Tridus

I prefer to think of FE as Elemental 1.0 release, with WoM as a curiously extended prototype.

[quote who="Nenjin" reply="155" id="2980584"] When EQ was the hot MMO, accounts were still hacked. Frequently. The existence of a 3rd party market does not "cause" hacks, it's a symptom of them.[/quote] Buying gold/items/accounts on a third party market is what causes that market to exist, which is what motivates account hackers. [quote]Honestly, Blizzards stands to make perhaps millions a month off this. That is their primary motivation, not some white knight desi

Okay, crystlshake wins the thread. That's awesome.

Won't this cause the Tea Party to show up demanding mana cost cuts for the wealthiest channelers? :P

[quote who="Nenjin" reply="152" id="2980407"]My thinking goes like this: if 3rd party sales didn't really hurt the game play, then it's about the money, not the principle. If it's about the money, and not the principle, then Blizzard has no counter motivation not to manipulate their own game for money. Remember, there's no redeeming principle in a game that isn't subject to market forces in their mind. If that's true, then there's no principle to stick to, to stop

[quote who="ZehDon" reply="151" id="2980292"]PC Gaming is a live and well, however it's not headed in a direction that many people enjoy. Instead of simply buying an AU$100.00 game and enjoying the average 15-20 hours of content, we get an AU$100.00 game with around 8 hours of content, and then we're charged extravagent prices for piece-meal content. Although the additional purchases are optional, it doesn't change the fact that releases today contain less 'gam

AI War is great for the price.

The power of thread necromancy compels you?

Oh I dunno, go back a year on this very forum and there was a 20 page thread whining about Steam. I had to make a second Civ 5 thread so that there was one actually about the game because the Steam whinage was so strong it totally took over the first one. :P And what do bad games have to do with things? There's always been buggy releases. There's always been bad releases. WoM isn't an example of the decline of PC gaming. It's an example of Stardock not having a clue wh

PC gaming is only in decline if you buy into the "Steam is evil" BS. For the vast majority of people who don't have that problem, things are pretty good. Also, Civ 5 works fine offline. There is no "online restriction".

[quote who="Darvin3" reply="141" id="2978727"]The always-online thing is a deal-breaker for me. I won't be playing Diablo 3. The auction-house system comes as no surprise; I've been anticipating them to announce such a system. Blizzard always had a love/hate relationship with cheaters in Diablo 2; on the one hand they gave the game a shady and unscrupulous dark side, but on the other hand these were some of their best customers, loyally repurchasing the game aft

No, the game is pretty much as bad as it sounds. It's playable, but in the sense that making a game out of installing Windows is also playable. There's very little fun to be had.

Line of sight and obstructive terrain in tactical combat (ie: walls). Multiplayer brought up to feature parity with single player.

I'm curious to see if being owned by Bethesda influences the game at all.

Yeah. If they put up an early build and find something that's crashy and doesn't play well? The reaction will not be good. After WoM, what we don't need is a buggy incomplete alpha release. Build it, and don't put it out until it's in good shape and just needs tweaks. (ie: how basically everybody else makes games.)

I don't see how that plan could ever work, the five of us would never get along! :P

I'm not a fan of this either. It's turn based combat where actions aren't always resolved in a turn based way? Confusing and annoying. Maybe it's more realistic, but I don't like it at all as a mechanic.

[quote who="Alstein" reply="6" id="2978347"]Here's the question though: how can you judge the success of a game like FE, when so many folks are going to be playing it for free? [/quote] Going by sales, they mentioned that WoM picked back up some in the winter and was at least modestly successful by volume. I wouldn't infer from sales that WoM was a success though. It should be fairly straightforward to judge FE. Are people replaying it? Do the hours per player go

[quote who="Mistwraithe" reply="68" id="2978323"] I agree in part with this and I can certainly see engine limitations screwing up all sorts of things BUT you only need a relatively small number of core mechanics to make a coherent game design. The game design will take collateral damage from a poor engine but one should still be able to see the potential of the core mechanics. In WoM's case I can't see that potential and to further support my case I point to the many changes whi

[quote who="Sir_Linque" reply="4" id="2978012"]Hard to understand what good this kind of speculation does.[/quote] People are bored lately? :) Assuming this happens and FE isn't worth playing, then I'll simply be done with the franchise. No more posting, no more paying attention, no money spent on future installments. I don't think there's much else to it then that. They're getting a do-over on FE. If it doesn't work out, then that's

Well in the new version once you have a lot of cities it's basically impossible to grow them at all. So it depends on your definition of fubar I guess. Personally I've shelved WoM entirely and I'm just waiting for the expansion (since those of us who bought in 2010 are getting it free).

[quote who="Murteas" reply="18" id="2977880"] Tridus, I don't know what to say. Stardock does not have a history as a MP game company. See GC2 as an example. I honestly don't know why anyone would have bought WoM expecting it to be a good MP game, especially when Brad has consistently said he doesn't really care about MP. I guess I understand the disapointment, but not the expectation.[/quote] Well, clearly they shouldn't have. :P

For the SP game, they have acknowledged it yes. For the MP game go ahead and read some of Brad's posts in this forum. It's more like "we never promised tactical combat in MP". They've also said FE MP will use a similar direction and not be like SP, so it's not going to get fixed (unlike SP). When it comes to MP, they really don't care.

[quote who="shadowtongue" reply="23" id="2977720"] I don't find it any less easy to use than the tech tree in Civ4. Can you give me an example of a complex and robust tech tree which 'does it right'? You can't use any of the MoOs, they are neither complex nor robust. I wouldn't really accept GalCiv either, because if my memory serves me, there was a lot of scrolling to be done there as well.[/quote] If the tech tree is complicated enough

I believe they said there would be a discount option of some kind for anybody who owns WoM. That said... if you didn't qualify for free FE that means you bought it several months after release. Why didn't you know the state it was in by then?