May we have refunds?

You know you get Fallen Enchantress for free right?    

And by the way, did you ask EA for a refund on Spore?   Did you get it?  

A little late (after over a year) to ask for a refund, don't you think.  

In any case, Brad is still working on EWoM, and it might still become a good game, but for me I am looking toward FE as being closer to what I want.

Best of Luck.

He may have waited for the promised fixes to arrive. Seems like a fair request, especially after having "granted" the developers the time they supposedly needed to repair the game.

It is not a "fair" request and the only reason why you are saying so is because of your own bias towards the game. It is too late to receive a refund. No other company would ever do such a thing for just about any product so why should stardock?

I've given the moo3 devs (quicksilver I believe) many years to fix their game.  Can I get a refund too?   How about Empire total war, it never delivered on its multiplayer Campaign promises, should I ask CA for a refund as well?   

Windows 7 still blue screens on me sometimes and UAC still bothers me, should I get a refund for it too?

I think you've gone a little far, even for the entitlement crowd.     

if u have elemental:war of magic u get Fallen Enchantress free? ou mama :P  does multiplayer works on 1.3?

Stardock has always had a refund policy, unlike 99% of other game publishers out there.

However, you may have well passed the deadline. But as far as I'm concerned, the fact he does it at all is amazing. 

Maybe you are the one that is wrong here.

Maybe companies should be held accountable for delivering a product that is different than what they advertise. It doesn't make it an acceptable practice just because you are used to it happening. It would be one thing if it were a little buggy; it is another to not offer the features on the side of the box or a product that actually functions from the start of a new game until the last turn. 

Finally, the person you are quoting may very well not be part of the "entitlement crowd". For all you know he may be a hard working guy that earned everything he has ever had. It would be hard for you to make that judgment on one post in a forum. The comment does more to speak about your personality than it serves to point out to the rest of us that he has a sense of self entitlement.

Exactly.

No product is ever perfect but there has to be a line somewhere. And wherever that line is, I'm sure WoM crosses it on multiple instances. On top of that, people have shown patience by waiting an year, believing in the additional Stardock's claim that the game would be repaired. I still have a faint hope in FE, but if another customer loses his patience, well, it's simply understandable imho.

Since this is posted in the MP forum, the discussion should be about the MP of WoM. The SP game is a masterpiece compared to the MP game, where large chunks of the SP game aren't implemented and you can't do what are basic MP features in other games like coop.

Since the response has been "we never promised MP would have what SP has" (of course they also never mentioned that tactical battles wouldn't exist in MP until after release, or that MP would have no mods since custom servers to enable that were specifically mentioned) and "we're going to continue to take MP in a different direction from SP in FE", don't get your hopes up that it's going to improve. It's not something they particularly care about.

It's probably also about 10 months too late for a refund. Chalk this one up to a bad investment and hopefully you learned something about why pre-orders are for suckers. Next time wait two weeks and read reviews and the forums before buying. In this case you'd have seen that MP wasn't even turned on two weeks after release and that would have been a big red flag to go buy Civ 5 instead (which isn't as good at MP as Civ 4, but is fully playable).

It is not a "fair" request and the only reason why you are saying so is because of your own bias towards the game. It is too late to receive a refund. No other company would ever do such a thing for just about any product so why should stardock?

The refund business is always about image of the company. I bought AMD Processor for VMs, and then it turned out they had a flaw affecting virtualization. Spokeperson for AMD said no refunds on this one. Fair enough, but I will buy AMD now only on the basis of price, if I have no choice - I do not trust this company now.

Stardock has done some very good games before, but after Elemental, which I preordered for 60 pounds I think nearly a year before release for dubious privilege of playing beta, I changed my mind about company and its leadership, especially since even a year after release, it is still a beta effectively.

I am a programmer myself, and everybody makes bugs - but some people make less of them and some people have QA department. Some bugs in the game AFTER release were just ridiculous for released game. Even for Indie game (any experience-ruining bugs in Torchlight e.g.?)

I earn enough money, so I just dismissed that 60 pounds. But for me to buy anything else from Stardock it should be bloody extraordinary (fool me once - shame on you, fool me twice - shame on me).

So refunds are question of trust and image. Besides, the OP is not demanding, he is asking. There is a huge difference between the two.

All this discussing back and forth accomplishes nothing. Send an e-mail to [email protected] and explain your reasons for wanting a refund. They'll judge.

If game companies gave refunds for every bad game or games players didn't like, there wouldn't be any game companies left!

Stardock has already done the right thing, by giving FE away free to those who purchased WOM early on, which more than most companies have done, so I don't see point to this.

The point is humor, I believe.

I don't know about the rest of you, but when I read the OP I laughed my butt off..... in a respectful way of course.

-.-

:Wow!:   Interesting perspective on telling me that I am judging him and then turning around and telling me the type of person I am.  Someone asking for a refund after playing a game (regardless of how horrible it is) for a year has in my thinking a strange sense of entitlement.  

Honestly, the lack of dev presence in the forums speaks volumes to me about how they feel about the attitude that is now here.   I want WoM to be as good as anyone else, but I honestly don't understand where people are coming from with their demands.  Yes, Stardock is different than other companies and they do give some refunds, but the lengths some people go to criticize the game/devs/etc and then demand a refund is beyond comprehension to me.

Let me point something out:  Stardock has acknowledged their problems with the EWoM game (from pretty early on after release), and gave refunds (at least partial) after release, and for those that wanted to stick with the game, they promised a free game/expansion.  Yet, that is not enough?  Please tell me what I am missing, because that is an an awful lot they are giving up that no other company would.

For the SP game, they have acknowledged it yes. For the MP game go ahead and read some of Brad's posts in this forum. It's more like "we never promised tactical combat in MP". They've also said FE MP will use a similar direction and not be like SP, so it's not going to get fixed (unlike SP).

When it comes to MP, they really don't care.

I trust Yahtzee at the escapist with most of my game buying decisions. He generally has a stick far enough up his ass to get the really bad part of game out in the open. As for EWoM, this game started out for me as a quirky successor to GalCiv2. Now its more like putting my last 1000 dollar chip on black 13 in roulette and hoping for a darkened miracle.

I just don't care about money. I want to see how it all ends...

This is what it has turned into for me, I've been screwed out of my money and now I just sit here and wait for FE. Just hope it is a better game, I just know that I am not buying any games from Stardock and I am sure that there are a fair number of people who are of the same consensus.

Tridus, I don't know what to say.   Stardock does not have a history as a MP game company.  See GC2  as an example.   I honestly don't know why anyone would have bought WoM expecting it to be a good MP game, especially when Brad has consistently said he doesn't really care about MP.   I guess I understand the disapointment, but not the expectation.

Well, clearly they shouldn't have. But the early posts on the subject never said "we'll have MP but we don't care about it." That didn't happen until right around release. Stuff like tactical combat being missing from MP entirely with no way to turn it back on wasn't mentioned during the pre-order phase. Same with with lack of mods, in fact custom servers to allow modded games were explicitly mentioned as a way around that problem (which never materialized because they had bigger problems at release).

There's no question that had people not preordered and simply watched at release to see if it was worth it, they'd have saved the money because it became clear pretty quickly that it wasn't. But that also doesn't excuse SD for creating MP support and doing a half-assed job on it. They'd have been a lot better off not doing MP at all if they couldn't do it correctly.

I don't think GC2 is really relevant because there was no attempt at MP there at all. You can't draw much from that. It's not like Firaxis had a ton of MP experience either when they did Civ 4, and that has very strong MP support and had a thriving online community for years (and may still, I haven't played it MP in a while).

Fair enough.   I can certainly understand disappointment in EWoM Multiplayer, it certainly isn't compelling to play at all. 

Again, this is a ridiculous argument. You had a chance to get a refund, and then even a partial refund before. They even extended the dates they would allow people to get a refund. They even offered a free game for those who purchased EWOM! This is above and beyond the call of duty. It is way too late for that, although you can always try to do it if you like. I have bought many games that were garbage, and honestly I still got more worth out of EWOM then all of them. Take the loss and just move on, you had your chance.

No refunds, I say! By purchasing the game, you have sealed an eternal and infernal pact and are hereby cursed to sail this ghostship forever...together with the ghosts of other poor owners of Elemental. 

This be a cursed ship, landlubber, hahahahaaaaargh!

At least, there is a lot to do here while waiting for the eternity to pass. Care for a friendly game of Dominions 3?

Indeed.

Here is the thing. And I agree it is late for asking for a refund. However look at it this way, StarDock has never delivered a big stinker before that I have purchased. So when they said they would patch it and fix it, I thought what the hey, will wait it out and see.

The great thing about impulse is that they can look and see my playing time, which most all of which is the first week of release, then a few hours after each major patch. The other thing is the patches, and game features keep changing constantly. Unlike some of you, im still waiting for a finished game.

This isnt soley about the fact i got dupped into buying a game i thought would work multiplayer... this is about the fact the game single player still doesnt work. They add features, they remove features, hell its not the game I even paid for anymore is it? Yes they are giving me a free game, la-di-da. The current game isnt finished and polished yet, why is the new game going to be better?

The fact I gave them a year to hold and collect interest on my money was very polite i think Remember when the game first released and barely worked? They were going to take a "week" to clean up then release multi player, then out of the blue Brad posts this big thing on why EWOM Multiplayer wasnt important yada yada yada? Think maybe he released that in part because Single Player barely ran, and they quickly came to the conclusion they didnt have the expertise to correct the multiplayer issues?

I love Galactic Civs 2. I own each release indvidually and the trinity pack. Enjoyed the stuff they have published, Sins of a solar, Demigod. And yes to be honest I can add Stardock to the list of companies i shouldnt buy pre releases too. Which is really sad.

As pointed out above im not throwing a temper tantrum and demanding a refund. Im asking for one on behalf of my friends and I.

• A strategy game in an RPG world. - Yea kind of, not really an RPG yet.
• Randomly Generated Maps. - Yes it does randomly generate maps.
• 10 Unique Factions. -They are generally colored a bit different.
• In-Depth unit and character design. - Unit design yea kinda, didnt the character design get removed along with faction design?
• Tactical Battles. - Single Player
• Rich, story-driven campaign developed by Random House’s Del Rey. - We talking about the campaign that came with the book? Cause the inGame one was not rich.
• Incredible replayability. - Yes it does, mainly because finishing any large game is a real chore. Take the AI out early, or ovetime the game breaks down.
• Single player or Multiplayer (up to 16 players). 16 players? You'r kidding me right? Multiplayer BARELY functions at all.
• Plays on very low end hardware. - Yes. Low End hardware. Someone had to have tried this on low end hardware before making this uninformed list.
• Takes advantage of the latest hardware. - Yes takes advantage of it, the game basically mugs my highend graphic card, then crashes despite the fact I could run the entire game from memory.
• Massive modding support. - Shouldnt you add this after the game is running and working?
• From the people who brought you Galactic Civilizations and Sins of a Solar Empire. - Thats a great idea, im gonna flip a coin and play GC2 or Sins. GC2 for the win.

More hoping that this gives them something to think about in the future. There are reasons companies like JoWood are going out of business. Games like Gothic, and The Guild were great ideas with good stories. But the games were half finished and buggy. They kept releasing games like this and after a few years I will be honest, I had a rule. If it says JoWood on the box, im gonna TorrentDemo it before i buy it. Alot of companies are on my TorrentDemo list. Throwing away 60 bucks thats one thing, throwing it away 3 out of 4 purchased games is another. Im not advocating stealing, however game companies abound put out garbage with a patch later attitude, and never release demos anymore.

 A. The demo would be crappy and buggy, which would turn off sales, and

B. They barely get the game finished as it is.



Its really sad that in a few years we are going to be stuck with 50% console games, 40% mobile and facebook games, and 10% PC.

S.R.



StarReaper, you're actually being very generous.

Correct me if I am wrong, and I may be because I haven't played since 1.2something...but I don't think there is a true random map generator. The "massive" modding support was near nonexistent at launch and over the patches things have actually been taken away in order to hard code fixes. In a recent post it was mentioned that WOM has a very hard time running on new hardware because it was developed for low end hardware, which creates a conflict with newer video cards.