Civ 5 has very modest requirements, dual core systems were available in 05, you can't expect pc developers to keep building for antiquated technology. If you don't have a dual core or better its time to either upgrade or stop calling yourself a gamer.

People were saying the exact same thing about Civ IV, about how it would tank.  Yea, that happened!

If you don't have 4-5 year old hardware to run Civ5, you're probably not much of a gamer.  And in that case, waiting until your computer dies or you replace it isn't too much of a burden, right?

I really do truly sympathize with people who want to play but can't due to system reqs, but be reasonable.

Right.  Civ is a little easier to talk about, because you're talking about an existing franchise (a franchise that Elemental is, in some ways, based off off).  It's hard to discuss much about Elemental at this point, as there's no more Beta updates and we've yet to see the game "come together".  In two weeks time it will be much easier to talk about (and pimp) Elemental.

If you remember both Civilization and Fallout's mod communities started small and grew because of the popularity of their modding productions. Oblivion had countless mods that REALLY improved upon the game and Fallout has it's own assortment of major mods but also started with an established modding website (Nexus, taken from Oblivion).

If Elemental is a great game, it is easy to mod, and we get some good mod talent who can produce spectacular mods then you'll see Elemental living a long and healthy life.

Hell who needs MODS, play the damn game you BOUGHT and quit trying to leech something off of others for FREE.

So playing mods is now leeching off of others for free?

It's not like modders have a gun pointed to their head and forced to make free mods for games.... geez

You also don't grow the fan base by producing stagnant content that has no upgrades. Face it everyone appreciates a good looking game. Graphically this is a huge upgrade for the series. If they didn't make these kinds of changes the fan base would NEVER grow. Yes in some ways its a risk, but its a calculated risk. Face it any computer bought in the last 4-5 years should be capable of at least running the game. My rig I bought a few months ago with a liquid cooled i7 quad core, 4 gigs of coursair ram, 1TB HD,  and an ati 5770 cost around 800 bucks. Sure since then I have upgraded to a 23" widescreen monitor, added a 2nd ati 5770 in crossfire and put a sound card in. But the core machine was only 800 bucks and it stomps the system reqs of pretty much EVERYTHING into the ground.

point being for less then the cost of 1 starbucks coffee per day for a year you can get a machine that plays everything. So people need to stop being cheap...(and this rig was ordered from cyberpower cause I didn't want to build one myself, so I am sure it coulda been done cheaper.)

I was at EB on Saturday putting money down for my Civ5 Collectors edition, and the guy at the counter said, "Big half-year for PC: Starcraft, Civ and the Warcraft expansion.  Civ is also picking up a lot of pre-orders so seems you're joining a popular group."  I said, "What about Elemental?  How's it going?"  He says, "What?"  Looks on his computer and says, "We haven't got Elemental on our pre-order or stock lists."

Elemental will tank because there's no information in the main game circles, and no one will be able to find it (or even accidently come across it) except on a hardly-used almost-unknown digital distribution site.  

I think I read somewhere that the budget was around $800,000

Stupid WSJ won't show the full article.. but I was sure Frogboy debunked that in one more recent thread when someone was commenting and he answered that he wished he had that much money to make a game.

At some point, developers have to assume that everybody is on a machine using transistors already. You can't expect PC game developers to support vacuum tube machines forever. Not to mention some of us have newer computers that don't have drives for things such as punch cards or 5 1/4 floppies anymore.

I remembered playing X-Com again a year or two ago. It was such a pain to slow down my computer to handle it and I was using a core duo at the time. I eventually just bought it off Steam which comes with DosBox pre-configured. I since have a bought a new quad core already.

Now all Frogboy needs to do is ask his friends at Blizzard to sell an Elemental-themed WoW in-game pet and they'll easily make their investment back.

I updated the Wikipedia entry.

You're right. "Tank" and other such terms are all relative. Really, any game that can turn a profit isn't a failure. That's not something I'm terribly worried about in the case of Elemental.