Oh, please.  Might you be exaggerating a wee bit?  Sure, the game is rubbish as is, but Stardock has too many other solid titles and community respect for this release to be the end.  Please keep things in perspective.

If this becomes a habit, that's a different story.

Oh really? What's the last game they as a studio developed? Not published, developed. This may very well be the end of Stardock as a game studio the way we know it. Not in the sense of them going out of business but in the sense of consumer trust. Sure some will always buy but will it be enough. They practically lost all of their good PR image with this release. It won't be that easy to get it back. Because now you have to lump Stardock in with all the others ( EA, Paradox etc.) when it comes to releasing unfinished products. Their Gamer's Bill of Rights now looks like nothing more than a sales pitch.

Then there's also the possibility that what we're seeing is the true Stardock. Maybe they're just a one-hit wonder with GalCiv2 being it. Maybe they aren't capable of anything better than that. I just can't imagine them taking the same approach or attitude with their main source of income (Windows addons) as they took with this game by releasing it the way they did. Either they're incompetent or they think we're all a bunch of idiots who will buy anything they sell. Sadly I think they have most of the fanboys pegged right. They could put a turd in a box and a fanboy would argue that it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I'm not sure, the last one was probably one of the galciv2 expansions.  But what does that have to with the price of fish?

I'm guessing your argument is that if they lose some credibility or some consumer trust then this is 'the end of Stardock as a game studio the way we know it.' Which could happen for tons of reasons not related at all to Elemental... but how exactly are you measuring how much 'PR image' they lost?  Did you buy a device on ebay or something that tracks such things?

Everything Stardock does is the 'true' Stardock.   You have to take them as a whole, warts and all.  There is no conspiracy here to cheat you out of your hard earned money while falsely playing on and manipulating their goodwill.  They screwed up.  They admitted it.  They are trying to fix it.  What else do you want?  At least give them a bit to see what they do before putting on the tinfoil hat, ok?

This thread here was from July 2nd: https://forums.elementalgame.com/386009/page/1/#2669608

In it, a beta tester begged for the game to be delayed. He was told by most posters to stop worrying, as everything was going to be fine. It ended thusly:

Anyway, I'm going to lock this post.  They really don't serve a purpose.  The game is coming out on August 24th.  As of July 1st, the game is running approximately 55 engineering hours ahead of development schedule.

There's still plenty of threads around from those days. There's no need to make up new versions of what happened.

Another very common error in the software industry is, even if you do have QA, it's underappreciated.   The developers get all the glory.  Software QA can become PhD-level material very quickly.   If a software QA guy is able to break down an interactive application into a series of vectors, inject those vectors as if they were interactive events, compare those events against something that is considered "correct", formally verify threadsafe behavior, extract code coverage metrics, and formulate a methodology for mix-and-matching various hardware platforms for compatibility validation--that guy deserves to be paid more than the developer.  Easily.   But because the culture rewards the developer, all the smart people go into development.  And your QA ends up consisting of high school guys poking around the application and randomly entering issues into some bug-tracking tool.  It's not very smart, but that's how it's done.

It's certainly not the beta testers fault. Many of them spoke about regarding issues, reported our problems, and held dialogue with Stardock before it was released. If we're guilty of anything it was overconfidence in Stardock's process, which I'm certain we can see it as flawed now.

Hindsight is 20/20 but it's a bleak reality staring you in the face when you look close enough. All the evidence was there and Stardock missed it.

Nonetheless, this will hopefully be a pebble in the road for Stardock and they'll be back on their feet in a few. I do hope they don't get burned too badly for this and hope this improves them.

EDIT: I'd just like to note that the beta testers never had the final product. We had peices of it and were assured by the devs that it'd all come together at launch (and it had for past games).

Drago, you really love ad hominem, neh?  I suppose in lieu of content or critical discussion its the next best thing.

I'd just like to note that the beta testers never had the final product. We had peices of it and were assured by the devs that it'd all come together at launch (and it had for past games).

lol, had to laugh at this one.

Beta testers can't reasonably be blamed.

For instance: We all thought the magic system wasn't good. Brad also though the magic system in the beta needed work, said so and said there was an internal beta different from the one we were playing, and a one-month period after the beta where stuff like that would be fixed. There was no point repeating the magic system was bad or making suggestions, since stardock already knew that and had decided a course of action for it.

I refrained from posting many times because I knew that just posting a criticism wouldn't lead to anything, and that's due to the way Brad would react more than anything else. This ment I had to try and be more constructive in my remarks, but it's a lot of work to ask from someone who's paying to do it. Not that I'd mind if the end product is good.

Indeed. I think that many beta testers did an awesome job regarding reporting various bugs & crashes. We've made hundreds of different suggestions regarding enhancing the gameplay. Just check out the suggestions sub-forum.

Don't worry Froggie. I know that you are sad because of the bad start, but we -"serious strategy gamers"- know that EWoM will be one of the best games in the genre, because it has a huge potential, and you lads in the SD office are awesome regarding enhancing/fixing a game....and this IS important in my opinion.

Brad, continue to give apologies as you feel the need. They are cathartic.

Part of the problem as you mentioned was this was your baby. And while we all know it would of been better come February and another stage of beta.

You were too close to it. And though you could of created a great game by February. I still think because of the flaws, it wouldn't of been right. It takes these type of events, to knock you flat on your ass, seeing stars.. to get you to get back up. And knock the dust off, and go back to building a great game.

Now, to be honest, I may of felt the game was not ready for release at the time. But I kept seeing what you were mentioning about the changes being so dramatically, different. So I was expecting that there was a whole team who was crafting tons of awesome behind the scenes, and we were getting the blander stuff.. not to sell it but to test it.

The gods know I reported bugs with issues. What I didn't expect was them to be present when it went live. That actually got me peeved. Something I provided dropbox reports for, in the live version. I really thought I was done beta-testing. So it was a surprise.

But you know what.. me sayin' this game wasn't ready.. definitely NOT something that would of helped. And though my expectations of what was behind the curtain was really a LOT more than what we got.. so instead, I kept trying to come up with compelling things that would of made the game much more interesting, unique and special. I wrote a dissertation over on my website. An-honest-personal-elemental-opinion/ 

So, I'm glad Brad is learning from this debacle. I still think this game with a lot of the fixes in place is a good foundation. This entire thing was unfortunate. I just didn't know there was another team that had their lively hood on the line, or I would of attempted to implore the delay. But I took Brad at his word, and if he said there was a LOT more coming... I expected it. As I hadn't ever been let down by Stardock. And even with this catastrophic release, I still don't feel let down. I just see, a LOT of work ahead.

Because the ideas that were discussed, fantasy civilization, with a blend of D&D style rpg implied gaming, seemed like an outstanding idea. Still does.. (though I would really recommend wearing the trappings of traditional fantasy, to give a broader appeal.. and left the game presented with the lack of traditional high fantasy races, specifically as a world telling story of Elemental.. the campaign. And kept the two separate.)

I'm just hoping that the game comes along soon..