This game is great, but the multiplayer lobby side of things is ridiculously bad. In this day and age we should NOT be experiencing this type of issue. I mean - multiplayer RTS is not a new concept or anything. At the _very least_ the ability to join games and get them started should be flawless. Then if the game lags ingame or has other issues, so be it - no game is completely immune from them.
Look at other titles - dawn of war 2 being one of the most recent. What issues affect it? Balancing aside - there have been large scale complaints regarding the matchmaking, where low rank people get constantly put up against high rank etc etc. Personally I have also experienced issues such as long matchmaking wait times and say a premade team where one of the team will launch into a completely seperate game from his two teammates. No game is immune from problems - but at least Dawn of War 2 does in fact work properly most of the time.
I spend hours every night trying to play Demigod. Last night i outright just went and did something else. I played one game and mid-way through it two guys just suddenly disconnected at the same time, like they lost connection to each other. This was after waiting for precisely 50 minutes in the lobby beforehand while the comedy of connection issues played out before us. People would either suddenly be not able to connect to the game, or would get stuck in the joining process, or worse, connect with a yellow ping. My friend who was in the game lobby reconnected and then magically couldn't get back in. Frustrating? Yes, unbelievably.
However, I still persist with this game because 1. I enjoy the actual game(IF i can get into one) immensley, and 2. I highly respect the level of communication they have been delivering while they try and fix it. For that reason, and that reason alone, if you are reading this forum and interested in the game, these guys deserve your money.
I am confident they will get on top of these issues - with that much communication and dedication, how could they not? They're not just going to up and walk away and pretend they're not there, they cant. They have committed themselves now by way of constant communication to fixing these problems until they are at a highly acceptable state.
If the game itself was crap I would have shelved this and asked for a refund a long time ago. I effectively dont know of anyone whose actually played it and not enjoyed it. At the same time though, i dont really know of anyone(particularly all us aussies) who isnt frustrated beyond belief with the nightly crap involved in trying to play it. It will get fixed, and it will be worth it.