Behold the power of lowered expectations.

Game CD's get made well enough in advance of release that this buggy, crash-tastic version of the software was already burned and sitting on shelves.  It isn't like the guys at Best Buy are actually printing and boxing your game DVD in the back room.  Magical elves were not going to replace all of the game boxes on the 23rd with new ones on the 24th with the Day-0 patch in them.

The game was minted in beta form, went to shelves in beta form, and Stardock obviously was hoping they'd get the first patch done before people got home and realized they'd bought an unfinished product.  We aren't talking about CTDs on a few random weird-setup PC systems.  I have had at least 10 different crashes, or game-breaking bugs. My PC is from a major manufacturer without any kind of crazy/weird hardware or software setup.

.. in the end .. that STILL doesn't fix the fact that people bought (I repeat) an unfinished product, and now they are unhappy.

People then shout "well such-and-such game was buggy" ... you're just making excuses.  Products should not be sold to people if they don't work.  I think it is an industry problem, and it is getting worse.  Now, with all the "you have to sign up for an account to get patches" ... I think the game developers are just getting more lazy, and shrugging and saying "eh, we'll patch it after" because they know you're going to log on and get patches.

You used to buy a game, bring it home, install it, and it would work.  Little things .. little bugs got fixed later.  All the stuff you hear about on the forums here is supposed to be ironed out before printing.

Well I think frogboy handled the situation pretty good. Most CEOs just would state somethin like "eehh nono you didn't get it, it wasn't ment like that...blame Canada!".

Honsetly I think Elemental could have used more polish to it before release. But this industry is fast paced and with high demand on retailer slots and tripple A products waiting to be finished (e.g. Civ) you sometimes have to take some risk. Guess I would have done it exactly like it has been done here.

On the other hand, not every customer searches through the forums and far less know the whole story behind their individual problems with the game, so it MAY be even an understandable move in pointing out many of the flaws the game currently has.

However ripping stuff out of context and blaming people for something they've said on some forum is just bad journalism. It shows pretty clear that some writers just don't think about consequences. I wonder what would have happend if back then somebody would have written articles about how bad actually World of Warcraft was. Well okay some magazines actually did. But imagine what could've happend if the impact would've been bigger due to those negative statements. WoW much likely wouldn't be around anymore...at worst.

None the less Frogboy, you made a good move with the official excuse, even if I personally think that it wasn't fair to put the situation with Elemental on your shoulders alone, by taking stuff out of context in a completely inappropiate manner.

Yes indeed. I posted about that in the response thread, so not to cross-post I link it here;

https://forums.elementalgame.com/392474/get;2731722

Basically, PC Gamer gave the buggy (at release) Empire: Total War a glowing review, while here smacking Elemental for being buggy. Talk about hypocritical magazine. So PC Gamer, try to follow a consistent line. It's fair to criticize a buggy game, but just don't do it randomly ok?

I don't think we are remembering the same launch here. I remember massive server queues, if you were lucky enough to get on the servers, odds were the server was going to crash or come down for maintenance any minute. In the small amounts of time where you could get on and actually play, there were horrible bugs. Quests broken. 5 minute lag just to pick up trash loot. Random CTDs. Yeah, really fun times. Two or three months later it was much more stable and it turned out to be quite fun with lots of content to explore, but the first couple months were awful.

The review is correct,the game isnt ready period,i luv stardocks 4x4 games but this is not finished,im not having a go or bashing just telling the truth.Yes it mybe running ok for some but for alot like me it runs like a lame dog.It should of stayed in beta for another 2 months.Im 100% sure stardock will fix it but for a game i payed 34.99 for ive played better games for £10 than this is atm.

I'm not too worried. Those of us who truly want a game like Elemental will not be bothered by some pre-release bugs and waiting a few months until balance issues are sorted out. It took me seconds viewing screenshots to see the potential of this game and that I will like it. And I think it has a decent niche market. But those who dislike what they see now, will likely not enjoy the game when fully patched either. You can't please everyone.

The mag being hypocritical doesn't make this game less broken or more finished. Enough with the "mag is biased" strawman.

And I didn't say that. If you read what I posted, you see I mention that it is fair to criticize a buggy game.

So you think that it's not fair to criticize PC Gamer for their inconsistencies?

The issue is that a reviewer should be discussing the game, not forum posts the developer made to a friend of his (and the quote was taken out of context). Even Tom Chick wrote a major "f*ck off" to Tom Francis for using his forums in such a way. It causes developers not to visit forums, which would be a major loss for all.

I think it has little to do with the game or the fairness of this review. 

What happens is that people here agree with the meat of the review and then immediately their criticism is dismissed with the 1000th post saying that some other game got a good review despite having bugs. That or the poster is called a liar or it is insinuated that they haven't played the game.

It isn't germane to the meat of the review of this game which is spot on for large chunks of the customer base.

Not at all more that I feel old. I would say that 95% of all pc games in my life didn’t need to be patched after release. This seems to be more a common practice after everyone jumped on internet with broadband connections, so fixing something later became a possibility instead of releasing a finished product that could be returned to the store if it didn’t work, they use to have to get it right the first time.

I have been with Stardock for a long time, I have liked and preorder just about every product they have came out with, including this one. I just don’t understand how people can defend this game, if somebody brought me out a half cooked meal I would complain the same way. I have been playing around with it since beta2 and I am sure there are others that thought they should have waited months before prime time, this was  rushed.

Behold the power of unreasonable expectations.

Elemental, in its current state, has already entertained me and held my attention longer than Starcraft II, which had a small army of developers and a bajillion dollar budget. It also burned out graphics cards because of a bug where frames weren't limited on the menus. Did PC Gamer mention that? Of course not, since Blizz pretty much sustains the entire professional gaming press with their WoW ads. Oh, sorry about that. Mentioning obvious gaming press bias against small developers is totally irrelevant. My bad.

Well you said it alot better than I could. Major reviewers like most of the Mainstream media are little better than hacks for their respective cash cows.

It has to do with their credibility.

I didn't see them coming to the rescue when the Total War forums was filled with complaints about crashes, bugs and an unplayable game. No, they gave the game such superlatives I thought it was a joke when I read it and many other reviews at that time.

I wish you were right, but have to disagree with you. Patching computer games have been essential since the internet boom, with some few (and admirable!) exceptions. I rarely buy a game until after some months of patching. Pre-ordered Elemental though and have not regretted it the slightest. Sure some things can and will be improved in the game. But having lots of fun with it and that's what counts!

All that stuff you remember is true, but it was still less buggy and more fun then just about every other MMORPG on launch. You have to understand just how low the bar actually was.

So you have a very low threshold for being entertained...

Good to know I guess.

You also seem to care what some review rag has to say about anything.  Follows up with your easily entertained trait I suppose.

And this makes Elemental nor broken and imbalanced? It makes the points they made in their review somehow untrue?

It makes my own experience mirroring theirs somehow invalid?

Another game with a inflated review, just starcraft with a facelift, not such a bad thing but did they really need 12years to do it?

Even on the version released Sunday night I never experienced any totally game-breaking bugs. Maybe you should update your video drivers, lol just kidding. I know that a bunch of people are having some problems, but the point I'm trying to make is that early versions of game always have some bugs. They only become "important" to the gaming press when the development house who made them has a small ad budget. In the case of Elemental, as with most games, players can expect patches to fix outstanding bugs. Now, if a game is released and doesn't patch bugs, that's an issue, but nobody has ever come out with a perfectly balanced and bug-free PC game, and unbiased game reviewers take that into account.

I think the point is PC gamer gave ETW a good review on the idea that it would be fixed later.  It barely got fixed imo and even then it was a FULL YEAR LATER. 

However PC gamer doesn't give the same standards to Elemental even though Stardock is known for fixing their games (FAR more then Creative ASSembly).

I understand you're having technical issues and their are balance issues but those will be resolved which is more then I can say about other games coming from bigger name studios.  AVP2 is a good example since it's PC patch was completely cancelled.  I'm sorry the game doesn't run perfectly for you but it will be resolved and probably within a month, 2 months max which is still before the Feb release date and logically if the game was delayed you still would have ended up paying the same amount of money you spent now, just at a later date. 

Sigh... I agree with the essence of your post that gaming reviews are a total farce, but I really wish people would stop spewing this particular line of ignorance. Failing to frame limit is not the most optimal thing to do... You certainly don't "need" that umph for a menu. Still, this equates to "using hardware at 100% of it's potential caused it to fail". That is not a software flaw no matter how you spin it. Any card that would have killed was on its death bed whether people realized it or not. Sure... it helped it find the light sooner than it would've otherwise. So would a marathon of just about any graphics intensive game.

Stay away from the Light!