Well, here's the interview which among other things mentions modding or lack of:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05/04/speak-spell-warlock-master-of-the-arcane-interview/

I hope you're right

Feel free to suggest that to the person who began this discussion with me.   For the rest, I wasn't aware that "You must have a different definition of "tactics" in your dictionary, one that insists on a separate map," constituted a serious attempt at understanding the context of our ongoing remarks, and an attempt to engage in thoughtful discussion--commenting upon movement, spell options, stacks vs single attackers, hex vs squares, one battle map versus zoomed battle maps, and all matters that affect an evaluation of two different combat systems, each of which can be reasonably defended.  While taking into account that all this is perceived from the standpoint of game design depth.

How did you put it...?  Right.  Silly me.

Bought Warlock today, and it is a solid game.  Reminds me of MoM.  Not as deep as FE, but that's fine.  $20 is a steal for this title.  I'll definately purchase any worthy DLC.

Warlock and FE are substantially closer than either of them is to any other game of this genre. Sure, one has heroes and plays combats on a tactical map and the other doesn't (and Elemental has a gorgeous character creation system), but the introduction and the behavior of random monsters and the presence of so many resources to me makes Warlock and FE very similar, and most of all being the OP of this thread I tried to point out that Warlock succeeds from the very first turn in being a fun and strategically deep game, while the original Elemental sadly failed to work.  Sure W. has less races, no heroes, no items (but they will come believe me) and personally the tactical combat being played directly on the strategic map to me is a huge success and will make the difference when Multiplayer is introduced... because even in Age of Wonders Shadow Magic (which to my taste is still the best game of this genre around) when playing Multiplayer guess what... the combats have to be cut from the game, or many turns will be wasted on the tactical map for each combat!!! While in Warlock you still have a "tactical" combat right there on your complex and performing strategic map! ...And just as complex as any traditional wargame!

I also find that Warlock successfully resolved and balanced in the very first version of the game, many of the issues Stardock have been going crazy trying to deal with. Like for example having cities fighting back even if no unit is in them (one of the points I made several time actually when noticing how roaming monsters become annoying in Elemental), or the tuning down of teleport (teleporting one unit is really not a big deal, while in Elemental you can teleport "uberstacks"), even the city spamming in Warlock (to my taste) feels more natural than it ever was in Elemental not to mention how cities really feel unique and the way the economy is well balanced... And that game just came out all polished and nice! So that instead of wasting the forum's time trying to fix things that don't work the community there is free to discuss the future development of the game. I am really enchanted with Warlock, not to mention the introduction of hexes to which I am really biased toward (I will never be convinced that it feels natural when a unit takes the same time walking a side of a square than it takes walking its diagonal!!!)

Did I mention the UI, how practical and quick it is? At the beginning of each turn you just get a list of things you have to do in order to complete your turn. You just click on the icons which are nicely organized by "constructions" "movements" etc... and each turn takes just a few minutes even when a xlarge game is toward the end. I really think some players tend to underestimate Warlock because of its apparent simplicity of use, but (apparent) simplicity sometimes takes a lot of planning and it's not a "simple" achievement to obtain!

(By the way I actually think that Warlock has more spells than FE, but it's just an impression: I haven't counted them since each god has its own spells that are only available when getting closer to that specific divinity)

Actually the world does because the user scores are quite good. It's the "professional" reviewer scores that are lower than they should be. And at 70 the score there has actually improved as several good recent reviews have come in.

This game is a good example that most professional game reviewers these days are either idiots, have an agenda, are in some company's pocket, or are just pathetically lazy. Game reviewers do far more harm than good and I wish they'd just go away. They made sense in a world of print magazines 15 years ago but not anymore. I'd much rather trust the opinion of posters I know on a game forum somewhere like this one that have put real time into actually trying the game out in detail and that I know don't have some hidden interest that runs counter to fairness.

Well if in your opinion our Frogdude has done Shostakovich with Elemental War of Magic, man I got no answer for you!!!

Certainly "ABBA" in your post is used as "commercial bullshit", which no strategy turn based game ever is. If someone wants to go commercial they make a RTS not a TBS game! So the comparison doesn't really work.  Probably the professional reviewers mentioned above just try to anticipate the tastes of the masses who like those silly games. Obviously it is easier to make the AI in a RTS where the computer players can just build faster and rush, instead than a TBS where the AI is really challenging a human brain. Just for that a TBS should always deserve a few extra stars, like an author movie deserves them over a Hollywood flick... Evenn if an author film takes sometimes the chance to appear slow and boring to some. But then again I doubt videogame reviewers tend to have the same cultural depth of a (real) movie critic. (some of them are kinda young too)

Anyay the game is fun and has potential. True that the AI needs work. They are apparently working on that, meanwhile its multiplayer inclination makes me feel that the game will maybe work well even with a not so great AI.

Since I was just going for humor and certainly not for a comparison, the line works.   I'm honestly not sure how one could compare any game to a work of Shostakovich.  There's just no grounds for comparison.

They also say they're working on fleshing on the quest system, which is very lean at the moment.  I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, though their work on Majesty 2 was underwhelming.

EDIT: New thread by the lead developer states the DLC and major patch coming in August will also feature heroes who have special abilities and objects, very much like MoM.