It is pointless to argue about possibilities. Maybe it's unpolished, maybe it's not. You'll find out soon enough. Just be aware that both extremes are possible.

Lord Xia is right... I'm dragging my expectations for 1.1 in on the floor... that way I won't be too upset when it succors.

I'll end up playing it's dick off either way, but I'm not keeping hopes high.  I just feel that I will be making a lot of psychotic rants later this month.

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I just read the 1.1 beta patch notes and I can safely say the  1.1 WILL NOT be in any way underwhelming for me....

In Brad's response in the 1.1beta changelog thread he said that his latest AI work hadn't been put into the main branch yet. So the AI may not be stellar in 1.9n but should be better in the final version of 1.1 (i think).

Either way we look at it it is going to be a new game, I was just getting a good game going too.! Moving across the land like a plague, well a localized cold but kicking much ass! it is what it is I just hope it is what I had wanted last Fall and more than I got this this Fall!

There is a great game lurking in Elemental but, for me, they got the following things (in no particular order) badly wrong:

- AI

- Magic

- Tactical combat

- Economy

- Diplomacy

- Kingdoms/Factions (they play the same, they act the same, the AI doesn't care)

- Sovereigns (see above)

- Champions (dull all the way to uninteresting)

- Quests

- Absence of choices in world creation (e.g. % land, resource frequency, etc)

- etc

Given how little they actually got right on the detailed implementation level - not to mention the still unacceptably high level of crashing in my game, it is actually surprising that I think that the game has the potential to be great. What I am absolutely sure of is that 1.1 cannot come close to sorting all these issues out. Does this mean that I will be disappointed in 1.1 or that my bar has been set adequately low that I won't be? To be honest, I am not even sure that I will play 1.1; I fired up my old DOS PC and am having great fun playing a bunch of games from the early '90s, including MoM. Elemental is a long way from being fun and challenging; I'll watch with interest to see if it ever reaches it's potential.