Its been a while since I checked, Is it fixed yet?

This may be kind of a long post, and I know Im going to be asking questions that the more dedicated community members have heard a million times. A couple of my questions are not strictly Elemental questions either.

Apologies for that in advance.

I pre-ordered elemental a gazillion years ago, I was one of the people crammed into the chat rooms on impulse for the midnight launch, and despite all the promise it was one of the most disappointing games I have played in many many years. None of the factions felt unique or seemed to stand out from one another, the game was BARELY playable, the balance was a mess, and the AI insipid, and all this was provided the game would actually run for more than 5-10 minutes at a time. There were graphical issues as well, but I honestly don't care. That said it was still a fantastic concept in some ways.

So I loaded up impulse again a couple months ago only to find the damnable gamespot logo plastered across it.

FURY!

RAGE!

INDIGNATION!

Basically gamestop as a corporate entity has generally had an attitude of screw the consumers, take their money, make more gamestops. That they are now the ones running impulse, which was started as an organization with a very loudly stated objective of treating consumers fairly was more than a little upsetting, but I have calmed down now, and my wrath was never directed at stardocks actions but at the end result.

So now I am coming back and looking at elemental again (after a few thousand hours of shogun 2) and wondering:

1.Did they fix it? (as much as is possible, I realize some the design issues are so deeply embedded they would require a complete redesign)

2.Did they do anything to make amends for the craptacular launch?

3.Since gamestop owns impulse, is there any way to buy stardocks products without giving gamestop money?

4.Since stardock doesnt own impulse anymore does this mean an end to its digital distribution exclusivity? Is it possible we may see stardock products on steam at some point? I liked steam and impulse and GoG, I no longer plan to spend any money on impulse and never understood the general hostility directed towards steam by some of impulses supporters. I will likely play more of stardocks games in the future, and I would like to pay them for their hard work.

5.Do they have 64bit yet? I seem to recall this was something they said was really important.

6.What on earth is the release date for the expansions like now?

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1.Did they fix it? (as much as is possible, I realize some the design issues are so deeply embedded they would require a complete redesign)

2.Did they do anything to make amends for the craptacular launch?

3.Since gamestop owns impulse, is there any way to buy stardocks products without giving gamestop money?

4.Since stardock doesnt own impulse anymore does this mean an end to its digital distribution exclusivity? Is it possible we may see stardock products on steam at some point? I liked steam and impulse and GoG, I no longer plan to spend any money on impulse and never understood the general hostility directed towards steam by some of impulses supporters. I will likely play more of stardocks games in the future, and I would like to pay them for their hard work.

5.Do they have 64bit yet? I seem to recall this was something they said was really important.

6.What on earth is the release date for the expansions like now?

1. They've made a lot of changes, many for the better (global mana comes to mind), and they've fixed a lot of the bugs. Brad / Frogboy / Stardock's CEO continues to work on it sometimes by himself in the time he can carve out. But as you've correctly pointed out, a lot of the issues are very, very deep. So while it's better, it's still not particularly good:-( Fallen Enchantress (what you probably think of as the first expansion, but has since become re-imagined as a stand-alone product) is exactly such a redesign.

2. Since you preordered you will get Fallen Enchantress for free. Also the next game or expansion in the series. So yes, they've gone above and beyond. For Fallen Enchantress they brought on Derek Paxton (head of and instigator of the famed Fall From Heaven mod for Civ4 and - importantly - an enterprise software product manager in his former job) to be in charge. They've also hired Jon Schafer (the lead designer of Civilization 5) to create an actual campaign for Fallen Enchantress and help out in general (he will get control of another game series later). Very nearly every decision surfaced about Fallen Enchantress has been in the right direction, and it's looking very impressive, though there are reports from inside the company that it will suck and give you cancer.

3. Generally you can buy boxed copies of their games from box stores near you, not sure if that will also be true of Fallen Enchantress (I would assume so?)

4. Not yet. While I'm sure it'll happen, it's pretty clear that they're locked into Impulse for at least a while longer.

5. Nope.

6. 'When It's Done'. They've become more vague with dates, not less. They have definitely moved it out (and added a million dollars to the budget thanks in part to the sale of Impulse), and the current best guess is 'Winter 2012'. Mind you, winter covers January - February, so don't panic as some others did when they first saw that.

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1) The game works pretty much as intended now. There are still some fundamental gameplay flaws, but they've been improved on. I wouldn't call this game a classic, but it's decent now. Brad seems really stoked about Fallen Enchantress, which you'll get for free. Brad is currently working on 1.4 now.

2) Yes, you get the expansions free of charge for suffering through the launch pains. (you pre-ordered so you get the next game free)

3) For now , no. There will be a way in the future- Stardock is going to do direct sales again in the near future. This may not work for Fallen Enchantress. There will no boxed sale for FE.

4) Unknown. They are definitely remaining on Impulse for their games division, in addition to direct sales.

5) No. I suspect this will hold off until their next big game.

6) Final Release Q1 2012, beta before then at some point. My guess is beta very late this year.

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