Glad you read my post earlier, but I'm not sure you quite got what I was saying as my comments were for use specifically within Tactical Battles.  I Tactical Battles.

Personally I like the city building. I don't like the way most cities end up with the same buildings in them and the lack of distinctive feel, etc, but the actual mechanics of building cities I think is quite cool.

Which pretty much proves the point. Everyone will have opinions and conflicting ideas. What is needed is someone with a strong vision at Stardock (someone very clever with an excellent understanding of what makes other fun/challenging TBS games great) to put together a coherent whole rather than the many disjointed pieces we currently have.

Maybe the lack of personality for each city is part of the problem.

As it stands, I might as well name them "Sprawl 1", "Sprawl 2", "Sprawl Around the Mountain", etc.

It's getting there and a lot of the ideas are good. little enhancements will go a long way to making this a good game.

UI

Hotkeys: There needs to be more hotkeys and more customisation on how those keys are assigned. Right now it irritates me to not have a way to find out what they are and how to assign them. E.g. If I hit G by mistake it freezes the unit and I can't make it move until I realise oh it must be on guard by mistake.

Escape key needs to be more versatile and cancel anything.

Inventory: It is still too difficult to buy and equip. It annoys me I have to go to the shop, exit go into inventory, forgot to buy one item, go back into shop, exit, go back into inventory. Frogboy, you mentioned in Beta that there was going to be a more intuitive inventory screen, and I'm not sure if you meant the current one, but that's not enough. I want to easily see if I don't have gloves or boots equipped, not try and sift through the pool of items.

Quests

I really like quests and I can see the potential, and you guys know there needs to be more quests so I won't belabor this point other than to say it feels like the beta still.

Also there NEEDS to be a quest management screen much better than the exisiting. I want a list of current quests. I don't even care about the ones completed, I only care about the ones that aren't, and I am genuinely surprised you actually haven't done anything about this given how fun the quests are in the game.

Tactical Battle

It's not far off being decent in my opinion; some balance tweaks will do the world of good. Again it's just the little things that tarnish the experience. The ability to auto resolve without wasting precious mana. The ability to speed up animations or skip them altogether. I really quit like the way it's going to shape up.

Also where are my battle summons? Where are my illusionary warriors? And where's my wall of fog to hide my archers from enemy archers?

Magic

MoM had this down pat. I hated choosing between the books because they could do quite different things. I loved light for the healing and raising, I loved Nature for the transformation fo the land and maximisation of cities and resources and food. Death was great for debuffs and draining. Blue was brilliant for movement and illusions. As it stands now it doesn't really matter what spell books I choose because they all pretty much do the same thing. I don't know if it's just a matter of coding some good spells or whether the system can't really do it.

Also a little peeve of mine is why does endurance have a 5 turn duration? I hope it's fixed it because that's just stupid; if it's unbalanced then put a upkeep on it.

Champions

Champions aren't heroic enough, unless I am missing something. Assigning stats is pretty boring, I want to give them abilities like in Age of Wonders where you could give them special actions. It's not enough to stick a couple of strength here to add 2 attack or 3 essence or infintessimally increase spell damage. Why not be able to add one of the talents every few levels such as wealth. Or make the adventuring tree even more cool by enabling a chance at skill upgrades to the champions

General

This brings me to general points such as mods. I know Stardock made this game to be modded and the community would make great mods, and I'm sure they will. But that's not what I want. I want to be guaranteed a good game without having to go trawling for mods. It's not that I don't trust the community, It's just I don't trust the community . Stardok NEEDS to have maps and quests and interesting stuff from the beginning. The expansions will no doubt help, although I guess I am going to ahve to shelve the game until then because it seems quite uninspiring.

Lastly, if you say you are going to address things then do it. If you aren't sure, then don't say a thing and do the stony faced Blizzard thing. I remember clearly at the end of the beta (I missed phase 1) where bugs were mentioned that you were aware of them and fixes were already ready, or being worked on, for the release version, but of course they weren't; and again I don't want to retread painful ground, but I am seeing it again. I thought there was supposed to be some kind of mana pool in 1.08 or was it going to be in 1.1? Either way I was quite disappointed to see the old imbue/level up champions to try and get more mana regeneration. Maybe you should even consider going to a separate mana pool and casting skill again? I wouldn't object to that for the sovereigns.

As stated by posters above me, many facets of the game are quite boring/bland.

Heroes/Sovereigns - Definitely need to be more epic in feel and scope. They should outclass any standard units. Period. Items they acquire and use should add abilities or spell charges. Magic wands for ranged magical attacks. Something, bloody.. something. Look at the games we have all played. Disciples, Homm, AOW.. bloody heck, Lords of magic! Hero/Leader units GET special items and treatment, why should Elemental try to veer away from what we have come to expect as a standard in the genre? By all means, reinvent what needs reinventing, but don't mess with what works well, makes sense, and we have all come to expect just to BE there.

Mom's ability to cast a generic create item spell ( with caps on the +'s and amount of things you add to the item) and later create artifact spell (sky is the limit, if you had the mana resources and casting power to get the uber item made) was PRIMO.

Eg, I could start a game with sorcery magic and have the spell wind walking researched which allowed my enchanted hero the ability to 'float' across terrain and allowed all units stacked with me to float as well, at the speed of the hero enchanted. Wind walking had a pretty hefty upkeep. So off to cast create item, pick a generic ring as the item to create, slap a 'permanent' wind walking on the ring, Voila.. my hero now has a nifty windwalking ring.

There were just SO many possibilities. Most unit enchant spells had upkeeps, but by creating items with permanent enchants, I could afford to buff my heroes up nicely and spend my mana maintaining other more important global spells. Speaking of global spells.. should be some, every magic tier and type. I absolutely LOVED being able to create cheap staves with 1-4 charges of a low level spell (healing, phantom warriors, earth to mud, web), and then be able to cast these things in combat and NOT use my mana. They fully recharged after every battle and the really UBER spells would cost a fortune to put into items, so it was balanced out well enough that you didnt have some killer spell right from the get go.

Starting spells - I get so mad at Elemental every time I create a Sov. Why? I make mages. I LIKE mages. I LIKE magic. I DO NOT like starting my game after picking all spellbooks at creation only to see the same 3 crap bland utility spells and having NO summons, NO combat magic, NO buffs.. it just feels like the biggest slap to the face. I hate that to 'buy' equipment at the start of the game you have to spend points from the same pool of points you use to buy stats and skills!

O M G.. srsly? Stone ages much? How about this guys - A pool of points JUST for stats. Several points JUST for abilities and spellbooks, and last, some points JUST for starting gear? Epic.

Mana/Essence - Annoying to not be able to SEE it at Sov creation. No options to increase mana if I want to make a big ol beeftastic mana pool spellcaster? Hrmph. Fail. Why no good equipment for a caster? How about a mana regen 1 ring or a staff with 10.0 essence as options to be purchased or even standard gear that comes with characters who make a Sovereign with casting in mind?

Starting Skills/perks - Bland. +2 food for 5 points? Who in their right mind is going to pass that up when looking at the rest? You need food bad enough in this game, taking that one is like, mandatory imo. 10 points for 1 tech a turn generation? Bland. 10 points for 1 arcane research? Bland.

How about instead of buildings providing X% to this or that, starting skills add %. Eg, instead of 10 points getting me 1 gildar a turn or 2 food a turn, I get abilities that enhance what will already be provided in the game. Perhaps an ability to double my research in tech, or double my mana regen. (hell just a mana regen ability from the start would be nice), and while we are at it, should make it so the abilities I choose at the start can be upgraded in game as I am leveling up. Give me some of that ol RPG feel.

Games like HOMM or King's Bounty come to mind here, where I may have rank 1 of 3 in an ability. How about that mana regen as a starting ability giving 1 mana per turn. Upgradable to rank 2 (3 mana per turn) and rank 3 (5 mana per turn) as I level up in game?

I feel like I could just keep going on and on and on, and I really doubt much of what I say is going to change anything. Besides, there are so many people thinking like me and wishing for things like me, they will definitely post them ( and will probably look a lot better than my posting!)

I give up, going to wait for next patch with fingers crossed

Frogboy,

I truly hope that you do as you have stated and make this into the game it could have been...

That having been said I acknowledge my sincere disappointment in the game in it's current state but, since you are asking for what may be done to improve things and if I read you correctly what we think should be improved upon to help E:WoM turn the corner and achieve something special here are some of the core elements I believe need to be worked on the most.

The feel of the land:

The world is supposed to be a post cataclysmic recovering world devastated by magic and trying to recover so how about giving us some of that feel.  When a civilization collapses There are always things left behind, these things are generally obvious in the ruins that are left and the objects on the landscape showing signs of the exterminated peoples and cultures.  Using this idea there are things I expect to see and ideas incorporated.

Ruins :

City ruins, Special unique structures unable to be understood, Abandon Temples, Ancient Landmarks, Oracle locations, Strange towers, Forts, Signs of the Cataclysm, Battle ruins, burned out castles, abandon schools, Ruined port on the sea, Abandon trading posts, and some kind of roads or trails showing pointers between a few of these location showing people once traveled between them.

In each type of ruin I expect there to be hints about what it was used for and perhaps a chance of discovering something random and appropriate to that type of ruin:  Ancient books, Devices of forgotten technology, random amounts of gold, weapons, people who revere or worship the ancient object, hints at other locations, legends and rumors of other greater possibilities and rediscoveries.

Unlockable locations - The current mechanism for locations seems partially right but seems to miss the boat in many respects, especially where it comes to the random spawns based on research for entire groups of locations.  In my opinion About 80% of all locations should be generated on the map at the beginning of the game and be visible upon entering into scouting / visible range of the square or at the very least upon entering the square.  The lowest levels of locations should have between 50-100% of the visible locations able to be entered without any research much like the abandon caravans are currently.  Research should then instead focus on making them appear through the Fog of War as location icons perhaps within X spaces of the actual location to account for unreliability of rumors ect... The research paths could be logical topics such as: Paths of Commerce, Ancient Battlegrounds, Schools of the Elders, Temples of _______, Homes of the Titans, Cities of the Past.  Different amounts of research reveal more of these through the FoW with a small chance of making one of the other originally non-visible locations appear.  Additionally to actually unlock the locations of the mid and higher levels in order to enter into them specific research must be done on those types of location.  This is the research needed to overcome the runes or have the knowledge of the places to look in order to find where the items of interest might be.  At the highest level of locations in addition to the normal research to make the locations show up a spell could be unlocked, a Ritual of Opening for X, when this spell is then researched and cast or simply cast it opens all of the locations of Magus the Mad or whatever.  When that spell is then cast the locations become open and there is a chance for random monsters to be released from them much like the current mechanism.

Tech Tree:

I should not have it be more difficult to research a very basic idea within a tech category simply because I have spent a large amount of effort researching a more advanced idea within the same category.  With the current design of the tech tree if I advance one portion of a tech tree it affects all other research costs within the same tree.  Specific "dead end" research branches should be resource related i.e. mining should be a general research followed by smelting and on up the line but research into mining specific ore types or things such as beekeeping could be tied to a specific research to get full value from those resources.  This would account for an improved understanding of how to effectively exploit that resource rather than merely have it present.

Interrelation of items within a tech tree, mining should need to be achieved before metal weapons and armor are available.

New topics included in the tech tree, these could then be built into the prerequisite for a variety of other structures.  Among those items which are frequently lost in the fall of a civilization are the advanced forms of various skills such as carpentry, stone working, metalworking, mathematics and mechanics.  These skills are often ones that are known by the eldest and most vulnerable in times of crisis so they are among the fastest lost especially when the apprentices and journeymen are sent to war and many of them lost during war.  These same techs that are ones that different factions could start with in order to help with race flavor.

Map refinement:

Quest locations, Goodies huts, Notable locations and perhaps even lairs of monsters should spawn their own map locations as tactical maps rather than be simple encounters on the terrain type of the land under them.  This will require the addition of a variety of additional terrain tiles and so I expect would require being delayed until the second expansion but, a series of basic wall and corner tiles and a basic floor tile would give the community something to work off of for modding into more types such as ones for specific types of encounters such as laboratories, temples, catacombs, caves and lairs.

The parts of the maps that were not initially included in the game but were intended to be present such as most notably rivers and some of the special terrain that goes with them.  I would also recommend adding an additional level of magnitude of height to maps this would allow for more dramatic maps and allow for steppes, valleys, ravines as well as the look of a land devastated and torn apart by magic. Special lands showing the after effects of magic would also be a nice future enhancement at this point, lands showing strange crystals, chaotic storms of magic, floating islands of land still hanging after devastation by magic, dark corrupted forests, desserts of shifting sands that send those who enter them to random locations and any number of other refinements that could be used to enhance the game, both by the player mod base and by your designs in campaign creation.

An official random map generator, the current one made by Cephalo is a great start but it needs further refinement and shouldn't have been left to the community to develop.  An official random map generator should include spawn rate of resources as well as a more complete inclusion of terrain types and perhaps sliders for climate and cliffs / beach.  At the same time include rivers if they have been corrected at the point you release this or patched once you have done so.

Magic:

The current spell books lack depth and a cohesive feel to them, as well any one or two spell books will end up giving a sovereign the complete variety of spells one would need to win the game so there is no reason to take focus on magic beyond that.  Taking more than one school of magic should enhance starting essence or more variety to spell choices.  

AI:

AI strategy needs to have a chance of competing with players and allow for future mods by players so that players may influence the behavior of the AI in their own mods.

AI Tactical strategy needs to be developed to include something more than charge straight ahead, it should take into account it's own movement speed vs. that of the opponent as well as not closing to the adjacent square unless able to initiate an attack the same turn with the only exception being when it's own movement speed is 1.

Other issues:

Weapon balancing, unit balancing, city balancing, resource balancing, interface on the map editor (think photoshop), a quest editor and any number of the other complaints in the forum as well.

At this point I am out of things I can recall at this moment but am sure once I fire the game up again I'll come up with more since there was so much potential that seemed to fall so far from expectations and are still so many things that can be done to improve things.

The area of the game I feel most needs work is the AI, however you have already expressed concern with this in another thread and have already said you'll be working on it extensively after 1.1 so this isn't what I will discuss.  Instead I want to talk about tactical combat.  More specifically, diversifying the weapons.

I am going to make a few references to MOM.  I know, Elemental isn't MOM.  However, there is one thing that I feel this game lacks that MOM has and thats unit diversity.  This can easily be accomplished by diversifying the weapons themselves.  For example, spear units in MOM usually had the first strike ability.  They would use their retaliation strike before the attacker got to attack.  This ability could be attached to spear weapons in Elemental to give much needed tactics to tactical battles.  Other abilities could be attached to other weapons, such as swords having a percentage chance to double strike ability (attack twice) with one attack.  Axes could perhaps have a cleave ability by striking two stacks of units as long as they are adjacent to one another.  Maces/hammers could have some other ability.  The sky is the limit here and you don't even have to take my suggestions.  I know some of them could be rather overpowered in this game setting.  However, we really need a reason to use anything other than mace/hammer weapons right now.  And we could really use more spear type weapons as well.  Wooden sticks just don't cut it, which brings me to my next point.

I'd like to see more weapons added to the game.  Wooden sticks are fine for peasants but I would love to see more spear and ranged weapons added.  Add some halberds, metal spears, and pikes and lances so I can make some mounted spear units.  Lances in particular could do more damage the further the unit had to travel to get to its target (would only work when mounted).  Give us crossbows, more powerful up close but much less range compared to a bow.  Slings wouldn't be a bad idea for a really early tech ranged weapon.  More siege engines such as ballistas.  They could have a piercing ability that could strike units in a straight line behind the initial unit fired on.  And have meaningful uses for siege engines and the corresponding warfare techs such as having actual walls show up when attacking cities (if proper research has been acquired).  I really do not like the idea of attacking a city and not having to break down walls if they have researched the fortification techs.  As of right now, fortification techs are useless the way combat is handled.  There is no point in even using armor since the biggest stack with the meanest weapon always kills everything in 1 or 2 hits anyway.

Diversify the terrain a bit as well.  I want to see tactical battles that have obstacles you have to move around or can hide behind.  Why aren't there trees in the middle of the battle field when you get into a fight in a forest on the over land map?  These obstacles could be destructible too.  Launch big boulders from your catapult or fireballs from your sovereign (and have them catch fire!) at the trees to knock em down so your enemy can't hide behind the trees block arrows from your archers.  This also removes them so your melee units don't have to dance around them to maneuver into position to fight your opponent.

Tactical combat right now is just run up and punch our opponent with the best weapon and unarmored unit you can make.  The first unit stack to get the first strike wins.  This makes tactical combat boring and predictable.

I really love this game--but I'm starting to get scared that it'll be changed way too much for me to enjoy it like this, so I'm grateful for this thread!!

What I WOULD like to see happen is to expand the dynasty feature because it really adds a lot to the game already and I'd love to get more out of that.  It would be nice if we could choose to marry our children to our champions, because there is not always an arranged marriage possible (my family and the other families I knew had all daughters at one point, so no marriages were possible.)  It could have a random effect on your prestige, if you like.  It could have a chance to lower your prestige, or even increase it (like when Dianna married Prince Charles, she improved the prestige for the monarchy by more than double )  Also, succession really needs to be a strategic element in the game.

I would love to see quests expanded and I loved the idea of entering into dungeons with your hero!  I'd love to see that in the near future.

I would also love to see more diplomacy in the game.  I'd like it if there was a lot more interaction with the factions you have diplomatic relations with.  If you could get diplomatic missions from your missionary hall or embassy, for instance, that would be awesome.  It would be cool if you would have missions where you could escort a character to a location in the other faction's territory, or to their embassy.  Another idea could be a mission to go and cast a spell or enchantment for the other faction.  The diplomatic missions could be a good way to improve your relationships with trade partners and allies, and would add a lot of fun for players who already enjoy quests, I think.

I like powerful magic users like in 1.08, because it makes heros seem much more heroic!  Magical resistances would make it a little more challenging to use magic to wipe the world clean though--or change tactical combat to include initiative. 

I personally don't think it's necessary to make tactical combat complex--I don't see tactical combat as a main feature of Elemental, but more as a supplement.  I like the spell effects and don't like the length of some animations (but would prefer to have shorter animatiions than no animations at all).  Most games that have complex tactical combat are JUST a combat game.  I don't see Elemental as a war game with an rpg twist--I see it as a turn based rpg with quests, battles, awesome magic, diplomacy and dynasty.  I enjoyed the tactical battles in Heroes of Might & Magic 5, but tactical battles is pretty much all that game has to offer--whereas Elemental has a lot more depth and variety to gameplay.

Last but not least, I would like a multiplayer mode (hotseat preferred) to include most of the features that the single player game includes.

And how do you define "own the game by 30th of September" ? Order date ? Impulse registration date ?

A couple of small suggestions I wrote in another thread, my guess they would go to A:

Shop:  Make it so we can see what the hero has currently equiped when we're buying stuff, preferably with a figure representing the character with his/her character slots

Movement in the map:  Please have the unit/s draw a line first to the destination we're moving and then have another click confirm the move, maybe have it as an option as well.

Squads, etc:  When showing the attack/defense values of a group of soldiers, please make it so we can see the stats for the individual figure..  say if i have a group 4 solders with 5/5...  its better to see those numbers instead of 20/20...  big numbers tend to be misleading...

Magic: Can't really say much since the current embodiment magic will change, I'd just like to add, like many people suggested,  a magic resistance stat of sorts... or not, after all, armor should protect you from a fireball or a stone to some degree...

Have a sovereign choose only 1 or 2 schools of magic at most..  choosing one school should give you access to all 10 levels, while chosing 2 will cap both... 

Make cities something more than just resource collectors, have them produce something on their own as well, but to prevent city spamming have it tied to their level...  say a merchant makes 1 gilder in a lvl 1 city, 3 in a lvl 2, 5 in a lvl 3, etc... same with the 4 basic buildings...  another option could be provided to scale metal and crystal production as well...

That way when the city just starts off wharever resources it has will make a difference but in the end a lvl 5 city will beat a gold mine laying around...  also there should be administration cost associated with the level of the city, being 1 for lvl 1, 2 for two etc... in that case gildar production could be boosted to cover that...

Heroes:  have them earn a some hit points when leveling up as well as the usually stuff... and why not some passive xp just for being there...  

Soliders xp:  reduce the way solders gain experience when leveling up, a solder that survives a couple of battles can have up to 3 times the hit points of a fresh one,  make it just 1 per level up or a multiplier of their original ones (adding 20% per level up, that way soldiers that started with better training will keep being better)

An option to build roads!  

and last, move the independents away from them, its annoying when they just sit there and prevent my units from using them, forcing me to lose a turn when they are needed in the front...

Btw I just remembered there was another post for this so I'll paste it there as well...

There's one fine example that came to mind - Magic system.

I doubt that it escaped anyone notice, but in case it did - Just about every forum member has his own vision of perfect magic system.

Nothing wrong with that, but still it's an ocean of information.

Dev. team will have to deal with that horde eventually.

How? I can't predict an actual outcome but I won't make a far guess if I say that their own vision of it will be a deciding factor.

That's the natural thing to do, one can't make a decent enough creation if it contradicts one's tastes.



Now, what makes it a problem is that the ones who give those ideas have got no clue as to what the dev. team vision is.

I'm not saying that it's easy to express, I'm guessing it's not even easy to grasp. Anyway, let me continue this example and hopefully it'll get clearer.

I dunno if you actually read through those countless ideas, but for the sake of this example we'll assume that you did. In that case you've probably thought "this isn't going to work", "this sounds nice", "hmm... some of this can be used". This is the upper part of the iceberg that I called your vision of the matter. Even that upper part is hidden from us.

I suggest to make it visible. Of cause I don't ask you to reply to each and every idea, what I ask is once you've seen a bunch and made some filtering "tell us how it went".

Start a thread stating "we've read a lot of ideas... ... these are the ones that caught our attention so far: ... . What are your thoughts on them?".

Such a thread would direct our effort and in turn make your own job easier. Instead of adding yet another idea that completely mismatches with your vision we could work with something that does.



Ever played a word guessing game that gives hints by pointing out the letters that match? This is how we can give something that fits your vision.

Ever tried to guess a word you don't know anything about? This is how we currently give you ideas.

Compare the chances and I hope you can understand why your feedback to us is so important.



Mind you, such a thread can get hot and messy to an extent, but isn't a messy thread better than a messy forum?

Take a look at this thread for example - It got some ideas already. Anyone discussing them? Nope. Everyone is busy promoting one's own vision of elemental. In a couple of days this thread will either be full of those "2 cents" ideas or dead. Those ideas are a lot of wasted effort. You can direct it, make it go into something productive, like an actual discussion. The time you need to make a thread is a small price to pay compared to what you'll get.

Make a bunch of those threads on different aspects and you'll find that everyone who cares about the game and not just about posting one's own ideas is giving you useful feedback (at the very least more useful than 2 cents ideas are).

The next step would be to discuss how different ideas on different aspects can correlate or conflict, but with your current unwillingness to organize what we currently have this step is far out of scope.

As many posters have commented about, a lot more than just the magic system needs a major overhaul.

Here are what I see as the major problems that MUST be fixed before making an "expansion pack" of content.

#1) Magic - Spells schools aren't different enough, and many don't seem to do anything. Magic tech tree has little use, maybe this will change with other changes. Stats need to be more useful, hopefully the global mana pool will change this for the better but the track record isn't so good right now especially with "global" things that you love. MoM had a good global mana pool system, and each charater still had their own personal mana pool. This would be a good system to copy and I hope it is where you're headed.

#2) Combat - Unbalanced, undifferentiated, almost no strategic or tactical elements.

#3) Economy - Many people have mentioned it in various ways and you seem to be ignoring it in every review or comment... but the current economy model is BORING. If you want people to like your game, you need to eliminate boring and install FUN. You even threw out a popular and fun economy system in beta because it got in the way of your game (your game's failure as it turns out). You need to revisit this and you need to include it in your customer polls so you stop turning a blind eye to it.

#4) Dynasty GUI - Unintuitive and unwieldy. It seems like it could easily be a fun and useful mechanic. We know Stardock is good with GUIs so hopefully this one should be an easier fix for you.

#5) AI & Diplomacy - The AI doesn't think well, they lack distinct personalities and the diplomacy is difficult and cumbersome.

After fixing all of these I think the game should be ready for an "expansion pack" of content. If you don't have the mechanics in place, it will just make more difficulty with working on the content down the road.

Enough Gorgon.  Take your rage elsewhere.  This is a discussion for what things people would like to see in the game. And for the record, Stardock doesn't ship products, it uses a fulfillment house. We have taken the issue of duplicate shipments up with them.  I can think of plenty of forums you can visit and express your endless rage.  If this thread turns into a flame war, I'll just lock it.  

Our participation in the forums is not a requirement and while I am dismayed at the technical issues that the game came out with, I can assure you that we are doing the best we can. But your purchase of a $50 video game does not entitle you to abuse us on our own forums.

This will be the only warning I give on this thread. I'm going to go back and remove the off topic message and see if we can go forward from there.