When is Stardock Design going to "WOW" us?

messiah,
Do not adjust your crosshairs. Repeat: Do not adjust your point-of-aim. High-and-to-the-right is invalid. Ten-ring all the way. Curious to see what sort of response this thread/post will generate. I'm an XP PRO SP2 user, and aim to be as long as possible. No V-word yet, although bloody M'soft just made me reactivate windows or else! Gave me three days.    Took TWO hours!   
As for the *ahem* topic: yes, me too...
If I go to Stardock's site, to see if anything is really new, I find a lot of the same skins, themes that have been up for, well, take the premiums, as you mentioned. They're really quite dusty and in need of...something, since many of them are from years ago, and although very well-done, simply lack the WOW-factor of the newest creations I find in the "Newest" gallery. If I put those older themes/skins/GUI-enhancements next to, say, current works by some of the more accomplished author-coders here, they seem quite pale by comparison. If there could be upgrades to, say, Universe Metal, Logika and others that are offered as Premium Suites, perhaps that would inject some pizazz into the offerings. Maybe I'm just jaded, and need to get outside and offline more now that Summer's here in the Rockies. I did throw a temper tantrum about 2003 or so, and didn't even plug my PC in 'til a couple years ago. Just a laptop for basic tasks. I'd love for Stardock et Cie. to kick it up a notch, but am puzzled as to just what might constitute such a step. I'll join ya in the dunking booth or stockades or whatever might happen here. It could get violent, though... Er, here goes...

Hey, I take a peek-a-boo every once and a while and have to agree with that observation. Now that that's said I can only offer some business observations.

First, Stardock Design is relatively a new business even though it contains the Stardock name people need to realize this. Second, the main business is offering services on the corporate aka big money side of things. Not to mention that they're currently in a significant growth phase.

Can that area be improved, most definitely but, don't expect anyone to push aside a five, six or seven figure contract to develop skins essentially on spec that may sell a few thousand. It's a typical squeeze that happens at this stage of the game but, posts like these are great because they tend to light a fire in certain areas.

Personally, if I were running that specific business I don't think the results would necessarily be any different. Asides from expecting the team to have all the NHL, NFL and cross-fingers NBA skins ready by the start of their next seasons! Then again I'm probably a tyrant.

I have to disagree.

We've been WOWed too much and now we're spoiled. I did a quick check and there's over 4,000 windowblinds in the library and I know personally that there's some that are no longer in the library. I'd say that whatever you can think of, chances are there's gonna be at least one that's similar. Nothing wrong with that. Recently, some of the skinners have gone to updating older blinds to get the "WOW" back into them. I'm glad there's some I really miss using.

It's not that there's no WOW it's that it's mostly WOW and that makes it SEEM like quality, ingenuity or whatever you want to call it has fallen off. There's so many really good blinds I have a hard time settling on one.

As to Stardock's own releases, in my own opinion I think Pantheon is one of the best blinds ever released, but that's MY taste. Everyone's different. I would like to see SD get into producing more of their own DX themes/suites.

I guess when you've got an example of something done right, everyone tries to emulate it. So now >90% of the blinds are "done right"

I'm not really talking about the majority of the blinds in the gallery. I'm talking about the "Premium" themes that are coming out of Stardock. There are a lot of good blinds in the WB Gallery, don't get me wrong, but only a few have the WOW factor (for me). I expect a Stardock "Premium" suite to deliver over the top. That's what these guys get paid for isn't it. I understand they have other things going on...but just stuffing a bunch of things into a suite doesn't make it "Premium". The only theme to get to me from SD has been Liquidox. I highly recommend that one if you don't have it. Other than that, I wait patiently...