Civ3 was released without the advertised MP and Editor.  The Conquests expansion never received its last patch.  Then comes Civ4 with a wide variety of problems right out of the box.  Some were game breaking on a variety of systems.  The patch process was disastrous (Took far too long and new patches consistently introduced new problems).  And the really big problems like the MAF were never dealt with.  One patch in particular made the game unplayable and had to be immediately withdrawn.  Then comes the expansion BTS which promised a fix to the MAF and an improvement to the AI.  But neither occurred.  The MAF still existed and from my experience the AI was worse (they'd used a fans AI mod but didn't manage it as well as he did).  Vassal States still didn't work well and new problems were introduced to that system.  Corporations was just odd in its imbalance.  The AI overbuilt Settlers to its detriment, and would forget it was at war... cities under siege would continue building civil structures while their empire crumbled around them.  Espionage was a serious hassle. etc etc. 

There has been plenty of fodder in Civ releases for dramatic reviews.  I don't pay much mind to reviews of any sort.  But I'da heard from the Civ community if the Civ reviews had received even a small fraction of the negativity that EWoM did.  Better to gauge a game by reading the fan reaction.  Less publisher interference that way.  Though they can still have their moles in community forums to attempt to herd the sheep this way or that.  It's interesting to me how the behavior of the steam fan bois on CivFanatics is so similar to the EWoM haters here.  Just saying.  A few well placed sparks ignite a firestorm.  Rabble rousers in a crowd can incite a mob.  Its an ancient tactic.  It wouldn't surprise me if certain entities employed these tactics on the internet.  Not saying they are.  Cuz I can't know of a certain.  I just see the motivation, therefore there is the potential.  And not saying that everyone, or even most, people who post inflammatory criticism are doing so on behalf of some shadowy entity.  Humans are a herd animal.  You start a movement and others will follow...  (a three minute video demonstrating "How to Start a Movement" @ TED Talks)

Perhaps he meant they are just as buggy?   Civ4 was definitely not bug-free when it was released, and it had various issues until the first patch came out. Colonization 2 was not very enjoyable for a long time, and there was barely any communication going on. The patch that fixed major gameplay issues came out a long time after the game's release (when I had long shelved it).

As for Blizzard, Diablo 2 had a number of severe problems when it came out in summer of 2000. Playing online in the first few weeks was a trial in patience. Lag, disconnects, crashes to the desktop. Fantastic game and I played it for several years, but the first few weeks were not enjoyable. WoW, in spite of its long time in both closed and open beta, was imbalanced and prone to crashes/disconnects/lag when it hit the market even in Europe, which was three months after the US launch. Even today, nearly six years later, the game is plagued by balance issues. Starcraft 1 was also a balance mess when it came out in 1997, and it took many patches over several years to achieve the level of balance that made it an eSports suited game. Starcraft 2, in spite of months of being in public beta, and developed with a 100 million dollar budget, isn't properly balanced (and battle.net v2 is an unfinished barebones platform that lacks in numerous (and very basic) ways. It still feels like a beta.

Blizzard makes good games, and I greatly appreciate that they put effort in making their games run on a wide spectrum of computers, not just the latest, and they do spend a lot of time on development, but it's a myth that their games are bug- or issue-free when they come out. Their patches also take time and bugs sometimes stay around for months or even longer. Firaxis also makes solid games and I have bought pretty much all of their releases, but especially since the 2k Games takeover communication and responsiveness to problems have suffered.

And finally, Stardock also develops great games! Yes, Elemental had more issues at release than those other games. But Stardock also patches much faster and excels at communication with the customer base. I only know a few other studios that do the same.

The point is people need others to think they made the best choice. They can't just consider a game "the best" if not everybody thinks so, they need others to agree with them. The same kind of discussion happened when Aion came. I was a fan of Lineage II and just thought it was a great improvement and was just happy with it. But there was that Aion vs WoW crap. Because those who chose WoW over Aion couldn't just play WoW, they needed to prove their choice was best. And so did those who chose Aion. What a pitty. Same thing happening here.

You can never prove chocolate tastes better than vanilla, it's not true for everyone !  

Anyway you can say why you prefere chocolate  without saying vanilla is crap

I don't buy it, and have to disagree. Railroads, which has his name slapped on it, has serious problems that never went away. You might seem some reviewers be more kind and generous to the title in terms of score, but the players will tell you yeah... they never fixed this title of issues that have been there from the beginning. I think this is just Elemental fans trying to drum up issues for a well-loved AND well done series.

Funny thing is, I always seem to get behind games that "everybody" hates.  It's almost as though people have forgotten that the point of gaming is to have fun, and that even a flawed game can offer hours of solid entertainment.  Roger Ebert is fond of the quote "Movies are so rarely great art that if you can't enjoy great trash then there's no point going."  I think this applies to video games.

Yeah, Sid Meier's Pirates remake was pretty good.  When they announced Railroads, a spiritual successor to Railroad Tycoon, I was excited.  It turned out to be buggy and just a big disappointment all around.  It killed the opinion I held for Firaxis and Sid Meier.  I am sure Civ 5 will be very good, but companies like Firaxis are also prone to disasters and debacles, and their patch and support of Railroads was TERRIBLE, unlike the support from Stardock.

Sid Meier's Pirates is one of my most favorite games.  I love the remake.  I enjoyed the tactical combat there, and I am hoping that Elemental's version will be 100x better.

Now that's just burying your head in the sand. The Stardock name has as much clout as Sid Meier in the industry, especially the 4x world. Virtually every review has ended with a conclusion along the lines of "It's in a rather poor state right now, but this is Stardock, so we're going to stick with it because they'll make it better". Major reviewers decided to delay their review for a couple of weeks of patches to come out, just because, like the fans, they wanted to like the game so much. Most reviews start with something along the lines of "When we heard that Stardock were making a spiritual successor to Master of Magic, we were overjoyed" or "We were very excited to try out Stardock's new offering". You can't play the underdog card here. A lot of faith was put in the company by fans and reviewers alike and much of the negative reaction has been due to the shock that a company with such a high reputation would disappoint.

I bought Civ 4 on release and I remember how frustrated I was with the slowdowns mid game as the memory usage ballooned out, having to restart every 2 or 3 hours to get performance back, the long turn times late game where you had to have a novel with you to pass the time. The difference was that, despite all this, the gameplay was solid and highly addictive. They delivered on their promises, plenty of new functionality was there, the strategic depth and a capable AI that gave you the challenge needed to play the game. This means that even when slowdowns or crashes affected you, you would curse, but you'd still be firing it up again, at 3 in the morning, because you so want to get back into it.

As with any game, it had bugs. Civ is a very complicated game so plenty of bugs would creep in that don't even get detected until it's been out for months. They still weren't game breaking - if a building that would have given you 3 extra gold didn't work, you hardly notice when you're making 400 gold a turn.

The difference with Elemental is that, aside from stability issues, the underlying game hasn't come out complete. The gameplay bugs were much less trivial and they were game breaking. I find this strange - Elemental is a much simpler game than Civ, which is fine, they can build on it, but I'd think that would make it much easier to test and verify it. How does QA miss the fact that the elemental shards don't work in a game called Elemental: War of Magic? Or that parties/squads/companies were totally broken? And of course, there's the AI. It provides no challenge even at the hardest difficulty level. You have no sense of achievement while playing the game, because there's no challenge to overcome.

There is no conspiracy or favouritism here. Everyone knows that games these days get released with plenty of bugs and need months of patching before they are solid. Reviews take this into account. What they look for is whether the game offers compelling gameplay right out of the box and whether the bugs are minor enough not to be completely game breaking. Right now, not 6 months from now.

Another good example is any Creative Assembly release. The Total War games come out full of bugs, stability issues and shoddy AI. Even so, they still have such good gameplay you can bear all that. Or most Paradox games - those are usually ridden with bugs on release, yet again, the compelling gameplay makes you forget them. This is why those games get good scores, in spite of their issues.

You cite this as a difference, but it's exactly how I feel about Elemental.

The two things I disliked about civ 4 were the garish cartoony graphics and the stack-based unit system. As both have been changed I have to say I'm looking forward to it; though I have doubts as to how complex the combat system will be (e.g do units have a 'facing' so they can be flanked etc?). If civ v is fun to play out of the box then it immediately has an advantage over Elemental; I've been looking forward to it since it was announced but I can rarely find the drive to play for longer than an hour- the game just isn't much fun and frankly becomes a bit of a chore. Anaemic sound effects and an uninspiring score don't help matters immersion-wise.

Anyways, civ 5 seems to be advancing the francise which can only be a good thing for civ and pc gaming in general. If it works out, of course...

Just a note: Changing to hex grids was a good idea imo.

I actually don't know how I feel about the removal of the stacks. Pretty much everyone in this thread (I probably missed some posts) seems to welcome this. I wonder how well the AI will handle this, though. I really don't play TBS games online, so the quality of the AI is an important aspect for me.

This won't happen in the Civ games...ever...as for the removal of stacks: I had no probs with stacks in Civ4 [FFH2], but yeah...the number of units / stack should be limited. I definitely don't like the 1 unit[army] / hex rule in Civ5, but like I've said, I am not a big Civ fan anyway.