Yea, just started testing today. So far I have been able to get to turn250-300 then crash. I won't start submitting bugs for couple days as I want to learn current mechanics first. Every game I have played has crashed. Some crashed after the first 20-30 turns. I have won one fight with spider leader, and died every other time. I am mostly using the first premade character but I have created several games where I used the customize feature for the Soverign. I was able to upgrade unit equipment. I haven't fielded any new troops yet.
The download was stable but slow(my current connect is comin from a wireless router adsl). I am running an XPS 700 system with 2 6400 @ 2.13 GHz processors with 2GB of RAM. I have a NVidia GeForce 7900GTX.(comments on cheap quality part upgrades accepted but won't necessarily be acted upon) I am also using a CreativeLabs SB X-FI. I probably won't be upgrading much this year other than maybe some RAM. I am also running a paid version of Bit Defender.
The intro music and art gives you that old Master of Magic feeling. Then it quickly moves to the Elemental:War of Magic load screen. The music also changes(for the better). I enjoy the comment at the bottom of the load screen. A little blurb about how betas are rough work.
The beta 1Z lets you create a custom soverign much in the same way as MoM. For being a rough work in progress it shows much promise. Hopefully, the stability issue will be resolved before to long as this will actually make it "close to fun". I can already see(premonition) this game far outstripping many others(STRATEGY/RPG) with the customize features currently implemented. Since this is just a rough draft, I can't wait to see a full fleshed out and bug free game. I am glad that I prepaid for a limited addition copy. I will actually be able to help(teeny weeny bit) with its success/failure, direction and expansion. This is awesome for long time gamer with no previous beta(gaming) experience.
For those who are worried that Elemental won't achieve the same great feeling we had when playing Master of Magic; I want to let you know I think Elemental could actually eclipse it in a big way. I don't think any of us were playing MoM right out of the box. I couldn't. It took a few years or so for the patches to be effective. My memory is foggy. Anyways, it was only fun after it had been patched and afterward it still has some annoying bugs(mostly AI?). It had most of what we wanted out of a fantasy strategy game except in how it ran. I think Elemental will be fairly, if not very stable game at release with much polish. It will aslo have the developers actually helping the modders do some modding and/or helping in other ways. MoM was not really moddable(MO). Yea some have tried and mostly failed(speculating). Elemental takes modding into consideration right from the beginning. AND/if multiplayer works well it will be the game to get for everyone. I definitely will enjoy playing Elemental(and testing) long before it is released.
