The "Play the World" expansion pack was originally released in 2002 and it was generally considered buggy and incomplete. Patching fixed many of the bugs but the multiplayer portion still left much to be desired due to poor original design. Unfortunately, these design flaws were deeply rooted and could not be fixed by further "free" patches (it just wouldn't be economical) and so the developer went to work on a new expansion pack called "Conquests".

Now, in 2003, with release of the "Conquests" expansion pack, the "Play The World" (PTW) xpack has been rendered utterly obsolete, since Conquests includes all of the 'good' stuff from PTW (and none of the 'bad'!). Conquests also has many new features (new civs, new wonders, new techs, new units, etc) and much better multiplayer support.

My advice to anyone considering buying this PTW xpack is: DON'T!

You're much better off getting the "Conquests" xpack instead which, at the time of this writing, is the same price as PTW!

In summary, the "Conquests" xpack:

a) includes everything in the PTW xpack except the bugs and flawed multiplayer support

b) has a bunch of new stuff: civs, techs, units, wonders, etc.

c) costs the same as PTW!

Good luck.

"The worst add-on I ever bought. Waste at any price.", I felt ripped-off. I love Civ III, but this add-on is total trash. Nothing to it. It is only good for their pocket books, I was very let down that this trash was put on the market. It is not worth even a dime!!! Wyatt Kaldenberg

"The Best Yet", This is, in my opinion, the greatest member of the Civilization. I just ordered Conquests, so we'll se how that goes, but I've personally logged about 1000 hours on PTW. The new advanced orders make the game a lot less tedious at the higher levels. Multiplayer is REALLY WORTH IT, believe me. I don't even use it online, and I do hotseat games. Seriously, if strategy games are your thing, PTW is the ultimate.

"Multiplayer no, Mulitproblem yes!", The only reason someone would buy this expansion pack is to play multiplayer Civ. That is really what this expansion offers. Well, let me assure you, this system is so full of bugs, so user-unfriendly, and so poorly designed that after 2 hours, me and my friend were still unable to play together online.

First, to play the game online you must go through Gamespy, an internet site. Now, you can launch the multiplayer mode from Civ 3 itself, but not be able to find friends or see who you could play, let alone invite them. You have to enter through the Gamespy program instead, and select Civ 3 as your game there. Don't worry, there are tons of ads to amuse you while you try and fail to launch the game.

Personally, I had many "firewall errors" because of my router, so I opened the ports. The errors still showed up (?), so I disconected the router and went stright from the modem. Still, the errors persisted. There is no online customer service at Gamespy, so I get to try and "figure it out myself".

I want the multiplayer simplicity offered by Age of Mythology. I love Civ 3, but this system seems hopelessly outdated already.

"This item is obsolete upon the release of 'Conquests'", This is the first expansion pack to 'Civilization III', and, after installing the badly-needed patches provided on the civ3 website, I've enjoyed it for its single-player additions alone.

The important thing to know at this point, however, is that all of the content in 'Civ III: Play the World' is to be included in the *next* expansion -- 'Civ III: Conquests'. That means that there's no reason whatsoever to invest in this expanion now. Note that pre-ordering 'Conquests' here at Amazon earns one an additional bonus disc of fan material as a giveaway from Atari.

Got it? In order to get the 'Play the World' material (and all the new additions), go buy 'Conquests'.