Dear Stardock,
I'm writing this here because i have no other idea where on the earths internet would be a better place to write this. So if you want to move it i'll give no complaint.
In regards to your soon to come out title Elemental WOM i have only known of it's existence for the past 48 hours. That within the first 12mins of reading up on it's ideas i was freaking sucked in as i've never been before in regards to a video game. But after my 12 mins of heaven as it were i kept trying to research it and couldn't really find a whole lot of concrete info on what exactly the game was going to be like. When i looked up official trailers and commercial type videos i came up with little and they weren't all that awe inspiring. (which i felt was bad because i still didn't know how on earth the end game was going to look and in a sad kinda a way it made me feel giddy since i'm hoping it means you've got a bunch of good gaming "geeks" making the game who just don't know what marketing means)
Yet because the theory of you game does sound absolutely fantastic, you seem to be going out on a "small" limb by trusting "me" in the way of not encoding protection software in your game, and because you seem to have a great history of helping out with your games even after they're a little old i'm going to buy Elemental.
All that i ask is that you continue to do whatever it is that you do to make everyone i read who has played your previous games feel supported by you. So that if your ground breaking game, that's main web page is still filled with "how do you guys want us to do this idea" 6 days away from it's release, falls flat on it's face with bugs you be there.
Thanks for reading ( that is of course if you really do
A very excited and also very uncertain "gamer"
This is the very same reason I bought Galactic Civilizations II without knowing much about it.
It caught my interest, I only had to read a few blog posts and forum threads and I said to myself "yup, these guys have earned my money".
EDIT: Oh and if you didn't figure it out already, I didn't regret it. GalCiv2 turned out to be one of the best 4x games ever.
Similarly, I bought Sins of a Solar Empire on a whim based on precious little information beyond the fact that it was a slower-paced, thinking-man's RTS and that Stardock had an unimpeachable reputation. I haven't regretted that decision in the least, and I trust Stardock to deliver when it comes to Elemental.
Sins of a Solar Empire, however, was developed by Ironclad Games and not Stardock - it was a close partnership and Stardock was involved more heavily than a typical publisher is with the developer, and one of the big reasons for the partnership is that Ironclad shares Stardock's ideals - which is probably why people keep confusing them a bit
Not a knock on Stardock, just giving Ironclad credit where it's due, it's a bit sad to see it rarely mentioned when people talk about Sins.
Once I saw the play and style of GC2 origional I was hooked on Stardock produced games. They have improved that game 100 fold since the beginning and I fully expect Elemental to receive the same treatment. That's why I don't expect it to be a masterpiece out of the box. No game is really anymore because of all the coding and lack of real beta testing. I'll play what they give me (that I paid for rather hehe) and like an expentant child before christmas wait with glee for all the patches and extra content we will get for it over the YEARS. My biggest wish and hope is that this initial gold release is stable enough I don't get the dreaded crashes of death as I can deal with minor bugs and NO MULTIPLAYER if they should choose to not include that in the beginning. I personally can't believe they would do so much for the Galactic Civ series and not do the same for this one. Brad has always seemed an appeared more excited about this game than GC2.
I have been a stardock customer a long time and I have never been disappointed with any of Stardock's games. Stardock's customer service and commitment to their clients is what the industry standard should be. They would rather spend their time and money on polishing the game than on advertising and promoting it. I personally applaud this approach and wish more developers felt the same way about quality control. How many coaster games do you have in your library?
I've heard Brad state many times that their best advertisement is their customer base. That's understandable when you consider that the turn based gaming community is a small subset--word of mouth is often more efficient and less expensive. Add to that a constant stream of updates and modability and you have a winning formula. GalCiv 2 is a perfect example of this policy being reality and was arguably not just the best 4x space game, but one of the best games ever made period. Its certainly on my short list, right up there with XCOM, Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, Doom, Ultima, Diablo, MOO, MOM, etc.
I have had problems with other games sold on impulse, but even with these problems, Stardock works with me to resolve them even though the game wasn't theirs. Dragon Age and all its release problems are a fine example of this. I can rest assured that my money is well spend and have never been sorry for it.
Rest assurred, Elemental will be a great game.
I can't rest I'm too excited about the release next week or this weekend for us preorderers.
Let me tell you a story. Once there was a game called Demigod. It was not developed by Stardock. It was published by Stardock. At launch this multiplayer-centric game had devistating connectivity issues for a significant portion of the player base. To remedy the situation, Stardock reallocated members from it's Impulse and Application development teams (which persumably had lots of networking knowledge) to write code which"by-passed" the in-game networking that was broken. In the process, Stardock bore the brunt of the community outrage even though the problems were not their creation. The developer Gas Powered Games quietly sat in the background working on their next title. In the end, Stardock fixed the networking issues. My guess is the expense of lost man-hours was not recruperated though additional sales. The reviews were in and some were harsh. Yet Stardock refused to abandon a title with their name on it. Even if they were only the publisher.
Can you imagine Valve doing this for a game published through Steam? Stardock has placed a high value on its reputation. If any company deserves a gamer's trust it is this one.
I was a huge fan of both Galciv2 and Sins, what impressed me most about both of them was stardock's (and Ironclad for Sins) post release commitment to listening to the players and improving the game. Galciv2 had 3 xpacs! three! most games these days don't even get one. they get a few $5-$10 dollar DLC packs if your lucky, but then the devs have pretty much moved on to the next game.
vanilla Galactic Civilizations 2 was a very different game than what we had after the 3rd xpac, and it was all improvement in my mind. Stardock doesn;t just make good games, they keep working to improve them. that's the best thing about the company, in my opinion.
Well, yes, I am aware of that, but Sins had a lot of "Stardock touches" to it. I have a feeling it would have been a very different game without Stardock's involvement. Plus I really like Stardock's overall philosophy regarding the PC games industry and game development.
Now if only they would support Linux then they'd be the perfect PC game company.
Doesn't surprise me. I lost a lot of respect for Chris Taylor and Gas Powered Games when they released Supreme Commander with broken sound code that made the game unplayable on certain popular hardware configurations (primarily any system using a Creative sound card), and instead of fixing the problem, they at first refused to acknowledge that it even existed, then they told people who were having the problem that we shouldn't be using crappy hardware like Creative in the first place and that we should buy new sound cards if we wanted to play the game (never mind that Supreme Commander was the only piece of software any of us were having a problem with), and finally they straight up lied and told everybody that it had been fixed when they had, in fact, done nothing at all to remedy the problem (confirmed by numerous players using in-game benchmarks), but as far as they were concerned the matter was closed and they wouldn't say another word about it.
I have refused to buy a Gas Powered Game developed game since.
I trust Stardock with my hard-won gaming dollars (GalCiv, Sins) and have not been disappointed.
And as pointed upstream, Stardock goes the extra mile (hell, extra parsec) to make the games a good experience. And they love turn based (or slow RTS) games that have a strong SP focus and replayability. How can you say no to THAT?
It's funny, I really hated Sins of a Solar Empire, but for the life of me I can't remember why....the experience has just erased itself from my memory. I always just chalked it up to not liking RTS space games that much though, so I never really blamed Stardock for it (and I guess they didn't develop it anyway). I also only tried the first released version of it so I don't know how it may have changed.
GalCiv though will always have a very soft spot in my heart and is the primary reason why I'm interested in elemental. Although I'm more skeptical then many that elemental will be ready for the 24th, I will probably still buy it on release. If it were not a company that I trusted, I would never remotely consider that.
Let me toss in my Kudos and thanks to Stardock for daring to be who they are.. I also have played the galciv's and expansions, Demigod, and sins .. as well have bought several other games through impulse.. All because of what they do.. its easy to see they love to play great games by the support they put improving, expanding and fixing what they don't like...
Carry on Stardock..
I got into sins thanks to some previews in PC gamer, which in turn lead me to Gal Civ 2 ultimate edition, which in turn leads us to Elemental being available to preorders on monday... Is it monday yet?
I would bask in this great thread longer but I have campaign tweaks to make Thanks for the support and kind words, guys! Very much appreciated!
Indeed, I have been a stardock fan since the original galCiv saved me from MOO3. I've not regretted a purchase from Stardock yet.
Yup, we do read the threads. Thanks for the kind words! We're still working hard, and will way beyond release.
Check this Vid out:
Not bad for a "Reveal".
Hopefully Elemental will have many such updates as well.
I'm quite sure that Elemental is bound to follow a similar path of awesomeness too. Already saving for the two expansion packs!
I think we're all in this for the long-haul.
I watched a video with Brad on G4 earlier today. In the video, Brad stated that Stardock will NOT be releasing a new game next year. They will be spending all of their time on Elemental. Even though I had already ordered the limited edition (And the novel by Brad), I would have bought the game right there. You can find the video here...
http://g4tv.com/videos/48042/Elemental-War-of-Magic-Interview/?quality=hd
The part I am talking about it around 4:10.
derp, your right. got mixed up sry. regardless, its still two more than most games these days!
That's one of the things I really like about Stardock: they don't release a game, put out a couple of basic patches, and then abandon it as they move on to their next project. They continue improving it for as long as people are still playing. The only other companies I can think of that do that are Blizzard and Valve, so Stardock finds itself among excellent company.
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