When it comes to making a commercial product, strong effort without a matchingly strong result counts for squat. How much of an effort Stardock made into making Elemental: Fallen Enchantress is, unfortunately, irrelevant to the question of how 'good' of a game resulted from that effort.
I have been a loyal customer of Stardock since the original Galactic Civilizations. Brad is certainly a lot more sharing of what he's working on and what's going on than, say, Sid Meier or big-name guys. That does tend to make me feel a bit fan-boyish, as Brad isn't afraid to 'be among the people' (we fans), talking with us and even conversing with us more directly than, say, Sid Meier would.
I think this tends to make us feel closer to him and consider Brad a friend ... and while there is nothing wrong with that, I think it makes us loyal customers, in here on the forums, a bit overly defensive of Brad, and that is a strong sign many of us, especially those harping on a reviewer because they didn't take the hard work effort in making a game into consideration, are fanboys/groupies/whatever. Many of us are a few shades in the direction of that infamous guy on YouTube crying about the treatment Britney Spears was getting ... because you aren't at that level doesn't make you innocent of having at least a few shades of fanboy-ism.
If you put a billion man-hours into making a car, and it had a lot of ideas, but in the end the car still had problems, it isn't the job of automotive critics to give you special extra credit for the billion man-hours. Their job, their only job as critics is to judge the end product based on their meters.
The absolute worst thing that could happen to Brad and Stardock, and I've had some hint that Brad would agree from some of his messages especially when he apologized for having attacked a reviewer in the wake of the premature WoM release, is if all the reviewers gave Fallen Enchantress a 10/10, giving the product bonus credit for all the hard work of the developers plus more extra credit for his honesty about WoM being subpar at release. A lot of people feel the world could do without naysayers, but the truth is if our faults aren't pointed out, we wouldn't make efforts to improve ourselves. You can't improve if you feel, and especially if everyone you hear from makes you feel, that you could not possibly be doing any better -- if you feel there is no room for improvement, you won't improve.
I don't think Brad nor anyone at Stardock feels there is no room for improvement, and I don't think anyone at Stardock wants to feel like there is no room for improvement.
