Listening to beta testers is .... "Elemental"

Stardock did a wonderful job with Galactic Civilizations, and those of you who follow my blog know that I've been very eager for their new game "Elemental: War of Magic" for a long time. That is until it showed during beta that their egos were getting in the way of listening to customers and beta testers. I won't rehash the old parts, but the behavior continued and despite people like me posting game crashing bugs... the game went gold before it should have and the game you buy in the box is completely unstable. Tonight as I write this I think I'm downloading the 6th post-release patch already adding stabilization and making other basic mechanics work.

So if you're not buying a game and expecting to connect to the internet and patch it right off... don't buy this game. In fact, sadly as someone who already sunk their money into it you are probably better off waiting several months before the game is to the state where it should have been at release. Luckily, with Stardock one can still trust that they will do that and not just drop the title so I do feel that Elemental will eventually be a market ready game.

Disappointed with Stardock

If you've been a long time reader of mine then you know I'm a fan of Stardock. I haven't written about Elemental in quite a while. I'm wondering if they're also getting so big that they don't care about customer feedback. What I mean is tossing aside intense lengthy discussions they invite with customers, in favor of using a 1 dozen post low visiblity thread as an excuse to throw out the most recent economic model in favor of something with far less consensus (and I use that phrase to give them the benefit of the doubt). The forums over there are quite civil so I don't know why they'd ignore it.

Are they playing too much Starcraft over there and thinking that the economy of a real-time strategy game will import smoothly into a turn-based strategy game?

I don't know, but right now I'm hoping the game is worth my pre-order.

Slothing to 2010

I can't believe another decade is around the corner. Sigh. Where did this last one go? I graduated from college in 2000 and suddenly... zoom it is 2010 almost already. Meanwhile I had a big job interview last week. I'm in the final 3 for a company that is actually determined to hire someone. It sure would be nice to be collecting a paycheck again! I'm trying to ebay stuff I don't use so I can have some sort of Christmas on my own money. Doubly so since we're moving by the end of December with a job or not. So excuse me if my posting is very infrequent until then.

I'm playing a pen and paper game of Elemental that can be viewed over at their website. It is going about as slow as my blog posting these days though. The others are too afraid that I'm going to win that they can't even make their moves is the way I look at it.

If ebay goes well I'll be buying a new Wii Nunchuk for playing games with my daughters and maybe some cheap Wii games as well. Meanwhile if you want some good reviews of Wii games, check out the Wiiviewer channel on youtube!

What I've been doing

I'm still unemployed and my family has to move out of our apartment by the end of December so real life is becoming more of a focus and this blog less so. Posting will probably be sporadic and sparse until next year at least unfortunately. Got a job or a cheap family residence? I'm in desperate need of one of the two.

Meanwhile to keep at the QA thing and keep having fun I've been working on this:



Elemental Beta baby! One of the most primitive early betas I've been a part of and I've done a lot of betas. But playtesters are getting much earlier input than normal into a game's development which I think is going to make this a totally awesome game by release time.

Betas

Well I can reveal now that one of the betas I had been in previously was Fallen Earth. It is a good post-apocalyptic MMO PC game. I really liked the post-apocalyptic setting and skill based MMO play. I'm not playing it now for two reasons: First and foremost I don't have the money if I really wanted to. Second the bigger reason is that some really fun things I enjoyed got cut during the beta. I'm hoping they'll get re-introduced later on in the game, but at this point I'm really starting to doubt it. What got cut was the Stealth skill and the meaningfulness and specializations of each faction got diminished. It is still a great game and if you're looking to play a non-fantasy MMO right now you should definitely try it out.

In other beta news, I just finished downloading the first beta for Elemental: War of Magic. Time for me to go join all the crashing and my favorite work profession ... bug reports!

Finally as a little bonus for the miniatures gamers! I did another video for Anima Tactics. This one covers the line-up of models available for the Church organization in the game. Enjoy!

Post PAX 09 Review

Soooo much fun. I feel sorry for those who dwell among lesser cons not knowing anything about what PAX is like. Given I didn't milk the pure fun out of it, as usual I came with an agenda and there is only so much time in the Con and different activities to choose from. First stop saturday morning was waiting in line for the exhibit hall and picking up all kinds of swag along the way.



The video above only barely begins to describe the haul of free stuff I pulled out of the con. My daughters are beating each other silly with inflatable swords from DragonAge. Lost track of how many free T-shirts I got, last count was about 8 or 9. In previous years I've gotten keyboards, my nice Razer gaming mouse and others from raffles. Unfortunately I had no raffle winnings this year.

I headed straight for the Stardock booth and got to play with the Elemental Alpha build which is already a ton of fun. I've been posting more pictures of the Alpha over on their game forums if you're following it. I couldn't wait to get back the second day and pay for my pre-order of the game.



Then I just had to get a few pictures of people in costumes. There are so many I didn't get pictures of that I wish I had. Luckily I'm not the only one there taking pictures so I can enjoy the exhibits while other people do the business of covering the convention. But I did get the picture of Pirates up on stage. Yeah, dancing Pirates on a Tom Clancy Splinter Cell stage... what did you do with your weekend?


All this before the day was even half over. I got to talk with several HR people about advancing in the gaming industry and how to sell my myself. So hey, maybe somebody is looking to hire a good QA person who can double as a great editor? They actually had better tips than a lot of other "get a job" discussions I've been to.

I got in a good game of Anima Tactics at the convention, sat in on the Legend of Neil interview panel (and saw today's new episode ahead of time), and a few minutes of concert before heading home on the first day.

Yeah, I'll be blogging a lot more about PAX all week!

Media showcases Elemental

Elemental: War of Magic is the PC game I'm following most avidly right now. It seems as they gear up for PAX they're really ramping up the media blitz. No surprise either as Stardock intends to really show off the game for the first time at PAX. My favorite article so far is the one from Kotaku.

Upcoming

The Guild Season 3 is coming... and they have an awesome music video as a commercial.



and in other fantasies... Elemental is getting close to a public beta release. It isn't going to look like the picture during early beta they've warned us... warned us! After years of overhyped games (*cough* FU_com *cough* EA_Fail) it is a breath of fresh air to be warned about the unplayabilty of a beta. This is now the beta I'm waiting for with eager anticipation. For the rest of you too... this beta has no NDA.

So I hope these teasers tide you over, I'm going on vacation to the beach for a while. Then I'll be putting my possessions in hoc so I can have some spending money for PAX!

Mines of Canada Elemental

Two more days till Mines of Moria expansion release for Lord of the Rings Online. I'm somewhat excited; excited because of the new Moria content but heavily dampered by nerfs and bad class redesign. Expect to hear a lot about it in my next post. Also, this next weekend my gaming cohorts will gather and play some more Chronicles of Ramlar and Arkham Horror.

In good and interesting news, Stardock has finally announced their fantasy strategy game in development. You can see an early promo picture to the right for the game. I'll be following this game with much interest till it is released. The release isn't slated until winter of 2010, but as with other Stardock games if you pre-order you automatically get into being able to beta test and can play the pre-release versions of the game. The game looks like it will be the only true spiritual successor to Master of Magic and I have little doubt that it can top the old classic as well. It will be a true 4X game no doubt, but with duel research paths of technology and magic and a lot of interesting dynamics are being discussed that involve trading your power for different kinds of advantages and achieving different kinds of victories. The only disappointment so far is that they're only planning on two playable civilization races for release at this point and I think the game could easily gain from having a couple more. It shouldn't be too hard to do so without falling into the typical elves, orcs, dwarves fantasy trope.

Now the biggest and best news is saved for last and about VOR. I grab local bioplazm forum gamer Scott (left) and went up to Canada to meet "Skuzz" (wave 'hi' Skuzz!) who I caught in the below unprepared picture amid revealing juicy details of Vor 2.0 So I've got the spoilers, sneak peeks, and news about Vor 2.0... unfortunately Skuzz long ago got the promise of secrecy from me so there isn't much I can reveal. I can confirm seeing concept doodles for a new masher unit, and that other work towards the new release is proceeding. My opinions however are not under NDA and I can tell you that I'm very excited and eager for the release of what is in store with Vor 2.0 Old time fans like myself will not be merely pleased with a re-release of VOR but I think you'll be beside yourselves with excitement for the some of the game changes and story advancements. I don't think it will be difficult for VOR 2.0 to make a huge number of new fans as well.

In other VOR news, the next unofficial Golden Growler contest is complete. Head to wargame forums and vote! (and not necessarily for me).

- Sallust/Rishkith over and out!