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[forsaken1111]

Refusing to allow any negative reviews of their game, or even constructive criticism, is really poor form.

Actually most likely it is a PR tactic. They are probably under pressure from investors and need to maximize initial sales, and nothing would kill sales like bad reviews on their own forums and site. I'm not defending them, they've obviously sold out and have lost a bit of my respect. If your product cannot stand on its own merits against honest criticism, then it is a poor product and needs more work.

[Mephansteras]

I'm sure you're right. That smacks of worried management.

Still, it's something that would have caused me to hold off on buying the game if I hadn't pre-ordered it. Ah, well.

[nenjin]

The forum thread nuking is pretty shameful. I thought Stardock was up to facing criticism of their products. At least, Frogboy harping on the games own shortcomings led me to think so.

I'm sure you're right. That smacks of worried management.

Still, it's something that would have caused me to hold off on buying the game if I hadn't pre-ordered it. Ah, well.

Well, they have Random to worry about too. All that face limited edition crap set them back a pretty penny, I'm sure.

[GaelicVigil]

Check this out.  I just PMd frogboy about the situation.  His response is at the top, and my message is at the bottom:

I'm not seeing a lot of posts removed (they show up with an icon when I look at them).

The ones I've seen removed were ones that had inflammatory topics like "the disappointment is justified".

The dev team has been working very hard on the game and we really aren't in the mood, a day before official release, to visit our forums and have them innudated with trolling.  Constructive feedback is certainly welcome but the one thread I saw that got hidden talked about how the game promised back in 2008 to have virtual shared races and such out of the box in a thread called "the disappiontment is justified".


--------------------------------------------------
Sent: 8/23/2010 2:12:33 PM


I don't know if this is yours or Stardock's policy, but a lot of posts with constructive criticism about Elemental: War of Magic are being removed from the forums (including my own).

The ones I have seen do not seem to be trolling, flaming or any other inappropriate behavior.  Is this just a trigger-happy moderator, or something more sinister?  There is already talk on other sites of the blatant "silencing" that is going on, on the forums.  I'd appreciate it, if this issue was addressed.

He's using my own post as an example of an "inflammatory" post.  Nice.

[Mephansteras]

Hmmm. Maybe they're frazzled. I know when we release a game it's 12-16 hour shifts and massive stress for everyone involved. I could see a smaller publisher having issues with the dev team also trying to police the forums and being a bit touchy on the subject. It sounds like they honestly found your post to be flaming, which is isn't.

Maybe wait a day or two and respond back to the PM with your post and why you don't think it was flaming. Maybe they'll be more reasonable about it?

[GaelicVigil]

Hmmm. Maybe they're frazzled. I know when we release a game it's 12-16 hour shifts and massive stress for everyone involved. I could see a smaller publisher having issues with the dev team also trying to police the forums and being a bit touchy on the subject. It sounds like they honestly found your post to be flaming, which is isn't.

Maybe wait a day or two and respond back to the PM with your post and why you don't think it was flaming. Maybe they'll be more reasonable about it?

Yeah, I can respect that.  I'm not going to bother with it anymore, the game speaks for itself anyway., whether it's posted publicly or not.

[Sowelu]

Respect for Stardock dropping to zer--

no, not quite to zero.  They're trying.  They put out one hell of an admirable effort.  It just sounds like they failed to pull it off, again.  Damn, I was really looking forwards to this, but I probably won't buy it if it's this crummy.  Because you know what I wanted more than anything else?  A Master of Magic that WASN'T FULL OF BUGS.  Hah.  It would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad.

Someone needs to boot their upper management in the face and tell them "Just give the devs 3-6 more months on every game you make, and you will become one of the major industry players instead of bush league".  But...I'm not hopeful.

gg Stardock, no re.

[forsaken1111]

And that is the problem, the game isn't all that bad really. It's not as good as it was hyped, but it certainly isn't terrible.

Their forum nuking is sending a bad message though.

[Viken]

I can understand the reluctance to let bad critism hit the forum a day before the official release on the market, but still, there seems to be pleanty of activity in the support forum, with geniune help being given as well as expansions (i.e. fixes) being done on the Day 0 update they'll be launching tomorrow. 

The majority of the issues I've seen though has to do with 64-bit systems, which is sad, because I do have a 64-bit OS (Win 7 Ultimate), and have been looking foreward to this game for some time, although I was never able to pre-order it, and its looking slimmer and slimmer that I'll have money to buy it outright retail. 

Another thing, though, that has gotten me is the custom map generation.  At this point they've admitted that there aren't as many map seeds as what will be released in the Day 0 update, but with the Impulse Reactor there are already dozens of new maps available via mod.  Maybe that'll work out, although the bigger map generation for their upcoming 64-bit Version patch suggests there is more in store for that entire system.

I'm still looking forward too it though, and would like to thank everyone here in the forum for the constructive critisms and information. Keep up the good work, and if I can finally get the game, I'll let you all know.

[forsaken1111]

If it eases your worry a bit, I am using a 64 bit install of win7 ultimate as well and have had no issues. It installed and played seamlessly. I have only experienced a single crash in a whole day of playing, when I repeatedly alt-tabbed in and out of the game very quickly.

[Viken]

Like a few of the dev team has said, its actually easier (and better) to play the game in windowed mode.  Its what I had originally planned to do, and almost always do for games like this. XD That alt-tabbing has been causing several issues in the game from what I've seen, but they are generally small and minor issues.

I'm not so much worried about having any issues, sense I'm running a Nvidia card, I get to skip all of the ATI issues altogether. XD Its a money problem with RL issues going on here.  So no go with getting it any time soon.  Oh well.

[forsaken1111]

Yeah I started running it in a window immediately after that crash.

I usually do anyway.

[Heavenfall]

Over the next 72 hours as thousands of people come into the forums looking for help we're looking to keep the signal to noise ratio somewhat under control.

If you want to post your impressions (be they positive or negative) do so with a title such as "My impressions of the game" or "This is my review" or something like that.

If you have a technical problem of some kind, go to the support forum and try to be as specific with your post title as possible.

What we DO NOT want in the forums are posts with titles like "This game SUX" or "This game ROX" or other declaratory titles.

Once the initial onrush of new players is through, we'll lighten up on moderation some so that people can advocate or detract to their hearts content.

http://forums.elementalgame.com/391553/get;last

I remember the same things happened when Demigod was released. Stardock doesn't have investors, its a private firm. They tend to be pretty brutish towards people they don't like.

[GaelicVigil]

Over the next 72 hours as thousands of people come into the forums looking for help we're looking to keep the signal to noise ratio somewhat under control.

If you want to post your impressions (be they positive or negative) do so with a title such as "My impressions of the game" or "This is my review" or something like that.

If you have a technical problem of some kind, go to the support forum and try to be as specific with your post title as possible.

What we DO NOT want in the forums are posts with titles like "This game SUX" or "This game ROX" or other declaratory titles.

Once the initial onrush of new players is through, we'll lighten up on moderation some so that people can advocate or detract to their hearts content.

http://forums.elementalgame.com/391553/get;last

I remember the same things happened when Demigod was released. Stardock doesn't have investors, its a private firm. They tend to be pretty brutish towards people they don't like.

This is such BS, my post title was far from "This game SUX", my guess is that he had a problem with the content, not the title.  We all know they simply want to silence those who want to post something negative.  This latter statement/response admits that:

Forum Member:

I can understand that you don't want crap on your forums, but I'm not sure deleting posts is the way to go. Generally, people don't like seeing their efforts go to waste, and if they can't be vocal here, they'll be vocal somewhere else. And there will always be people caught in the cross-fire.

Maybe adding a "whine" forum subsection is an idea?

Frogboy:

I'm okay with them being vocal somewhere else.

But customers expect to be able to go to a game's forum and get help.

So, in other words, he has a problem with people who are giving negative feedback, regardless of whether it's in good taste or not.  This all just comes off as if they are trying to hide something and are embarrassed.  If someone is trolling a forum, most mods simply lock the thread and ban the user.  Let their actions speak for themselves, but don't go deleting posts like that or it starts to look even worse. 

And Frogboy, your wish has been granted. 

[Fikes]

I remember this exact situation from Demigod. It took them two weeks to realize the net code was totally fucked and not even sending requests until 45 seconds after a user tried to connect to your server. In fact, right off the bat they blamed it on pirates!

People would level frustrated, but generally mild, complaints at Stardock, which would get deleted. One guy even had his game forcefully refunded (he asked for a refund, but still).

Who ever said Stardock falls overly in-love with their IP's is 100% correct. You have to be able to accept your flaws and figure out a path to victory.

All that being said, I am pretty sure I am really going to enjoy the game. People who are complaining about the campaign... come on, what Strategy game in the last 8 years has had a good campaign? It is almost always about the sandbox. Even in HOMM or AOW I only played the scenarios (sandboxes) and even then, I preferred random maps (when possible, neither of those games had that option).

I worry about post-release support, however. Demigod I think only ever added 2 heroes. Last time I checked there were not even any new maps.