Fallen Enchantress is the expansion/sequel to War of Magic. You will get if for free if you preordered or bought War of Magic in 2010. The beta test for it will start around the end of the month or so, December maybe.

And if FE gives you cancer as predicted,  maybe 2 more free games will be added to the original 2 free games. How cool would that be????????????

Yes, if EFE is not successful then Derek will be fired so he can begin work on his own Fall From Heaven mod for Civ V.  Jon Shafer will be fired and he will go back to Firaxis to start working on Civ VI.  The cool thing about Civ VI is that it will use tetrahedrons instead of hexes.  

He said that if he is not satisfied. I don't think he is using popular opinion to make that decision. 

I'm hoping for multi-dimensional thingamajigs for Civ VI myself.

And I want road-spam back, like the good old days.

Well damn I guess I should never have bought this game in 2011. I'm screwed both ways now. Not getting FE for the waiting time while I am also not getting this game patched up in the forseable future.

Feels so shitty.

Like I said to you in the PM; still ain't fair nor good to release an expansion before the

game is fully patched. We all agree that there's tons of potential in this game and I would understand if you needed funds as soon as possible to continue development but I've got info that claims that you've made turnover already before the pre-order finished.

In this case you should first patch the game that you've released as finished when it's not finished and then start working on an expansion.

I mean it does look like a beta game. I've mentioned some problems in my PM that I hope you've at least read (no pun intended, I understand your scheduele is  busy). But there are far more blatant things out there that simply aren't as problematic and thus go unnoticed. Take for example the tactical battle and the many objects in it that serve no purpose but to shroud units and make it harder for the human player to even know where he moved his spiderling that's now inside the mesh of the tree.

The trees don't block, the trees don't add to the defense, the trees can't fall down and damage you. The trees are there for the looks but when my spider moves into the tree it doesn't look to good. I bet if you asked for help from the community and payed out token prizes as thanks for support alot of people would turn up to fix these things. Or if you put the energy into patching it instead of creating an expansion to an unfinished game the gaming community might regain trust in your company again and in your games and the real expansion that would follow would hit some really good sales.

I was considering asking for a refund due to the total innability of playing it in Full Screen and its incompatibility with my graphics card but I won't since it wasn't expensive afterall and I've had a probably equal share of frustration as I've had fun.
I'll just think twice about buying a game from you before testing it first, hopefully you won't intentionally withold a demo in the next game - it will probably hurt you more than anyone else this time since people will be wanting to try out if it has improved or not and will do so regardless of if there is a demo or not.The incentive  not to do so depends on the consumers trust in the deliverer of the product and that trust has been at least somewhat depleted by now. 

I do hope you take my advice to heart, despite the fact that I am just a name on a forum.

I'm sure that you will come up with a much better title (expansion or not) when it comes to FE as you have a foundation to work on.

Concerning this games performance I think that we can just leave it that I don't believe it met anyones expectations.

edit: Let's leave it unsaid if that's the games fault or the fault of peoples unrealistic expectations.

Please bear in mind that we at Stardock spent a year updating War of Magic after release. At a certain point, the game reaches diminishing returns where it doesn't make sense to keep updating it but rather move on.

Like you said, at the end of the day, it's a game. Not all games are all things to all people. I am highly sympathetic to your point of view.  But at the same time, I don't think you can imagine how frustrating it is on our part to spend massive time updating the game, putting it out only to get a fresh round of complaints of "Yea, that's nice but why didn't you do X, Y, Z?"  

It makes far more sense to move on to Fallen Enchantress where the game gets a fresh start than to keep trying to make War of Magic into something that will appease the user base.

I've got hundreds of dollars in games in the garage wasting away in 100-degree heat that maybe I played once.   Sometimes you buy a game and it's a dud.  I spent $130 on a video card just so I could play Supreme Commander and ended up not even liking the game.  Did I complain?   No...I laughed about it.  That's life--get used to it.   The lesson to learn is to browse forums like these, Gamespy, IGN, and Gamespot before buying.   And quit whining at the developer because you "got ripped off".   You didn't have to buy it.  It's a risk you take.   And you can always do a user review yourself on one of those sites if you like. 

Whoa there. Don't assume the motivations of those who release games you don't like or don't think meet your personal standard of quality.   

I can assure you, we believes War of Magic was ready for release. We actually released it two days early to our pre-order group, that's how certain we were.  

There are a lot of reasons games can be released with sub-standard quality and most of those reasons involve no corrupt motivation.

And that is, essentially the issue that WOM hit.  It was too ambitious.  Fallen Enchantress has a much MUCH smaller scope than WOM did but does it much better.

Interesting, I also have a 1:1 hour-to-dollars ratio, to label any game good. Unless it is of extreme quality, like bastion (10 bucks, 5 hours, worth it).

Frogboy you shouldn't be assuming things neither. I didn't say those reasons were corrupt. They are valid reasons. But I acknowledge you might have had others.
The thing I saw as dishonest from you was not to release a demo. In a game like this it's so simple by just adding a turn limit or a faction limit or just including one tiny map or something.

Good luck with Fallen Enchantress to. Taking things in smaller chunks is always better.  The day you combine it all then will be awesome

If you're going to have tactical combat do please fix the AI there. In all other aspects the AI imo ranges from average/buggy to really good but in the tactical comabt part it's just so dumb that I don't think it's acceptable.

About the dollar to hour ratio. I don't look at it that way. It's a stupid way to look at it.
That's like saying a fine glass of scotch is less worth than a big beer because there's less to drink. Not to mention that any adventure game will be of shorter length than a strategy game for obvious reasons. I enjoy and value games on an individual basis.