The feeling I get is a great many people have invested a huge deal of emotional capital in this game, not because its 'Elemental', not because its 'Stardock', but because it was going to be (hoped it would be) the genre buster that MoM, Civ, WoW, Halo, Empire: Total war (or other games if you prefer) were for their fanbases, a game which would thrust this style of game into the limelight and the rest of the gamer community would finally understand why blended fantasy, TBS games are a legitimate genre worth playing and developing, particularly at the AAA level.  So the answer to my original question seems to be there is nothing inherent to Elemental that makes it special, it's just any game of it's kind needed to be successful or the consequnces for the genre would be significant.  Who knew the stakes were so high?

Undoubtedly true, look around you now. Elemental wasn't an "official" MoM sequel but it was billed as the spiritual successor to Master of Magic. Since they didn't nail it (not even close) there has been a massive backlash. Though one has to feel that maybe the disappointment wouldn't be quite so strong if Elemental had actually tried to be MoM-like instead of milking the spiritual successor angle and then failing to deliver on that entirely.

Doubt it. Sure, you'll take a beating for bugs fromthe average user but that's true of any game. The rabid MoM fanboys would be the first to defend a MoM remake even if it crashed ever other turn. Again look around at the people here who defended the 1.0 or 1.05 version of Elemental. People will willfully blind themselves to any fault in something if they want to badly enough.

I want this game to be good because it's doing something different, rather than the 10,001 other mainstream titles on the market that feel like carbon copies of each other with only minimal changes.

This game has the platform to be something great, it just needs a lot more polish, better AI, more balanced, more stuff in it, etc. There are a lot of good qualities in the game, it's just very rough around the edges right now.

I actually like Elemental more than Master of Magic.  I know, it's heresy!  But, you know, MoM didn't have customizable units, technologies, quests, marriage, real-world city building, dynasties, modding, 3D graphics, a snazzy cloth map, and multiplayer (which will come soon).  Elemental has everything MoM had and much more.

 We dont want a clone of MoM, we want a modern version that introduces concepts that take care of its weaknesses, with a modern AI, multi-player and some fun new concepts that add to its depth, not detract. 

You realize that half my message was about fixing the flaws of MoM (AI, unbalancing and aged graphics) ? So I don't really see where the "ignoring flaws" or "putting MoM on a pedestal and ignoring its shortcoming" come from. You DID read the actual message, right ?

And anyway, despite its flaws, it was (and somehow sadly still is...) an awesome game. It's not because we find it amazing that we don't SEE the flaws. We (well, at least me, but I very much doubt I'm alone in this) just want to see a modern-day remake of the game, with modern day means and experience to precisely polish the game and correct the flaws.

The sad thing is, MoM has still much more solid mechanics, much more ambiance and much more features than pratically any modern game. In 16 years and with game budget skyrocketting, nobody has still managed to best an early 90' game. That's just sad.

You've all the rights in the world to prefer Elemental over MoM, but even if there is many features in Elemental, saying it has "all that MoM had" is simply not true. A good deal of the MoM features aren't in Elemental, and many that are in are done worse (seriously, you would compare the magic system of both games ?).

Thinking EWOM = MoM 2 .....................now after EWOM release  

I still have not bought Elemental, but I would really really love to...and I registered in this forum because I really want to be excited about this game and for any reason for me to put down $50 on this. I've been tracking this game for as long as I first heard about SD wanting to buy MoM license from Atari. I think this part of game development history provided some expectation to the legions of MoM, AOE:SM, HOMM fans out there. I certainly had my expectations, but people should not write off the criticisms against EWOM as something unreasonable from MoM fanboys.

This fact cannot be ignored: even though EWOM is not spiritual heir to MoM, but as long as EWOM is a decent fantasy 4x game in its own right, then it'll be well received by 4x TBS gamers, MoM fans or not. Here however, EWOM is most definitely a lackluster release as a fantasy 4x TBS game, and that's why so many are disappointed. Even though there are not many options for the fantasy 4x gamers these days, people still will not tolerate a ho-hum game when MoM has set the bar for the games in this genre nearly 2 decades ago.

Yeah, I do realize what you were saying. But you left out part of my post. Anything called MoM2 has to be better then MoM, as judged by the fans of MoM. Or else. Considering that the flaws in MoM aren't something you could get away with in MoM 2, you have to get EVERYTHING right. It's a very tall order.

Combined with the issues with getting access to the IP license to do it, and you've got something that's just not easy to get done.

(And budgets really don't have much to do with things like ambiance. Portal was one of the most interesting games around when it came out, and it was dirt cheap. Someone with a clear vision for the game they want to make and the ability to execute it will beat someone without those things and a big budget any day.)

I have played MoM quite a bit and I can tell you right now that Elemental will have many, many more worlds than MoM.  Just check the Mod Forum.  I think that's a laughable position to take as a strength for MoM.  "You've gotta be kidding me, MoM only has 2 worlds?"

I can also assure you that Elemental will end up having many, many more spells than MoM after modders start creating them.  Basically, what I'm getting at is that the modding system will be able to surpass MoM in every conceivable way in the long run.  And if your rebuttal is, "we can only compare vanilla Elemental to Vanilla MoM", I say you're most definitely wrong.  This game was intended from the very beginning to allow modders to take over most of the content work.  Or do you actually believe that Brad Wardell intentionally gave us only 1 race, and a handful of other content and expected the game to stand on that alone?

Maybe you weren't around back when Elemental was announced, but this was stated to be the case from the very beginning.  Elemental would be released with "framework" content, much like Spore was.  The modding community would take the brunt of the work upon themselves to flesh out the rest.

So yes, Elemental via it's perpetual modding system which is a part of the core game, far surpasses MoM.  Not to mention the multiplayer feature and the other plethora of things I've already mentioned above.

Not that much. I agree, the hardest part would be the ambiance - something that is more akin an art than a science, and require inspiration rather than know-how. But I think they could manage.

For the rest, it's not like if it was HARD to make a better AI and balance than MoM. I think that it's also not really hard to make graphics better.

Making a whole new game different to MoM but just as fun is maybe a dangerous task. Making a "remake" wouldn't be as a daunting task - of course, here you have a point, the copyright are still a sore point, and I hope that the idiot who prefer to let the franchise rot rather than having someone else actually do something with, should be strangled by his own bad karma.

He was talking about how MoM had two simultaneous world you could play at the same time (Arcanus and Myrror). I may be wrong, but it seems like you talk about custom-made map, which is completely different.

If someone manage to create a nice MoM-clone with the modding tools, great. Until then, we're going to compare a game with a game, and not a game with what potential we could see in the moding of another game.

Not that I want to diminish the actual worth of modding, but when I want to play a MoM-like, I don't want to have to actually design and build it.

Yep....also, IMO lot of people will reorder it, if the game will be improved for expansion #1. [Polished gameplay mechanics - ex. magic system, tactical battles, some UI related stuff & AI] I am pretty sure that the game will be very successful [financially as well] after the first year. [2 expansions]

I would say the same if it weren't for MoM having magic that matters and hugely diverse units with a gazillion of funky special effects.

Elemental is indeed the better game - except with the magic and units part ripped out. Which leaves...?

The one saving grace is the promise that WOM will be modable. So we'll have to wait and see what it can be turned into once interesting spell and unit effects can be scripted.
The last posts from Brad have been very promising as well, moving away from the quirky handling of essence and mana regen to a global mana pool and global upkeep for "stuff". A simple and far more transparent system. It may be coincidence that it worked that way in MOM - or it might just be that it is a better and more accessible system. Who knows?

There's no denying that MOM had gotten a lot of things right. In a big way.

That said, I don't even want to make WOM a MOM clone. It has the potential to kill and bury MOM once and for all and this is
the first time in 15 years of gaming that I'd even consider saying that.