I posted the same thing in the comments in RPS, and I'll post it here.  The Bill of rights is still where it has been for a long time:

www.gamersbillofrights.com

What's even worse about this thread here is BRAD HIMSELF HAS LINKED IT IN THREADS OF PEOPLE ASKING FOR A REFUND AND THEN GIVEN IT!

I can't tell if you're agreeing with me that stardock's done just fine (which the part you quoted doesn't say) or not. But I like your reply regardless.

LoL Nice!!!

+1

I cannot name a single game in recent years, apart from a few simple platformers, where I have not encountered bugs, glitches and frequent crashes of varying levels of seriousness.

The fact that Stardock promised more than they delivered may be true, but this level of criticism (the please go and die as a company kind) is severely over the top. I would assume that any reasoning person would look at the Gamer Bill of Rights and apply the same logic to it as the actualy Bill of Rights. It's an ideal.

I play, and enjoy Elemental. Nothing can beat MoM due to nostalgia, that which triumphs over all, and EWoM could probably have looked a little more at Dominions and Age of Wonders, and possbly Starcraft 2 and No One Lives Forever and Braid for inspiration...

Not really though. I think this is not a debate, but people whining cause they are disappointed. Again.

I look forward to seeing what Elemental turns into. I just hope they won't try to bleed my wallet through too many useless expansions, which seems to be the vogue. And here is to hoping. I won't really take it to bad if they do, cause I won't be paying or playing if the game doesn't steadily improve through patching. It's a growing process.

Good luck, Stardock, you appear to be working hard.

P.S. I know some people have genuined problems with crashes etc. Don't take it too hard.

Well, i am a huge fanboy of Stardock and will stab anyone who doubts that, but hindsight is always 20:20 as they say.

Playing the last couple of days i see some bad flaws not only in stability, but also in design.

I really believed in that miracle patch at release (i know, i am not the smartest one).

The patch delivered some hopes, but from the new introduced bugs its clear, it was not tested well.

I still trust in Stardock, but they should have postponed release to February 2011 and most importent let have some testers test the final game. the UI is still bad, magic is not where it should be and combat mechanics are downright bad documented and i think not implemented.

- What effect has blunt, pierce and slash damage on different armors? Where is the documentation on it, where do i see those things in the UI?

- Is magic resistence implemented?

- What effect has cold, fire, lightning damage? Are there creatures that suffer extra damage or are they immun?

- Why are there no more special trainings like the Ranger pack? Knight (adds charge, needs horse), Reaver (adds lifesteal), Flame Imbued (needs shards, adds fire damage), Assassine (needs guilds, adds poison or stealth). The system behind that packages is genius, but it is not used to full effect.

...

ups, forgot time need to run, sorry 

The technical issues I'm seeing...

- PC Gamer mentons a 'white screen' issue with tactical battles, which i think we have a machine reproducing internally (which is half the battle, sometimes)
- I know people with 64bit Win7 (and an ati card?) are experiencing issues, which we do have reproducing here
- late game hangs and crashes, which we're tackling as we go

So definatly more bits to overcome, plus balance issues and working towards explaining more to the player as UI communication complaints are made. However having followed the quarter to three thread that produced brads "Don't buy our games then!" quote, it looks to me this may be a spillover from that - but perhaps that's just my oh so impartial view on it

Gotta love drama

People need to realize what EwoM and Stardock is all about.

First of all how can you call something complete? Is starcraft 2 complete?  Is World of warcraft complete? This is always up to the people managing software design and production to decide. If it was up to the customers to decide, then no game is complete, not wow not galciv2 not soase not diablo, not super mario, not even tetris.

Secondly about the stability of the game: I've played the campaign/tutorial and I'm in the middle of my first game. That's about 8 hours so far cause I like to take my time. And guess what! NO crashes! I played 2 sessions of 4 hours each.  Wow! how can this be you ask? Well I am very carful with what goes in my PC, because that's where I work, where I communicate and where I play my games. The majority of ppl with graphic or stability problems use ATI cards that have driver bugs verified by ATI themselves, and this is a known fact. There are PC rigs out there, that are an environmental and health hazard, to their users and the gaming industry as a whole.

Thirdly: this is a new game on a new game engine. Noticed the 2 news? This isn't any rehash, and nothing similar to EwoM was ever made before it both in terms of gameplay or in terms of engine technology. Glitches? yes there are, Missing tooltips or ingame information? Check! Peculiar and unpolished UI? Check!  But stardock delivered. I can play from start to finish, I can make maps, I can mod the hell out of the game, And I could do all that on day 0.

Just realize the scale of this project, in comparison to the developer.

I read the article and Brads replies are those of a person that is too jaded of all of the forum dramas going around to care. And he asks people who don't understand to stay away of the game, and honestly I wouldn't want those ppl in my MP games and in the forums.

As far as RPS and the rest of the media are concerned, It's way too early to crucify stardock. Yet that's what happens! What didn't happen is the crucifixion of the Boby Kotics and EAs out there, but guess what, that will never happen, they can only bully the small fish.

As far as the gaming bill of rights is concerned, It isn't important that the text is displayed. What is important is for the developer to have it in his mind as he creates, and in his final product. From the things that I have read in all of his journals and forum posts, and the game that I played in the beta and now, this is definitely still the case.

Mind you, I'm not a fan boy and I'm not married to this project or company. I really enjoy the game right now. Sure it needs a lot of work, the Great china wall still needs a lot of work.

You remember the forum discussions about what publishing date to chose (24 Aug or Feb 2011)? What surprises me is that a lot (if not most) people on the forum thought August was too quick (also since no one had really seen tactical battles, magic etc), but that it was FB who insisted that "this is how games are done" and "people will always whine" ... In retrospect, did they live in some kind of bubble or what? And with people here on the forum only wanting to help, debugging their game for free, giving feedback they can use before it is cabled out all over the web and out of control. It has to be said, a published game should not only run, it should also have at least an acceptable level of balance, and already enough content to let you enjoy it. As for MP, it has to be in simply because SD stated so for selling the game. Whatever one thinks of the state of the game today, it is sure as anything that all this problems and question marks will hurt its reputation and sells, to some extent. Which is really sad BTW.

I guess only thing to do now is for everyone to just focus on getting the game in order, also content-wise. Indeed it won't take us anywhere looking back and complaining, but there is a lot to the criticism this time. It's sad that so much good work and potential might now meet with a lukewarm (at best) reception out on the market, just becuase it was rushed out.

Well, the idea that they could assemble the "game" part of the game as quickly as they did and have it be balanced at all was always kind of out there. Systems need to be put together and tested together, then tweaked and balanced. That takes time. That time wasn't really provided.

It really seems like Brad just underestimated the time it takes to put out a polished game, rather then putting out a game and the polishing it after the fact. People look at other games and only see a couple of patches as opposed to the lots of patches Stardock puts out, but at the same time a game like Civ 5 is getting a lot more polish time *before* release, so it won't need as many patches.

It's a shame that October wasn't available as a release date. That probably would have been an ideal one. February 2011 is a long way off.

Is someone from Stardock planning to make an official response to the RPS post? It seems like it would clear up a lot of things. Also, I'm impressed at your ability to remain calm and have a sense of wry humour about it BoogieBac, all this must be very frustrating.

Yeah, it is. And it's not entirely fair that things go that way, but they do.

I mean that's just a PR problem, but it's a big problem. A quote like that won't stay contained to the QtT forum, and someone on another site who was having crash problems reading that is going to fly off the handle (since they did just spend money on the game).

To be blunt, Brad is a blunt guy. Which is great, most of the time. But with the way things were yesterday that was an very ill-advised comment.

That's especially true when a lot of the problems are just due to the early release and things are so much better in the day-zero version. A simple comment like "we gave out an early version so customers wouldn't be left in the cold and it has some bugs we hadn't fixed yet that will be addressed Tuesday" would have been a lot better. It has the advantage of being true, today's build IS a lot better.

The release of starcraft 2 was OK man. You always have scores of ppl with faulty PC components, drivers, and software, that can't play and always blame the publisher. I played SC2 out of the box for 7 straight hours on the release day with no crashes and no problems watsoever online.

Check your rig!