I've never seen anything official on campaign length. All we know is it's made with the mod tools that we'll have access to I don't think they've even said if it's all on one map from start to finish, now that I think about it.

Last night I saw a post on the forums - before I could read it, it was deleted. However, the title was something along the lines of "beat the SP in one night". It's possible that the post was made by one of the few people who managed to download the gold version of the game.

Or it could have been complete garbage.

It took me about 5 hours to complete it.  That's with me knowing how to play the game of course.  I'd expect a typical user it would take them about 8 hours.

8 hours seems short for a single player campaign, but remember that the meat of the game is in the randomly generated non-campaign games and the mods.

It doesn't make sense to devote the company's resources towards a 20+ hour campaign when most people don't play these types of games for that.

Don't get me wrong, I am sure that the heart of Elemental will be the randomly generated maps and I am perfectly fine with that, especially considering the seemingly complex gameplay, the RPG element and Stardock's impressive body of work. I mean, I played MoM for ages and that game didn't even offer one tiny scenario or anything other than the generated maps. I am thankful for the fact that there IS a campaign at all.

Still, I had different expectations regarding the length of the campaign, that it would be comparable to, say, HOMM 4 or 5. At least it sounded like that to me with the emphasized focus on the RPG element of the game.

The campaign isn't where the RPG focus of the game comes from. It's largely an introduction to the game and its world as well as shows what you can make with the mod tools.

Correct me if I'm wrong Froggy One, but my understanding is the campaign is essentially an extended tutorial.

Personally, with a game like this, I'd rather have a short campaign that gets you into the tools, gameplay, story, and so on without artificially drawing out the experience.  Heroes is a campaign-driven game, because the AI is usually terrible unless it's scripted, and it's not really nearly as fun as a one-map sandbox as it is in a series of "levels."  Even so, HOMM5 suffered from having maps that were clearly just filler, some of which were extremely long, arduous, and boring.

Consider, on the other hand, a game like Sword of the Stars, which is fantastic as a sand box, but which really could have used a clearly delineated introductory scenario.  Much as I loved reading the manual, man did I want to learn that stuff in a campaign.

Consider, also, the horrid (no offense Brad) campaigns in GCII.  I'd rather have a 5-8 hour, one map intro full of goodness than an arbitrary collection of maps just there to provide filler.

I never even botheed to go through any of Gal Civ 2's campaigns and its one of my games ever. I want to see what Stardock do with the lore but i just want to do my own thing not follow a restrictive campaign so 8hrs seems about right to me.

Didn't GalCiv II come with the Darklords campaign?

Very much looking forward to playing through the campaign, regardless of length. It'll be an interesting experience, I'm sure!

My sons are playing the campaign right now in the other room as I type this. I love listening to them figuring things out.