This will eventually get stickied somewhere. 
So here is where we stand as we near the first anniversary of the release of the first Elemental title (War of Magic)
War of Magic v1.4
Last month we released War of Magic v1.3. We are currently working on v1.4 which we anticipate going into beta this month. v1.4 is scheduled to include AI updates, balance updates, and bug fixes.
Fallen Enchantress
Most of Stardock Entertainment’s resources are currently being put on the second Elemental title (Fallen Enchantress) which is a fairly radical departure from War of Magic (other than art resources). I can’t go into much detail regarding it other than to say it that it is much more similar to a Civilization/Master of Magic style strategy game versus a Galactic Civilizations/HOMM style strategy game (i.e. every tile of terrain matters i.e. building near rivers or forests or hills and that kind of thing will matter and there are things like unrest and tax rates and that kind of thing).
Of course, the decision to make Fallen Enchantress effectively a new game (other than art assets) has meant that its date is being pushed out to being more like a sequel’s release. That said, our plan is for the beta to come out this Fall still. However, bear in mind, that other than both existing in the Elemental universe, the gameplay of the two are very different.
Staffing
For those of you who follow/are interested in this sort of thing, the staffing on Fallen Enchantress is similar to War of Magic.
- I am the executive producer of both.
- Cari and Jesse have been the senior engine developers.
- The big changes have been that Scott has moved from being Producer to being senior Animator.
- We also were able to re-hire (call back from last year’s lay offs) Auri who was the lead animator on WOM who is back on animating all the new monsters.
- Derek Paxton (Civilization: Fall from Heaven fame) has taken over from Scott as Producer.
- Derek has also taken over as lead developer (as opposed to the quasi “design by committee” led by myself with WOM).
- Jon Shafer (Civilization V lead designer) has designed the single player campaigns for Fallen Enchantress.
In addition, several new artists/developers have been hired over the past year with the result being that the FE team is larger than the WOM team was.
Who gets what
Everyone who bought War of Magic in 2010 gets Fallen Enchantress for free. The betas will one day simply “show up” in your Impulse account. You don’t have to do anything to get access to it. People who bought War of Magic in 2011 up to its release will be able to get Fallen Enchantress for a discounted price. The full price for Fallen Enchantress is likely going to be $39.95 and it’s a stand alone game (and in fact, we may sunset War of Magic entirely – i.e. no longer sell it new after FE is released – however we may continue to release updates to WOM after FE comes out regardless to satisfy ourselves and our fans who like its game mechanics).
Objectives
As some of you know, my “day job” is CEO of Stardock overall of which Stardock Entertainment is one business unit of with the Elemental franchise being one game series of. To make a long story short, I’ve given Derek cart blanche to do what is necessary to make sure Fallen Enchantress awesome – even if it means spending more money or taking more time. As a result, while I am fairly certain the betas of it will come out this Fall, I can’t promise when the final version will come out.
Multiplayer
Since I don’t want that dangling out there, multiplayer matters to me personally but we know the hard statistics on the % of people who play turn-based strategy games MP (and I mean industry wide). The word tiny comes to mind. That said, Elemental will be receiving multiplayer love anyway.
Lastly
Yes, we do read the forums religiously. But we don’t typically respond.
