The multiplayer doesn't detract from the single player, but could help to add a fresh perspective to the game mechanics.  It is a 'launch' feature some will have bought the game for, it has to be deployed some time.

Personally I want to try it, if its too problematic I don't have to use it for a bit longer, but at least I get to make the choice.

I understand and agree Anny,  I just think the little bit of positive it creates (we promised it and here it is! ) will come with more negatives in terms of bugs / balance / connectivity issues. 

For me stability is no longer an issue since 1.07 so I am glad that's cleared up.

1.)  The game needs to be working, well-documented, and fun to play in single-player before multiplayer is even a twinkle in anyone's eye.  Rushing MP ahead of everything else results in a buggy, poorly documented, boring multiplayer game.

2.)  Polls are next to worthless.

3.)  A poll might distract Stardock from re-designing the game because they've proven to have some odd compulsion to follow their customer's design ideas (which by rule just plain suck) and ignore their warnings about bugs, missing or broken features, lack of fun, etc.

tbh they need a media blackout and, outside of forum mods, need to stop reading the forums.  This game's design process had a lot in common with an ADD kid.  It's time to be a big boy, sit down at your desk, take your Ritalin, close the door and do your homework.

I agree.

Since the game is already out, might as well have the multiplayer, at least to check the game balance of the new patches.

Time to actually fix the game, time to re-design the game, time from throwing netcode and all kinds of other crap on top of code that doesn't work particularly well as-is, the time required to deal with the massive chance for a deluge of bugs and side-effects (yes, in single player too) from a hasty implementation.

Multiplayer is a minority.  You can tell due to the fact that there are 50 complaint threads about crashing, performance, and boring gameplay for every one thread about multiplayer.  I think any reasonable person would rather add multiplayer in AFTER the game is fun, not before it.

The game's beginning a major re-design in 1.1.  Why test multiplayer balance between now and then?

How's this for a poll:

What would you like to see first for Elemental?

a.)  Bugs squashed, performance improved, gameplay overhauled.

b.)  Multiplayer.

I don't think that's a fair question.  The "bugs and performance" will probably never be completely gone - ever.  They have been addressing these issues since day 0 and will continue to address it for years to come.  Are you saying that multi-player shouldn't be enabled for years?

Secondly, there are a lot of people who are, indeed, having fun with the game and a lot of people who are angry that what was advertised on the box is still not in the game.  People, in general, are more tolerant of imbalances and bugs, but not so tolerant of full-fledged features of the game not even being enabled, period.

b does not directly serve a.  You fix your house's floors before throwing a dance party.

My, that's one adorable strawman!  How about I correct it to "many bugs squashed?"  Aw, but you knew that's what I meant and were just trying to be cute.

Oh, you mean things on the box like:

"[a] Randomly generated world, rich in history and ripe for conquest, mak[ing] each game a new experience?"

"...world-destroying spells?"

"Rich, single-player campaign with many hours of gameplay?"

Those are on the box.  Those aren't in the game.  And that's without going into the spiritual "isn't in the game either" ones.  Or the technical "I thought I bought a finished product" ones.  Oh, and inb4 the inane fanboi nonsense about how it was a finished product and Stardock is going to deliver some day, just you wait!  I didn't pay for someday.  I paid for today.  That's not me being selfish or impatient, that's me paying for a product and expecting it to work.  I'd buy stocks if I wanted to "invest."

Wrong, sorry.  People aren't tolerant of "can't play past turn 150" or "bluescreens randomly" or "20 fps on my brand new tower" or "I can win the game in 50 turns because the AI does nothing."  People are actually rather intelligent and realize that if what you have is in pretty bad shape, it's probably better to fix that up before adding more features on top of it.

I never care for multiplayer in these sorts of slow long TBS games.

I'd rather have a single player game that's fun and polished than a multiplayer game that sucks. I really don't see why multiplayer is such an important feature to include these days anyways. In fact, multiplayer and the rise of the internet in gaming has led to the ever-accursed DLC and DRM.

Lol, true enough, multiplayer has been around for quite a while, but until recent days multiplayer meant playing with a friend in the same room or over a LAN. I'm talking online infrastructure multiplayer, which has surfaced only recently. Developers realized that they could make people pay for this coveted resource, and thus figured they could make people pay for more than that too, they could remove side content from the game and release it for extra. Multiplayer is overrated anyways.

Long story short: multiplayer is a stupid, useless waste of resources in my opinion. But that's just my opinion.

Okay I'll try again, if you're talking about mmo's, those came into existance in the really really early 90's, so recently is really far fetched, that and the drm and dlc you managed to squeeze in is on the same level as any conspiracy theorist.

multiplayer over lan or over the internet at its core has no difference, since packets does not care about how far it has to travel, they're still packets, and multiplayer in 4x games is not something new either.

why am I even trying..

To everyone else looking forward to multiplayer, yaay!....