The only thing I'm sensitive to is the obscene number of morons overrunning the forums. I was referencing your statement - not his: you're sitting here telling us to stop bitching about something we paid for. I agree that useful posts are more, well... useful, but people have the right to express their frustration on purchasing something that may not work for them.

Try clicking on the "view edits" button beneath his post - you'll see he edited his post after I quoted. The only thing sickening here is your severe ignorance.

What's with these people who become such ardent supporters of companies which produce inferior goods? It's a company who took your hard earned money! If MacDonalds' burgers started poisoning people you'd rightly expect outrage and not sympathy for poor ol' Macdonald who was just trying to make us happy by making his ol' burgers.

This is gross sentimentalism at work. It's one thing to genuinely like Elemental-- I don't doubt that there are many people who are having lots of fun with the game as it is now, and that's perfectly fine. What is utterly bizarre are these people who clearly admit that the game is lousy (or euphemistically "a work in progress" or "highly moddable" or "has great potential") but still insist that we the consumers weren't short-changed. The fact that Stardock may try to rectify its mistakes is a point in their favour (although my own view is that the fundamental game is so flawed as to be irredeemable unless they re-do it from scratch), but it doesn't change the fact that the game is right now not something I'd recommend to my worst enemy.

I don't feel obliged to "give Stardock a chance". They're not my best childhood friend. They aren't the poor kid from a broken home down the street. They're quite simply a company which gave me a lousy product for US$50! They deserve every bit of criticism they get, and then some!

I know that it sucks to feel like you wasted money. I know I don't feel great about it right now. It sucks even worse to admit you made a wrong (though completely understandable) decision to feel so invested and interested in a game that didn't meet expectations at all. Nobody likes to admit they were taken for a ride. But it's time to face reality and call a spade a spade.

With macdonalds, you have huge variety of competitors to choose from.

With Elemental, there is none (I already have each title worth having). So its either SD fixing it to finished and enjoyable state (and that requires some support from players) or we left with nothing. Civ5? I'm getting that one too, I'm not restrained in my budget. But I've played civilization series too much, and need something different. I've looked at release schedule for 2010/11, and it makes me sad - we will get SotS2 and Star Legacy in 2011, but they are both space 4X, not fantasy. So its safe to assume Elemental is the ONLY fantasy 4X for these two years. And most of us prefer 'something' over 'nothing'.

Fanboy is a label which describes a particular stereotypical person. If they fit the stereotype then it is perfectly normal to call them by that label! And the person in question certainly fits the label, we are meant to ignore the fact that the game mechanics are broken and unbalanced and instead be thankful that they made a PC game so they could take "our" money for it instead of ripping of console players?

Get over it and accept that there are fanboys on this website.

P.S. I'm pretty sure Elemental will end up being much better, I'm just not sure it will ever get where I hoped it would be after this start. But to pretend all is fine with the game right now is wrong.

If you're tired of people speaking the truth, nothing forces you to read those topics. Or to come to the forums.

This game is supposed to ship with coherent mechanics, decent optimization, a reasonable set of bugs at most, and enough content for a $50 game. This is what "finished" means: self-sufficient out of the box. It means release-worth, not in the beta state it is now and will be for at least another 3 months. Mods and patches are extra, and are here to expand a finished game, not to slowly transform the game into a late Release Candidate.

Only thing I want to say in this thread, is that if the idea is to get people to play this game for 10 years, then you need to start with a great game.  Unfortunately, IMO EWOM misses that mark.

Ok here is one from me, somebody standing on the side lines and watching the game unfold. I just played EWOM at my buds house the past couple days, I was surprised. I mean the game seems so freaking addicting! There is no doubt, no doubt that there is a ton of expansion room in this title. Simple things, such as adding more creatures, more quests, just more of everything. The actual engine is right on and you can bet SD is all over this game from what I been seeing. I read people talking about lack of instructions or whatever, I for one jumped right in and was playing my butt off. I guess MH2, SSE and a few other games that have recently been released and on my "to buy" list have to wait for now, I am getting Elemental.

Once they fix the engine, and lets face it, there are some really huge memory leaks and some massive performance issues. I believe this game will be on par with just about every other game that's come out this year and cost the same ammount.

Everybody keeps going on like this is the only game to ever be released with critical errors still in place, and lets not forget that stardock are a small indie company, they haven't got the resources to sit on a game for 12 years and polish the hell out of it.

More importantly THEY ARE TRYING TO FIX IT. This is a small company that's giving better support than i've seen from some of the software giants, EA and Atari to name two... cut them some slack and be patient, you got the game early you're playing it.

If you didn't think it could be fixed you wouldn't be on the forum posting about it.

That is a subjective opinion. While i do agree that there are many unfinished features and untapped potential in Elemental, that didn't stop me from wasting every evening since release just playing the game and having fun doing so.

The funny thing is the more i play it the better it becomes. I notice what is wrong less and less, and what is right more and more. Some of the shortcomings even became a non-issue(mainly lack of documentation - i've figured it out in meantime).

Can someone tell me if the faction editor currently works ? I think there was an issue with technologies not being in game.

It's also a company who will happily give me it back if I ask. Lets see you try that with McDonalds.

Well durrp, you're on the official company hosted website for the game. Who exactly do you think would come here, the local knitting circle?

Okay, that does it. I'm shamelessly reprinting a post from another forum, because I totally agree with it. He also put it better than I could.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?p=755620

They couldn't. It was August or February, no other choice.