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[Urist McDepravity]

Because I doubt that this game will have no bugs in 1 year . In its current state more than 30% is incomplete and other stuff is 50% bugged, so I doubt 1 year is enough.

I dunno, I've played 1.05 _on PCs where it does not immediately crash_ and I would not say that bugs are such a problem. Heck, DF has much more bugs than EWoM.
There are some performance issues, and some things like shards in tactical are broken, but these are easy to fix, and I bet sept. version will be mostly bug-free.

I'm far more concerned with general, umm, shallowness? of the game. Magic and heroes are *meh*. Tactical compat is not fun. Its all about roaming with party of 12x units with hammers by teleport spell and crushing everything with auto-resolve.

[Deon]

I dunno, I've played 1.05 _on PCs where it does not immediately crash_ and I would not say that bugs are such a problem. Heck, DF has much more bugs than EWoM.

DF is 1000 times more complex and it's in alpha and not a commercial game. You can't compare them.

Most of nations have no working racial traits.
Unit designs have random stats.
Many buildings don't do what their description says.
Many items don't do what they should.

And there're big memory leaks. It's not terrible but more than 30% of content is bugged, or 80% in case of racial traits. And I hope they make units upgradeable. It's even in Civ4, why didn't they bring this over?

Shallowness is there, but it can be overcome with lots of modding.

[nenjin]

I think you're being a little overly dramatic Deon. Many of the game's bug issues are matters of tweaking; the poor FPS on the non-cloth map has to do with how the LOD tech they use was configured. (At least that's part of the issue.)

Most other issues are: a lack of true, compelling content, improperly balanced mechanics and features that are present but not hooked up.

All that can be solved in a year, I imagine. The real problem, I think, is that without showing people something really awesome in teh first few builds, no one is going to care in a year if the game is better, because they assume the core still sucks.

I see the potential for the game, and all the good things it could be capable of doing, but that's because I've made myself play the game until I found something I liked. Many people didn't give it that much time, nor should they have to.

[forsaken1111]

All that can be solved in a year

Which means they should have waited until 2011 to release.

As they themselves have said, they are both developer and publisher. They aren't under any time constraints, and game development isn't their main source of income. Why did they rush this out?

[nenjin]

At some point, flaying them over their obvious mistakes serves no purpose anymore. I've toned down on their forums because, and I say this as someone with real problems with the game, we're turning into broken records.

They shouldn't get a break, but every future thought doesn't necessarily need "....then you should have waited 6 months."

I chalk this one up to a learning experience for me. I never knew why some snickered about SD while others raved about them as a dev house. Now I know.

[forsaken1111]

I'm not so quick to forgive them, this isn't their first game release after all.

[nenjin]

Oh I'm not forgiving them. I think I've basically criticized myself hoarse at this point. And I'm still trying to give them their .5 dues they're owed for the work they have done. I've bought it, I plan on keeping it, so for people like me it's time to play the waiting game.

[forsaken1111]

Well, despite my dislike of the company I cannot pass up a sale like this, especially when some of the proceeds will be donated to a charity I like.

[a1s]

They aren't under any time constraints, and game development isn't their main source of income.

Huh? What is their "main" source of income?

[Aklyon]

All those software things they made.
like Object Desktop, Fences (doesn't really count since its free), and Tweak7.

[ductape]

I use fences, i like it quite a bit.

I also use the Windows Blinds because I am soooo tired of looking at the default Win XP GUI.

[forsaken1111]

They aren't under any time constraints, and game development isn't their main source of income.

Huh? What is their "main" source of income?

Their other non-game products, and digitally distributing other people's games.

[nenjin]

Huh, didn't know they made Windows Blinds. Loved it when I was on XP.

[Viken]

Stardock started as a purely distrubutional company, and then started creating software for themselves, most of which is quite popular.  Even I've used Blinds before.  lol.  But as a game developer, they're still rather new at it.  I can forgive them for the mistakes, cause they are only human, after all.  But as for the games they've created, I think they'll win out over time.

My first taste of GalCiv was after it had already been released for a year when I found the Gold pack in a bargain bin.  Sense then, I fell in love with it. lol.  Elemental is the same way, in my opinion.  Everyone is talking about the waiting game while patches and updated content come out for it, but like a wine, it takes time to get right.    Just my two cents.

[a1s]

Stardock started as a purely distrubutional company, and then started creating software for themselves, most of which is quite popular.  Even I've used Blinds before.  lol.  But as a game developer, they're still rather new at it.  I can forgive them for the mistakes, cause they are only human, after all.  But as for the games they've created, I think they'll win out over time.

well, actually...
Stardock was always a developer. Even more ironically their first product was "Star Emperor", also known as "Galactic Civilizations", a game for the OS/2. Desktop enhancements came later, it was not until OS/2 gave up he ghost that they would get rid of their game-dev part and become an office developer. Nevertheless Stardock went back to developing games at least as early as 2003 (that is: 7 years ago) when they remade their earlier hit: "Galactic Civilizations" to be used with Microsoft Windows. (I don't know if it's their main source of income or not, but game-dev was always a big deal for Stardock)