blueparrot1966

Was E:WoM ever truly finished?

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Was E:WoM ever truly finished?

from Elemental Forums

And if so, what do players of the game think of it now? I was really looking forward to this one last year, and disappointed when the feedback and reviews came out.  I followed all of the hoopla at the time, about how incomplete it was, etc. 

But it's been a few months now, and though I know work has continued, and it's been patched, what do the folks here think?  Is it worth buying now, or still a work in progress?

elemental
106,135 views 31 replies
Reply #26 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm glad you're doing this- I'm sure you have some good ideas- and the best ideas could be taken and put into FE, or the other expansion.

 

That said, I do think you could have radically changed the economics of GCII with another expansion, as it was an area people were critical.  One thing I noticed is that it seemed some of those ideas for GCII made it into EWOM, when perhaps they weren't suited for a fantasy game as much.

 

There's always GCIII though, which I will be looking forward to in about 3 years.   Really want to see how Derek and Jon can expand on GalCiv.

Reply #27 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 25
If I have my way, WOM won't ever be finished or at least will be worked on until I can't compile it anymore (see my angst on tryign to do new builds of galCiv II).

As much as I wish WOM had been a critical success, the fact it wasn't frees me to tinker with it without the same kind of crazy that would happen otherwise.

I can only read this as "since I'm chalking this game up as a loss, now I don't really care whether it ever succeeds".

In GalCiv, I hated the economic system but couldn't really change it because it has such a larger player base.

WOM, by contrast, will eventually have a very small player base as people move to FE and that means only us hard core people will be playing and doing things with it.

As someone who bought WOM expecting it to be in working order, and after having waited 3 months for you to make good on the promises you made back in January to make WOM worth playing, I can say that I have no intention of "moving to FE" unless you're going to offer it for free to anyone who bought WOM. In fact, I have no intention of buying any future Stardock game until you redeem your credibility by finishing WOM. It is not finished, and you're still in denial about it. There's still no decent in-game tutorial. There's still no balance. There's still dozens of unimplemented features that you've been promising since release.

If you don't make this game worth playing, then you have one less customer. FE be damned.

Siege of Centauri
Reply #28 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 25
(see my angst on tryign to do new builds of galCiv II).

I would love to read that, but can't seem to find it...

Reply #29 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting rivers_richard, reply 27

As someone who bought WOM expecting it to be in working order, and after having waited 3 months for you to make good on the promises you made back in January to make WOM worth playing, I can say that I have no intention of "moving to FE" unless you're going to offer it for free to anyone who bought WOM.

That's already been done for everybody who bought in 2010. If you bought in 2011... realistically I'm not sure what you expected. All the problems were well known by then.

In fact, I have no intention of buying any future Stardock game until you redeem your credibility by finishing WOM. It is not finished, and you're still in denial about it. There's still no decent in-game tutorial. There's still no balance. There's still dozens of unimplemented features that you've been promising since release.

If you don't make this game worth playing, then you have one less customer. FE be damned.

WoM is what it is. Future patches might change stuff, but I can't imagine there's enough people working on it to make radical change (that's what FE is). So don't hold your breath expecting a version that's going to make you love it if you hate it now. It's not happening. FE might though.

Reply #30 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting rivers_richard, reply 27

I can only read this as "since I'm chalking this game up as a loss, now I don't really care whether it ever succeeds".

Elemental's failure hurt him a lot more than it hurt you. I seriously doubt Brad doesn't care about Elemental's success. You greatly underestimate him as a game designer and, more importantly, as a human being.

In fact, I have no intention of buying any future Stardock game until you redeem your credibility by finishing WOM. It is not finished, and you're still in denial about it. There's still no decent in-game tutorial. There's still no balance. There's still dozens of unimplemented features that you've been promising since release.

Well that's too bad.

Whatever your intentions or thoughts about the game, at some point Brad has to move on. He can't devote substantial company resources into something WOM will never be. The only course of action left is to learn from Elemental's mistakes and make a damn fine stand-alone expansion pack. If this doesn't suit you then I'm going to have to chime in with Brad and say that this game just isn't for you and you should play something else.

Reply #31 from Elemental Forums Top

Stable? OOM errors still happen to me (on medium maps) about once an hour. DX crashes occur if I alt-tab. Tactical combat still freezes, forcing me to use auto-resolve, likewise, I get a general game freeze once every 2-3 hours which requires closing Elemental with the task manager. I still get the odd crash on save/load, late-game slowdown can be killer...

And that's ignoring all the little bugs, like phantom quest huts, asymmetrical cloth/graphical maps, random building placement, disappearing resource tiles...

Element is a decent game. And while it is amazingly better than it was on release, it is by no means stable.