Sad thing is, if not for the flamewars, Elemental would have just been ignored by the gaming press, like every other indie release.

Que? Almost every post I've read says the complete opposite. it's the old Stardock customers that's concerned. And they've already bought the game so they're all paying customers and as such deserve as much attention as you do. Just because you wish for something to be true doesn't make it so I'm afraid.

Anyway. I've got the game and I'm quite positive so far. I just hope everyone on this forum could chill down a bit. Everything isn't black or white you know. Communicating on the internet isn't easy since we need facial expressions and body language in order to really connect. Once upon a time there were such a thing as Netiquette (yeah, I'm that old...).

Since they're not beholden to a publisher.

They're not true customers. Clearly, the technical and design issues they're experiencing are the result of their insufficient faith.

If only they prayed to the game with open hearts and true humility, their problems would be resolved.

This actually made me realize something.  Or actually something I had already realized but simply confirmed my suspicions.  You will only get a good review from a gaming magazine/website if you pay for advertising with them.  Since paying for advertising in general usually means putting your adds on multiple gaming magazines/websites they tend to all say the same thing.  Then you go out and buy the game and it turns out to be a piece of crap and you wonder how the hell these magazines/websites could possibly give that game anything higher than a 5.  The Halo series was very much like this for me.  Unreal Tournament series blew Halo out of the water and yet no one ever says anything about it.

Since Stardock publishes their own games and they're not as big as the big name publishers you can easily tell they have no budget for advertising.  I didn't even know Elemental existed until I saw a random poll on the Galactic Civilizations 2 website talking about this game.  Then I looked it up on Impulse and found out it had already released 2 days prior.  Since I'm a huge fan of MOM style games I bought it.  Yes, this game is unfinished.  I imagine its because they had to do something drastic to make ends meet, but in the couple of days I've owned this game they've already released 2 patches and have kept a constant flow of communication with us.

I've seen several threads here with developers talking directly with players and discussing ways to fix the current problems in the game.  I've never seen this happen before.  Not even Blizzard does this.  Then we see threads made by the CEO, Frogboy, getting down and dirty (metaphorically of course) with us and talking about the future of the game and AI direction.  I've never seen a CEO of a game company come down off his pedestal and speak with the lowly gamers like that.  It makes me believe that Stardock really does care about their products  and they really do want to make the best games they can.

The fanboyishness of that post is Appletastic

I'm waiting for my LE to arrive, but I'm going to leave it in the shrink wrap until the AI is improved and the crashes fixed. I've tried my best to like the game, but when 9 AIs at Ridiculous difficulty can't put up a fight (aside from doing a CTD every now and then), it's time to put it aside for a month or two till that's sorted out. Then I'll open the box and pretend it just got released.