Actually multiplayer is just another beta at this point. While the bugs can be fixed and the game can be balanced at some point, the main problem remains content - we have two factions with limited differences, low mobility ( bad transports, no dedicated spells for exploring ) and uninteresting rewards for quests. The game needs fresh ideas like the thalan race in GC2 TA. The lore is not even implemented - we see a levitating channeler in the game but there are no spells for that.

My guess - they alocated resources in creating their own game engine, and tried to implement many tech trees while ignoring the magic system.

The CEO is also the owner - that can be a good motivation to start with.

Balance and mechanics are important to fix, but everyone seems to be forgetting that there are a lot of people who don't really have strong opinions on the matter. All 90,000 people who bought the game so far aren't on the forums wanting stuff rebalanced. There are bound to be lots of them who don't mind the current state of the game, and just want to be able to play it with friends.

MP needs to be turned on now and fixed up as needed along with the SP.

If I had to guess, I'd say the thinking here is the box that shipped out last month said "features: 16 player multiplayer" not "features: balanced game".

It is largely irrelevant whether they are vocal or not, the issues still needs to be fixed. It would be naive to believe that the majority are happy about the state of the game, simply because they aren't vocal about it. You'd find that it would be more likely, that they simply move on from the game and don't bother looking back. That is bad for potential future customers.

That said Adding multiplayer won't magically make the game any better, or worse for that matter. And if it weren't because MP was an advertised feature at launch, then it should have been put on hold indefinitely until the game would be in a far better state then it currently is.

If Stardock had offered a version without MP and cheaper, many people would have bought that version instead.

Only if you assume that they can only work on one thing at a time. Obviously I don't know how it's structured, but one would assume the people who're working on MP aren't the same ones who are supposed to work on balancing.

Assuming that we (by we I mean the predominantly single-player crowd pushing for lots of changes) lose something because they decide to push out MP is, quite frankly, childish. It amounts to nothing more than "Give us what we want, but don't give the other guys what they want until we're happy!" They can do both at the same time.

the most important thing is another

you guys dont consider that multiplayer is the BEST balance workshop

its way harder to balance while ai does stupid mistake, instead in mp you can see the real problems when actual ppl play and learn from mistakes and use good strategies against each other

For those of you who want Stardock to delay multi-player even longer are really just putting them in a terrible position.  Poor reviews, bugs and backlash will be nothing compared to someone actually suing Stardock for blatant false advertising.  Because until Stardock gets multi-player in, what they are really asking for is a lawsuit, which to most people, is far more dangerous than some disappointing reviews.

Unlike a lot of Stardock "fans" who frequent the forums and lap up every piece of information, the vast majority of Elemental customers are just average folks who don't know Brad Wardell, don't have any leniency or goodwill toward Stardock, and will only see the game for what it is, as advertized on the box.

Here is some very good advice about how to run your company from TvTropes which applies very well to the multi-player controversy:

Taking these fans too seriously is usually a mistake. Although they tend to be louder than the rest of the fanbase combined, they are usually a decided minority in almost every fandom (though they often claim to be a majority). Fan Dumb also tends to suffer from an extreme case of Fan Myopia, regardless of what kind they are; in any variation, they are often intractably convinced that the views of "the fans" (or perhaps more accurately, them) are both more widespread and more mainstream than in fact they are. If you're a producer, then pandering to them is usually a good way to make your show crash and burn. And to add insult to injury, they usually won't be very grateful that you were thinking about them, but will instead start whining about how you made the show crash and burn.

actually mentioned several times...including in the post immediately before yours...

why o why don't people bother to read the whole thread before they post? 

Stardock once said (can't find the quote, it was forever ago) that they planned to track multiplayer statistics and feed it into creating a better AI - i.e. if strategy x won more often than not, teach the AI to use strategy x better!

So even though there will obviously be exceptions (bad players or even good players making mistakes), if you look at the average results of all multiplayer games, you should get some useful info for both game balance and a better AI. Even if players using an "overpowered" unit/strategy/etc can make mistakes and still lose to a weaker unit/strategy/etc, the people using underpowered strategies will make mistakes too, and overall the overpowered choice should lead to more wins. The only thing that might throw off your results is too small of a sample size - i.e. not enough people playing multiplayer.

For example: you're an amazingly skillful player who happens to love archers even though they suck, and you consistently beat lots of noobs by using archers. If 10 people total are playing the game, sure you could seriously throw off Stardock's perception of game balance by making archers look good; if there's 100 people, your impact will be small but maybe still noticeable; if there's 1000 people, your impact will be trivial, the averages will show that lord's hammers are better and win far more games. If even 1% of Elemental's buyers play multiplayer, we're pretty close to that 1000 mark.

In other words, if your sample size is large enough, player skill should be pretty irrelevant. Even if bad players sometimes use lord's hammer, they also use bows sometimes too, as do good players - the average should still show that lord's hammer beats bows most of the time.

The enabling of multiplayer is pretty much a "flip of the switch."  The addition of multiplayer will assist greatly in gameplay, balancing, and AI issues.

Yes of course, i worded it bad i guess.

It is just that those who dont care about MP (that would be me *wave*), dont care about its advertising on the box. If it wouldnt be for the forum outcry, i wouldnt even know it isnt there.

For those that care, it needs to be released yesterday. It was promised, it was payed for.