Elemental : War of Magic disastrous launch : stay well away
- Thread starter Neil79
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Soldato
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At the end of the day, he's taken responsibility for his screwup.
It's refreshing to see an honest CEO and I hope he can turn it around as a result.
As for those ranting on about him having to sack people...
Unless you work for yourself / are on the board / a shareholder, you have practically no control over what happens to the company and as a result, your position.
You're not paid to worry about that stuff, nor are you paid to take responsibility for it.
The company is not run for you to have the benefit of a job, but for the shareholders to get a return.
Only in co-op run companies like the John Lewis group or the Co-op (Surprise!) each employee is a stakeholder.
At the other end of the spectrum you have people like Bobby Kotick.
It's refreshing to see an honest CEO and I hope he can turn it around as a result.
As for those ranting on about him having to sack people...
Unless you work for yourself / are on the board / a shareholder, you have practically no control over what happens to the company and as a result, your position.
You're not paid to worry about that stuff, nor are you paid to take responsibility for it.
The company is not run for you to have the benefit of a job, but for the shareholders to get a return.
Only in co-op run companies like the John Lewis group or the Co-op (Surprise!) each employee is a stakeholder.
At the other end of the spectrum you have people like Bobby Kotick.
Hi everyone. I'm new here and one of the first things I did after my account being validated was to look Elemental up to see what this particular community thought of it. In response to Kieves's post before mine, and as a general catharsis, then, here's the lowdown.
After Stardock (well, Brad) admitted they screwed up they hastily began releasing patches. There was talk of their QA department not being big enough to cover the multiple hardware configurations they'd see in the wild once the game was released, but whatever. True or not, Elemental just didn't work for a lot of people. It was also rubbish, but that was lower in Stardock's priority list at the time.
So a series of fairly rapidly-deployed patches led to version 1.1 by around November 2010 if I recall correctly. Until recently this was the last stable patch. It was still mostly bugfixes so that people could actually play, and a relatively small amount of gameplay tweaks too. To be fair to them, gameplay did improve significantly after 1.1
Personally after experiencing the disastrous launch I had decided to wait until 1.1 was deployed before playing the game, so at this point I finally got stuck in. I should add here that for one reason or another I had paid the best part of £100 to have the game.
Unfortunately, playing my first full game of Elemental v1.1, I discovered a horrific bug. It seemed that enemy player AI was absolutely woeful. They didn't use magic (either at the strategic or tactical level) but, much worse, they sent their sovereigns out with no protection whatsoever. This is like, in Chess, using your king nearly every turn and trying to win with it alone. See, as soon as you encounter the enemy sovereign - and since he's always undefended - you can just beat him about the head and shoulders for two minutes and he will die. This will automatically win the war for you. In a nutshell, the enemy players just hand the game to you every time, which obviously makes the game completely unplayable.
I'm trying to cut a long story as short as possible here, by the way.
So we all waited for 1.2, the "major bugfix" patch, and it took until now to be released. With much rejoicing everyone downloaded it and got stuck back in. But no. The "major bugfix" patch has introduced a raft of DirectX errors which means, for many people it seems (and myself of course), Elemental is now totally unplayable at worst or extremely unstable at best.
I have posted about the DX errors a few times on Stardock's forum, as have others. No response. Further, it seems the DX errors have been known about since February this year...and again, no response to numerous bug reports on Stardock's forum as far as I can see.
Needless to say...after all the waiting, the money I'd spent, the awful launch, the hasty patching, the waiting almost another year (so far) after having handed over my money, I'm disgusted and fed up with Stardock. They used to be such a fantastic developer but now I have no respect for them whatsoever.
Kieves - did I answer your question?
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A real shame, the game has good potential
Absolutely. The game actually ran smoothly for me at 1.1, but the "suicidal sovereign" bug obviously prevented me playing it. Although the game had quite a few other issues, not least the appalling interface, I was fairly happy with it at the time. If they'd just fixed that one bug I'd be playing now.
I have been told in other communities to just wait for the Fallen Enchantress expandalone which I'll get for free. The thing is, without wanting to sound ungrateful, I don't give a damn about FE. It will be, in Stardock's own words, an almost completely different game to War of Magic. I don't want a completely different game, I want WoM. Playable.
I had really high hopes for this game after the amount of Hype it received pre-launch on the Stardock forums (I was there a bit due to Demigod - which, looking back, should have been a warning sign). Demigod could have been something special, but the AI pathing was awful, and the netcode was beyond abysmal. Another Stardock game, another could-have-been-great ****-up.
It really is a shame.
It really is a shame.
To be fair Demigod wasn't developed by Stardock they were the publishers - although it did get confusing. I believe the Stardock involvement was the handing over of connection information to the Demigod engine. What they did handle badly imho was understanding how bad the issue was and then blaming it on poor isp/network setups.
I didn't buy Demigod so my opinion isn't worth much - and if Stardock really did blame ISPs and network infrastructure that's obviously awful - but I bet Gas Powered Games is at least as responsible for the disaster. The reason I say that is Supreme Commander is by far the most troublesome game I've ever tried to play online, bar none. The silly little client that you're required to run to play multiplayer is almost comically bad.
By the way - hi Tals!
By the way - hi Tals!
I just noticed, Neoseeker also gave Demigod a perfect 10/10.
They obviously have some affiliation with Stardock.
Man of Honour
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- 21 Nov 2004
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At least they are honest 
I'm sure I preordered Elemental so not sure why I haven't received this email
The invites are being staggered. You'll get one, mate.
I've just had a really quick look. The good news is that the interface is a MILLION times better than WoM's. It's what WoM's interface should have been. It's not only much clearer, but it looks a hell of a lot nicer too.
Tactical combat seems to be tighter. Spells are more varied although the effects are still poo. But things like the glowy highlights are so much better in FE.
I haven't played anywhere near enough to comment on stats and how city/character development pan out.
One problem I do have is that Stardock have spent the past year banging on about how FE is going to be a completely different game; it bloody isn't! It's exactly the same game!
Tactical combat seems to be tighter. Spells are more varied although the effects are still poo. But things like the glowy highlights are so much better in FE.
I haven't played anywhere near enough to comment on stats and how city/character development pan out.
One problem I do have is that Stardock have spent the past year banging on about how FE is going to be a completely different game; it bloody isn't! It's exactly the same game!
Well, I can hardly believe I'm saying this, but I'm cautiously optimistic about Fallen Enchantress. I've played a good couple of hours of it now and I'm enjoying it a lot more than I enjoyed WoM. No crashes yet, which is a big plus!
Everything's just better. Tactical combat, interface, flavour, spells, research. I can't think of a single area that hasn't been improved. It's worth taking your heroes out into the world now, and by carefully assessing an enemy unit you can make a good judgement as to whether or not to engage. Leveling up is quite fast initially and your heroes will pick up perks (a nice new addition) at a healthy rate. Magic means a lot more now, but mana is a much more precious resource too (this is good).
There are some bugs, but this is only v0.75 after all. When you give an auto-explore order to a unit it will continue to auto-explore no matter what, unless you go through the tedium of giving it countermanding orders all the time...or just eventually disband it as I did. Also during one particular fight I cast a spell on an enemy unit that should've inflicted a random negative effect on it, but the spell strengthened it instead. I'll have to report these to Stardock.
But anyway. All in all, my impression is largely positive at the moment. You only have to look back to earlier posts in this thread to see how furious I was with Stardock after they essentially abandoned WoM in the state it was in; if I can come around, anyone can. So if you'd also given up on the Elemental series in disgust, please do join in the Fallen Enchantress beta. You may be pleasantly surprised.
I'll continue to post impressions if there's any interest. Oh, and if you pre-ordered WoM you'll be able to download the FE beta whether you received the email or not.
Everything's just better. Tactical combat, interface, flavour, spells, research. I can't think of a single area that hasn't been improved. It's worth taking your heroes out into the world now, and by carefully assessing an enemy unit you can make a good judgement as to whether or not to engage. Leveling up is quite fast initially and your heroes will pick up perks (a nice new addition) at a healthy rate. Magic means a lot more now, but mana is a much more precious resource too (this is good).
There are some bugs, but this is only v0.75 after all. When you give an auto-explore order to a unit it will continue to auto-explore no matter what, unless you go through the tedium of giving it countermanding orders all the time...or just eventually disband it as I did. Also during one particular fight I cast a spell on an enemy unit that should've inflicted a random negative effect on it, but the spell strengthened it instead. I'll have to report these to Stardock.
But anyway. All in all, my impression is largely positive at the moment. You only have to look back to earlier posts in this thread to see how furious I was with Stardock after they essentially abandoned WoM in the state it was in; if I can come around, anyone can. So if you'd also given up on the Elemental series in disgust, please do join in the Fallen Enchantress beta. You may be pleasantly surprised.
I'll continue to post impressions if there's any interest. Oh, and if you pre-ordered WoM you'll be able to download the FE beta whether you received the email or not.