Cruxador is right about the the beta part
when they are creating Elemental WoM, I was stalking the Forum for over a year to the day it came out. I recall there are ton of confusion and chaos in the elemental forum. I preorder Gal Civi 2 when it first came out, so I understand Brad intent to continue updating and polishing the WoM after it came out and continue polishing it for years unit new game is made. but WoM compare to Gal Civi when it first came out is far below what we were expecting. it's not even very stable to play because of the crush and memory leak. Many of the request and feature that we forum user requested never implanted, those that re implanted was incomplete or didn't put much time and effort in it. like the spells and such, every spell is the same among different element. powerful spell is just buff up version of lower spell and such. it's like the development time was spread among everything and nothing has any love to it.
it's understand able that WoM will be bad at first because WoM is the first fantasy 4X game that Brad and his team ever made.
reason why WoM failed soo badly are because
major reasons
The game concept and game mechanic wasn't thoroughly thought out before going into developmental. this why no balance and changes around the game setting will make the game any better. going back to fix the core feature of the game after development will just waste tons of more time. this why even after a year of patching and changing the game feature, the game still isn't what it was meant to be or want to be as. because it borrow way too much gaming concept from Gal Civi 2. This why I believe Brad made the move to create another game instead of fixing WoM
lack of people and people with great knowledge, like Derek Paxton, for this kind of game, I remember Brad was doing different position when developing WoM, it was Sad but cool in a way. this kind of game require a very very big team. or very very long time to make. beacuse it have many differnet aspect you have to carefully write and create, rushing one area will topple the experience of the whole game. This is the reason why Beta tester is important, if your team are low you need a good dirctor to skillful use the beta tester, if you have a great team, having beta experience beta tester will renovate and bring a new mile stone to your game
minior reasons
team lack of experience in 4x Fantasy genre game.
WoM was the first game using an experimental game engine that never been out before. as expected of any new game engine will come with tons of bugs until it's fully become well written.
