The original E:wom review, giving Fallen Enchantress' predecessor War of Magic a 70: http://www.pcgamer.com/review/elemental-war-of-magic-review/

Those pictures used in the FE review looks like the graphical settings are way off. At least the game doesn't look like that to me. Looks like the computer is on drugs.

85? Congratulations!

Nice, makes me happy.

First, congrats on the 85! If any game deserves it, it's FE for it's growing and ever increasing realized potential.

Not to split hairs here, but what version of the game did he review? I'm going to go out on a wing here and say that an 85 would not have been given if he was reviewing ver 1.0.

I don't want to sound mean....so let's look on the bright side of my statement: It means that FE has come a long way since 1.0 and continues to make huge progress with every update.

I would imagine that many (if not all) game developers are thankful that the gaming community is as forgiving as it currently is. While it can only be speculation, 10 years ago a release like that would have been met with a very cold and unendearing crowd.

I still consider the game to be in beta (but I'm really old fashioned....have to be to like MoM )....a REALLY good beta mind you. Eagerly awaiting ver 1.3 and MOST eagerly awaiting the expansion! Keep up the good work!

True.
I think that too, but we all have our own ideas, and the devs also have "hidden restraints" that fans never consider. Anyways...

~ Mr. K.

This is great news, Froggy!

I think that we should get the full expansion reveal TODAY to celebrate!

I tend to disagree.... imho the majority of the online crowd is even less forviving nowadays. The more and more connected ways of worldwide communications allow word to spread quickly across the web..... which can be both a blessing and a curse.

A blessing as it allows even small companies to have a huge marketing impact.... something nearly impossible with classical methods.

But may god show mercy upon you if it is not praise but hate that you triggered..... expect the legions of hell being unleashed onto you. Until people have cooled down or found another worthy target they will do about everything in their power to make your life miserable. They will nuke your amazon/any other webshop rating into oblivion, they will post in every forum they know just how shitty your product is and they will not be above putting considerable effort into making sure really everyone gets the message. 

Beware of the internet....

Sorry, this line made me really laugh out loud.

Yes, the Internet of today is certainly a cheerful, forgiving crowd compared to 10 years ago... 

I wonder how many people actually PLAYED Master of Magic when it first came out.  

A lot of game developers are leaving because of the toxicity of game communities.  Talk to people who know the Dr's from Bioware about why they decided to retire.  

Too true. I am consistently amazed by the level of vitriol that comes from gaming communities. People are so dramatically self entitled these days I find it rather disturbing and the gaming community seems to be a high point in that trend. Combined with the relative anonymity of the internet and the results are not pretty. A perfect example was the new XCom which was in a mind-blowingly amazing game and yet if you went on their forums you wouldn't know it. You have my sympathies as do most game developers. I hope you guys do keep on doing what you love and know that many people love your product as well.

@psychoak

Amen.  

I love Master of Magic more than most.  But I don't kid myself about the shape it was in when it shipped. Luckily, it was a very FUN game. But it was, by today's standards, completely broken.  If it came out today in the shape it was then, you'd be talking 50 metacritic. Even back at the time, it got panned for being so buggy. There's a reason there was no MOM 2.

People have this really odd idealized memory of games back in the DOS era. It's almost like people forget why there was an Ultima VII part 2 in the first place (Ultima VII shipped where saved games didn't save any keys you found during the game). 

MoM also had serious, serious balance issues. Now actually I found it somewhat fun and endearing, you could go and do OP strategies and completely crush the computer players. However it was not something with a lot of good play testing and balancing. There were things that just WTFpwned in that game.

People always tend to remember the past with rose coloured glasses. They remember the good moments of gaming, forget the bad ones. As an example I remember FF2 (the US version, FF4 in reality) as being hard. My friends and I would get together and play the game collectively. It took forever for us to beat it. I replayed it a couple years ago on an emulator and man, talk about easy. I speed ran it in like 11 hours of game time, far less realtime of course owing to acceleration. It was not at all the epic challenge I remembered  the mechanics were so dead simple I could win fights first time, every time.

Now a large part of that is when I first played it I was like 10. I've gotten a little better at strategy since then, and played a whole lot of games. Another part of it is just skewed memory. I am not really sure how accurate my memory of when I was that age is. It has been quite a while.

I loved a lot of old games, and still love them and replay them, but I don't kid myself about them being objectively better. There are a lot of things old games did wrong, including some of my favourites.

Congrats on the 85!

Well, at least I brought you a chuckle. 

Naturally, I only spoke out of experiance, and that 15yrs is from a simple gamer with peers. I would have only invested in a game if it was on a top 10 list and gave promise of excellance. A miss after playing and the company would be forever marred. Word of mouth still travelled pretty fast...and I did have things like telnet and BBS's. Patches also didn't come around often so if there was a problem with the game, that problem wasn't going away anytime soon. This impacted reviews of the product in a negative fashion and drove off customers. Never in a review would you of had: "there are problems now...but buy the game anyways cause those problems will be fixed later" However, you're seeing that now in many reviews (I paraphrase of course): "This game has potential and with a few more updates will be a very good game".

We could take FE as the counter example....there are others of course, but FE is at the tip of my brain at the moment (and I'm sure it has nothing to do with my playing it constantly.  ) When Elemental first came out and ... didn't meet expectations; 10 years ago, that would have been it. Pack bags. Start new company. But SD continued to release games after and people bought them, realizing that they were in fact good games to play. Even with the release of FE, as many have contested over these past monthes, the game is still riddled with little bugs and imbalances, etc....and maybe you would not have released it yet if you knew you couldn't not update...but the very fact that you could update and have a committed group of beta testers to help out has been a real boon. Players are willing to look past the problems in light of the fact that they know SD is working at fixing them.

Anyways, those were the thoughts that were running through my head when I made my first post. Maybe I'm way of the mark when it comes to practical thinking for the gaming market. I'm not part of the gaming market. (other than the consumer part). And even there...haven't bought anything new since FE. (well...I did buy galcivII...but that's cause I read a review on TofA and decided that the game would be good enough to play now...and I was right.)