or at least, starting one is. Once you get to the fourth or fifth game it gets quicker, once you know your players and your tactics and everything is set up.

But yeah, overall it's a pretty big improvement over '08, IMO. Even if you ignore the 3D match engine, arguably the biggest selling point.

Edited November 13, 2008 by Farmer Reil

[cmb211087]

Game and patch have been released, can authenticate via steam.

[Adam]

Yeah, but is there gonna be a patch for the demo? I dont wanna spend 40 quid on the game, download the patch and then find that it still doesn't work. It looks like I'll be sticking with FM08 (N)

[cmb211087]

Apparantly not, oh and loads of people are having problems because in their wisdom, sega have printed the authentication key in dots, so o and 0 look the same, i and 1 and t look the same, and when you get a key like 1O0OIt all printed in dots, you aint guessing that anytime soon

[Adam]

Someone from SI over at the forums there said a demo patch will be available in the next few days. Here's hopin'!

[Scott McFly]

I can just see my activation code when the game arrives (hopefully) tomorrow...

1000110TT001IIII

Although if you're having problems they've provided a tool to help:

http://keylookup.fm2009.softanchorinsight.com/

[stokeriño]

I think my copy was delivered yesterday, but our letterbox is stupidly small and the postman on this occasion opted to leave a note and take it back to the depot (usually they just leave it outside). This means I'm going to have to get up at 7am on Saturday to go and collect it...then have a 9am driving lesson, after which I need to head straight off to work... Essentially, I won't be able to play it until Saturday evening at the earliest.

[Scott McFly]

Got my copy this morning, only issue I've had is with the 0's and 1's, but that tool I posted sorted that out. After sorting out all the fake teams, leagues etc. and installing the patch I'm now starting my first game. Got a bit carried away with the leagues though - ended up selecting 19 from 9 nations apparently! Not sure how that'll fare on my dual core 2.0Ghz with 2Gb RAM, but we'll see how we go. Can always go full screen if it means it goes faster than windowed. Should've done the Blue Square Premier too and rounded it up to 20.

Not sure if this was in 08 or not (since I've come straight from 07), but there's an option at the start to disallow clubs the use of their transfer budget for the first window so that all teams etc. start the season exactly as they did in real life. Not sure if this applies to your team too or not, but I presume it did and therefore didn't touch it.

[SilentBob2004]

OK, I registered with Steam and typed in the code. All went ok, and it downloaded the patch too. Now when i try to open the game, i have to register it with 'Soft Anchor', but i cant cos it says it cant connect to the internet! Fucking hell!!!

Any ideas?

[Scott McFly]

I've heard the Soft Anchor/Uniloc authentication servers are completely bottlenecked just now, so that might be the issue.

Maybe try turning off your firewall or anti-virus stuff?

[SilentBob2004]

Cheers i'll try again later. Not in a huge rush to play the game really, i'll give it another go this evening.

[Pesci]

Bought my copy earlier from ASDA for £29.71. Bastards. I'd heard prices like £25 quoted and their website said £24! There wasn't even a price on the shelf so I just took it up to buy it, assuming that it'd come to £25 and got fucked over.

But yeah, I'll install it now.

[Baddar]

£29.71!!??

I'm almost sure my release day copy of 08 was £18.

Could've been £25 though, as my mate picked it up for me.

[Scott McFly]

Think the price has gone up this year in general, even Play are selling it for £29.99 and I'm sure 07 and 08 were around £18-£20 on release.

[Pesci]

Yeah, the ASDA price was the best one I could find, apart from some site selling it for £18 that people have had issues with in the past. Turns out I was cheated though :@

[stokeriño]

Well, they can't put up prices in increments to account for inflation, so there had to be a jump sometime...and people are paying more for next-gen console games anyway, so maybe they're more used to it.

I got it from GAME for £29.99 (-£5 from loyalty points).

Edited November 14, 2008 by stokeriño

[Scott McFly]

The website prices are generally different from the store prices for most retailers.