Well said, for every successful person, there is another unsuccessful person just waiting for them to slip one time. Just take a lot at all of the celebrity bashing, a lot of it is right there on top news sites and all over the media. Its their attempts to ruin the person's reputation. What they don't realize is there are a lot of loyal fans that stay loyal fans.

I really think that people need to stop making excuses for Stardock.  It's not doing Stardock any good and its not doing its customers any good.  I agree that anything less than constructive criticism is unwelcome and unnecessary, but the bottom line is that Stardock released a game, for whatever reasons, that was not ready.  It doesn't matter what other industry standards are like and it doesn't matter what conspiracy theories we have about game reviewing sites.  The bottom line is that Elemental is neither up to the standards we expect and it isn't up to the standards that Stardock has set for itself. 

Do most of us still admire the company?  Yes.  Do most of us think they will improve and fix the game?  Certainly.  But until Brad and his firm recognize their "whoops," we can expect more Stardock games in the future to be prone to the very same problems that Elemental is having right now.   

A lot of reviewers receive pre-release copies of games with the understanding -- or even an explicit agreement if the publisher is influential enough -- that they won't report on things like bugs and crashes, the premise being that things like that will be fixed before release.  Of course those issues are quite often not resolved, so a lot of glowing reviews for buggy games are actually based on a mythical perfect game that doesn't have those problems because the reviewer dutifully ignored them.  Unfortunately, smaller publishers like Stardock provide a cathartic release for reviewers because they can finally "tell it like it is" without having to fear the sales department.

I think that you are right, but only because non Stardock fans will be gone pretty fast.

Like I said earlier, this reminds me a lot of Demigod's release.  There were a lot of people saying the same stuff that you and other SD apologists were saying.  They thought that that game would be fine and it was all going to turn out OK.  They were wrong.  That game died a horrible death.

Now single player games are always going to be a lot more resiliant.  But word has already spread pretty quickly that this game is not to be bought right now (but check it out again in a few months).  Thats not from supposedly biased review sites, but from users themselves on forums.  Since the reviews for this game are going to be pretty harsh IMO, I dont think that you will see too much negativity on this game from the community for long simply because its not going to be bought by many people who arent big SD fans already.  And thats probably not a good scenario for SD.

God, I really hope Elemental doesn't follow the path of Demigod...

Wasn't Elemental supposed to be released in Feb. 2011?

I would like to remind people that Stardock didn't make Demigod or Sins of a solar empire.  They published them.

If you want to measure Stardock as a developer, you have to look at Galciv2.

I guess if you are in the business you have to worry about reviews and whatnot. But I'd like to think that there are a large portion of gamers who realize that the vast majority of gaming reviews are all total crap these days. Fortunately, Elemental seems like a game that may have a substantial portion of its target users under that umbrella.

There are some little things here and there I've run into. Still, I haven't seen a single thing that was even as bad, much less worse, than most major titles releasing today. Everything has bugs. Welcome to the internet age... when stuff doesn't have to work right because it is so easy to fix.

I wish that was different, and it would be nice to see someone emerge as a bastion of quality. I'm not holding my breath though.

This is what I find unsatisfying. I've been reading the dev journals for a long time and that's where my expectations were formed. I was very much looking forward to this because of what I had been reading here. All of a sudden, before we got to see anything approaching a well designed, functional beta, the plug was pulled and we went from beta 2,3,4 in like a month and then release is the first time any of us had seen what the game might be like. Now it's up to the review magazines to do the beta testing! Grreat.

What could have happened that made releasing an unfinished, nay, undesigned shadow of a game the better choice than waiting until February? Ugh. If the day comes that Elemental can be considered a good game I will see it, but right now I'm not happy with the flow of events.

I also completely agree with PC Gamer.  Go re-read the article, there are entire paragraphs (multiple) praising Stardock.  The writer notes he's a great fan, and that Elemental is a fantastic idea and title.  Even after talking about issues, he says he's sure Stardock will fix it; and that for the moment he's not going to finish his review because he's waiting for a major patch.

The released game was unacceptable, but they're quickly patching it up.  Even if major companies like PC Gamer are heavily influence or even straight out bought off by larger companies than Stardock, doesn't mean they're wrong about this.

Feb 2010 was the first release date, IIRC. It got pushed back, not forward.

I'm not worried about it following the path of Demigod because Demigod is a MP focused game. You need other people around to make it work. Elemental is a SP focused game, you need the AI to make it work.

Demigod wound up getting worse over time as the community shrank, whereas Elemental will get better as the AI improves and bugs are fixed.

This is the single worst post I've seen on this thread. You  are coming across as a paranoid fanboy trying to justify every little criticism of the company as a 'troll'. It is extremely disrespectful not only to the people having the problems but to Stardock as a developer who usually have a pretty great reputation when you give them a pass for these problems and call everyone else a liar. If anything PCGamer was more than forgiving based on their previous love of Stardock, if they did not have a great expectation of Stardock they would have gone right ahead and reviewed it and given it far under an 80 percent score.

Take a step back and realize that you are being the troll here. To quote an obscure game developer you may not have heard of:

Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.

It probably won't.  However, get ready to wait for awhile.  As far as my personal gaming experience is concerned, Elemental's tragic early release won't effect me one bit.  If they had waited to release it, I'd be waiting 'till about February 2011 to enjoy it.  Now?  Well, I'll probably have to wait about 6 months anyway.  Unfortunately, Stardock shot themselves in the foot on this one, so it'll be more difficult for them to make and sell games in the future.

Honestly, I really believe if it was a choice of August or October, they'd have taken October. But February? That's a LONG time when the game doesn't need anywhere near that long. You'd get to a point where the wait for release just drags on, and on, and on. It's bad for publicity and word of mouth to have it drag so long when people are eager to play.

I'm not saying this worked out so well either, but they only had two options and both had problems.

I have not been able to finish one single game, apart from the campaign.

I wouldn't mind to crash every few hours, but the further a game is the more likely it is to crash. The sessions end after 10 minutes at most.

On the pro side, once those crashes get fixed this will be a good foundation for a very awesome game, but so far it's mostly frustrating, sorry.

Well at least you have a taste of what politics are like:) I agree with you that the comment was taken out of tect and should not have been put in the review.

I so far like the game (and I have not even been home to download 1.05) however I can see how someone just buyin gthe game from the store would think the game was released too early. I love SD games and think you guys are one of the best companies out there but you made a big company mistake, you released too early.

Now you and I know that the game will get patched pretty quickly because you guys are that good. However in this day and age of PC gaming the masses will not forgive a 'botched' release. And this type of release will hurt the game which is a shame because it has the potential to be a fantastic game. And I personally think right now that it is pretty damn good.

I can understand the reviewer point of view; I haven't the game yet, but I've seen many in-game videos: the game feels really unpolished.

I compare Elemental to the first Age Of Wonder, my favourite one in the genre. AoW isn't as sophisticated like EWoM wants to be, but each functionality the game offers to the user is simple, clear and appealing. On the other side there EWoM, that (at the moment) looks like a Excel sheet to fill up to obtain a result

A stupid example:

- In AoW you click on a unit to select it, then click on a tile to set as destination for the movement, and a colorful (and well visible) trail of arrows show you the path and how many turns the unit will take to reach the destination; the amount of path the unit will walk in the current turn is indicated by gold arrows, the leftover is grey. As expected, if you deselect and reselect the unit the arrows trail will be visible again.

- EWoM you click on a unit and you barely know it is selected (have you selected a unit or a land tile?). You click on a destination point and an ugly X appears on the target tile. The unit will make its way to the destination but you won't know the path it will follow or the time it will take to reach it. Deselect and reselect the unit, and you'll barely find the previously designated target tile.

Now multiply this "feature comparison" for every feature of the game, and you can easily understand the headaches the common users will have.

I'm a WEB developer, at work I would say "this web page misses a good CSS".

I was waiting for this game to come out. But now that it's out, I'll just follow the future developments as I've done in the last 2 years, and wait till the game will be ready (from my point of view) before buying it.

I'm sure it'll be a great game, it is an ambitious project but I know you'll make a good job with it. I'll love it, I know

I believe that if they had released this version to us beta testers first, many of these ridiculous problems would be ironed out by February and the game would be released to universal acclaim. I've been a beta tester since the beginning and 1.05 is the first time I've even been able to comment on the gameplay!

Now, to salvage their reputation, it's gonna be crunch time until February anyways! 

Yeah I really wish there had been a public beta 5 for mechanics and balance stuff. (and ATI crashes apparently, though it didn't do that to me in beta 4 and I'm on ATI hardware. Maybe my drivers are too new since this is a brand new machine.)

I'm not trying to say this was a good date, but the alternative date was just as bad for another set of reasons. If delaying 1 month instead of 6 was an option, they IMO would have been a lot more likely to take it.

The only Total War game I had issues with (with the exception of the occational bug) was with the Total War Empire that was clearly rushed out the door. But I never had problems with the others and TW:Rome was fantastic. But I did not play any of the Total War games with the exception of TW: Empire on the firest week of release. Infact most of them I had bought any where from 6 months to 2 years after release.

Wait I take that back I also got Shogan on release day....Many years ago.

This is patently untrue. Some games with horrid releases go on to be massive successes, the most famous being WoW - their release was a real stinker, but the game was fun and addictive once they solved all the server issues and inital game-breaking bugs. While other games that release without any problems go on to be failures because at the core they aren't very fun or have any lasting appeal and replayability or a whole host of other reasons.

Well My HP is doing damn good for a "Crappy HP" Best computer I have ever had.  Better than the Alien I bought a few years ago..talk about a waist of money. They charge too damn much. Anyway I have only had CTD issues in Beta 3 and it crashed once on Monday with that version. But that may have been the process I had running in the background so I'm not blaming that on the game.

Oh, I'm not nearly as pessimistic as that.  I think Elemental will be a long-term success for Stardock.

ETW is still broken, I've been struggling with it recently when my campaign suddenly got corrupted and ended my game. However the design of the game itself is very good, and you can really see it shine in NTW. I can't say that for Elemental.

Even as a beta tester theres stuff I haven't seen until release. Why does every sovereign have every spellbook? Why should I choose fire damage over electrical? Why should I use an expensive sword rather than the much cheaper mace that does twice the damage? There's so much new stuff thrown in over the last month that seems to have very little thought put into it in the first place, and untested in the second place. Forget about AI. It's utterly impossible to design an AI when the game rules are clearly in a state of flux. This game will not work until many fundamental design issues are dealt with. There's gonna have to be radical changes just to make the game make sense with itself.

Yeah gamers usually forget botched launches these days.  HL2 was a complete disaster on steam, nothing bust post of people wanting to burn down valva studios, then there was the Oblivion launch with big technical issues for ATI and NVIDIA and the Fallout3 jefferson memorial crash. MOO and MOM got crappy reviews when they came out, it was only a decade later that those 2 games would be considered hall of fame like games.  

It's like a movie, as long as you wow them in the end no one cares how it begins.

Since when is it ok to release a game in this shape? The article is correct I have told my friends the same. I was shocked when they released this game in this shape, makes it look like they have no respect for their customers, it was all about selling the game and making a buck, I guess they don’t care about the future. I have been a loyal Stardock customer since GC1 first came out and it’s sad to see that they did this. They have no excuse and I don’t see how anyone can defend them. A bug or two ok but this game just wasn’t ready for prime time -period-.