Early april Fools! oh you got us good Brad.....

^^^^

Wishfull thinking....

Yes, it's all lies. It's just how I roll.

Here's how it works: We don't get to just copy some files up onto a network drive for people to copy. The IT team has to take what we give them and put it up and there's a finite number of people for that.  Last week, those resources were dominated by Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity and Diplomacy.  This week, there's a big announcement/release with Impulse that is dominating the IT resources.  Since Elemental is a BETA and the specific week of its release is not considered critical, it gets easily bumped.  That will happen throughout the beta cycle.

Heh. I don't think so.  It'll just be slightly less painful. 

Thank you for your answer. I did not expect that. I know your company is not big enough, but I did not expect that people who do programing also do also marketing. Still, its only the beta and delays in this phase are quiete common. I just did not thought, that one announcement can delay things by one week or two. Not even SINS, because it is not the game which you were developing. Still I have to say, that I like how you develop your games, and also results, and you have my full support with this.

I think BoogieBac deserves a raise.

*whispers to BoogieBac:  do you have my free copy of Elemental waiting for me?*

It's the same IT team.  Game development teams (whether at Stardock, Ironclad, or Gas Powered Games) send their "stuff" to QA which then graduates to the servers to be distributed to the worldwide server network.  Whenever something "big" happens, lower priority items tend to get pushed.

I'm sure if you told your IT team about the rabid fanbase and our easy access to pitchforks and fire, they would be able to find a little more time in their day and squeeze a little more out of the servers for us, right?

On the upside, I'm glad to see Impulse and SoASE continuing to grow, and glad to see Frog and company stepping up to keep the waiting public informed. Thanks, guys!

IT budgets are directly proportional to top-line sales.  Mid-level managers and higher are very much aware of industry trends when it comes to companies' IT budgets as a % of sales.   The CIO gets to spend some of that on network upgrades, some on servers, some of it on software licensing, and some of it on compensation for the staff.  There can be a "fudge factor" involved, i.e. to justify why your company should be a higher or lower %.  The rabid fanbase in executive terms would be more like, "sensitivity of sales to the soundness of the IT infrastructure", or "ROI of increasing IT spending".   If IT was hourly, and manpower was truly the bottleneck, I'm sure a little extra incentive for them would be awesome, but it has to be justified to executives in terms of sales.  It's all about money.  Adding to the funness of the game means nothing, unless you can quantify that funness in terms of $$$.

I think the rabid fanbase for the game that is actually out needs to come before the one for the game that doesn't come out for another ~5ish months Because the Sins fans are liable to pick up the pitchforks if the pirates don't get balanced a little better

Too bad you weren't using bumped in the good way.

Like hay look I just bumped this thread to the top!

I was going to make that joke but I decided against it.

Except for those of us from Colorado. We'd laugh at all of the rabid fans who didn't think to be prepared. (I'm sure there are other states that would be prepared, but from personal experience, I know that everyone in Colorado is always prepared for almost any weather )