Sarcerok

Reply to Why Free to Play is taking over and why that’s a good thing in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

Brad, I recall a number of years ago when I was just getting started as a virtual economist that you wrote that you didn't worry about putting copy protection on your software because you weren't trying to [monetize] those that could not or would not afford your products. The way you said it back then was very eloquent and made an impression on me. Whether you realized it or not then (or now), this is really when you started down the path of embracing the FTP philosophy even if it too

Reply to Pre-Ordered and in it for the Long Haul: Sound Off in War of Magic Stardock Forums

I pre-ordered about a year ago, then fell on hard times and had to decline the beta invite I received in late August (?). Very hard times. I am employed again and re-pre-ordered so hopefully I will still get a chance to help out. I beta tested the original MoM and have waited a long time for this. And seriously, LoM and AoW were not remotely worthy successors to MoM. LoM had its moments when it ran at all. AoW was tediously boring. Some day I would love to see you guys join

Reply to Elemental BETA 1 Arrives in Elemental Dev Journals Stardock Forums

OMG, that intro screen RULES! I was just playing Knights of Legend (circa 1989) last week, I have the original box/book but my floppy disks died years ago, I finally got it as abandonware again. I saw that intro screen and just blinked like 10 times.... "there is no way that is EGA is it?". I totally support any petition to have that somehow added to the retail version.

Reply to Fantasy Wars / Fantasy General Nostalgia in War of Magic Stardock Forums

If you are serious about turn-based strategy, pretty much all the good stuff over the last few years has come from either Stardock or 1C (Dominions 3 was also good though could have used a bigger budget, and of course some excellent Civ4 mods). Fantasy Wars is a great title but the Orc campaign is punishingly hard at the end. Could have used a tad more balancing. The "turn-limit" in that game is the developers' way of gauging difficulty level. Trying to race across a map against the clock rai

Reply to What is your biggest hope/biggest fear regarding EWOM? in War of Magic Stardock Forums

Greatest Hope: That Stardock will continue making great turn-based games that lead to continued growth in their company while larger companies just keep churning out the same graphics-based drool that insults the intelligence of their presumed not very sophisticated audience. Market forces continue to see large non-innovative companies like EA and Activision lose market share and smart efficient players like Stardock and 1C continue to see growth. Greatest Fear: That Stardock will con

Passwords Not Working on Multiplayer Games? in Demigod Stardock Forums

I tried to start some skirmishes, and put passwords on the games so that I could do some numbers testing but each time I tried to open the game I had a flood of other testers jumping in before I could lock in AI players. As I will be doing a lot of math it is very distracting to have other players trying to play a game while I do this. It also is not fair to them as I will likely be restarting the game to get different data well before the contest would normally end. Is there some way I can g

Reply to Tabula Rasa - Should SD consider taking it over? in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

One of my idols is Brad Wardell because he seems to really understand the economic underpinnings of computer game development. This is a rare skill, the lack of which has doomed many promising projects. While Stardock's resources may be growing, and they certainly have taken some risks in the market, this is not a smart risk and would just leech resources from projects that clearly would have a greater chance of success. While the major companies in this industry experience lukewarm profits d

Reply to Kingdoms of Arcania in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

This does look very promising. It reminds me of some play by mail games I used to play in the 1970s, but obviously some delicious advances have been made in the last thirty years. I will be checking this out as it develops.

Reply to Heroes of Might & Magic - Which Version to buy? in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

At the risk of dating myself, I played the Original King's Bounty, and HoMM 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 when they first came out. I have also played the recent King's Bounty remake. I tend to have a somewhat different take than the great masses on what was good and what was not. Having played a lot of wargames over the last 35 years or so, what attracted me to the series was its roleplay elements. For this reason I tended to rank the games more on their campaigns and the customizability of the characte

Reply to Pre-Ordered and in it for the Long Haul: Sound Off in War of Magic Stardock Forums

I beta tested the original MoM so I guess you could say I've been waiting 14 years for this opportunity.

Reply to The Fun is Back! in Demigod Stardock Forums

Lumify, I don't want to discount what your saying but when you say DS 2 had overwhelming praise you make it sound like this is public praise. What is your source for this? Gamespot gave it a 7.9 and the composite critic score was 8.1. In both cases lower than DS 1. As far as only using 2 spells, the two attack spells you listed would only be available at the very end of the game unless you used cheats so unless you only played the game at high level (which is impossible without cheats/mods, w

Reply to The Fun is Back! in Demigod Stardock Forums

[quote who="Insanetitan" reply="16" id="1880935"] Quoting HelgeHolm, reply 15 I'm with you on how "generic yellow ring: improves stat X by 5%" isn't inspiring. Those kinds of things make me feel like I'm playing a glitzy spreadsheet instead of a game. At the same time, it's VERY important to know what each item does. You can include a vibrant and rich backstory to every item in the game, but in the end if all it says is "increase

Reply to The Fun is Back! in Demigod Stardock Forums

Please note also that I stated clearly in my OP that "I will wait till we see more of the game in beta to really get deep into balancing issues since there is really no point at this stage." Which I think implies that I know this is beta and that commenting on balance is premature other than to point out that the games needs some work in this area still. I meant my post to be a complimentary discussion of Demigod game design so I would appreciate it if the trolls would stop attempting

Reply to The Fun is Back! in Demigod Stardock Forums

Yea but I am still not even sure who he is bagging on. He makes all these assumptions about someones ability or experience without really having any evidence to make such assumptions. If he is talking to me, and doesn't know I was a gaming journalist for 3 years, or that I am working on a PhD in virtual economics, or doesn't know that I've been in this industry for 10 plus years, he could at least figure it out by my low member number that I didn't just show up here this month.

Reply to The Fun is Back! in Demigod Stardock Forums

I am not sure who lifekatana is trolling, he quoted my long post for no clear reason then posted two lines that seem to have no purpose other than to offend.

The Fun is Back! in Demigod Stardock Forums

I was a huge fan of the original Dungeon Seige, and my whole family plays it. As you level you quickly go from a pitchfork/dagger/piece of meat to some really cool weapons and spells. It really felt heroic and the reactive xp system was great for both new and hardcore players. Then something happened with Dungeon Seige 2. Gone was the cool spell progression. The skill trees added complexity without adding significant fun factor. Gaining "5% more of this" or such was rea

Reply to Where to identify Beta issues? in Demigod Stardock Forums

I have the same question. The readme says to use http://beta.stardock.com but my browser claims that site does not exist. I didn't see an NDA but still feel nervous just posting technical stuff out here unless I hear clearly that that is desired.

Reply to My Quicksave Disappeared in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

No I'm sorry I played some on the Campaign, figuring I'd give Meta a break for a bit and hope the patch fixed things.

My Quicksave Disappeared in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

I was VERY close to the end of a large map game and I hit quicksave before a final assault on the Altarian homeworld. I reloaded to try a different tactic but then realized my quicksave was missing. In fact I had no quicksaves at all, the last one being a Campaign game quicksave from 15 days ago. For whatever reason the computer had not done an autosave in 5 hours either. I had a manual non-quicksave save file from four hours earlier and that was the most recent save. I was using quicksav

Where is Sector X:4 Y:0 ? in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

In the 4th or so mission in the campaign you are told to flee to sector X:4 Y:0. The Dark Avatar campaign had a similar mission which frustrated me also. I have not been able to find anywhere that marks the map locations on a sector basis. What feature am I missing? Since this is, after all, the victory condition, I would think this would be more obvious.

Reply to GalCiv Dev's Measure of Success: 100K in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

"What to know more? Then follow the link." Can you change that to "Want" instead of "What"? It is really bugging me and it is one of the first things people will read looking at your website. While I am at it I noticed your game description on Gamestop looks bad too: "Ten millennia have passed since you and the few survivors of the once mighty Vasari Empire fled from a mighty yet unknown threat that all but exterminated your kind's inexistence." Might want to change

Reply to Hyperspeed Bug in Technical Sins Forums

Your will is done.

Hyperspeed Bug in Technical Sins Forums

I played maybe 6 games since the 1.03 patch and on the last one I was playing a 1 on 1 vs the AI with all settings standard except low resources and not too far into the game suddenly the speed went into hyperspeed. I would estimate the speed to be about 100 times normal. That was at 1X speed setting. Raising the speed to 6X just made it move at what looked like 600 times speed. Going back to 1X was still 100 times normal. Saving, exiting, and reloading still had the bug. I prefer turn-based

Reply to STICKY: Having an IN-GAME problem? Here are some tips! in Bug Reports Stardock Forums

I also get the crash during turn processing resulting in the corrupted savefile. Attempting to email you the SmartException results also gave me the "No SDCzip file" or whatever error , though it has the exception data (just won't send it to you lol). Email me if you want me to start manually sending you files. System info: WinXP Home SP2 English Version Athlon 3000+ 2GB RAM Geforce 6600 , 256 MB RAM (current drivers)<br