I like it, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy on the inside.

Its all nice but I am apprehending a complete forum mess "à la" Fallen Enchantress BETA style.

I emphasize with your feelings of apprehension about the Elemental (the game that shall not be named) experience and how it might be repeated with the GalCiv3 roll-out.  "Burn me once, shame on you, burn me twice, shame on me" - to paraphrase one version of the 'buyer beware' set of 'wise sayings.'  However, Froggy (and SD) re-earned my respect, and trust, by telling us, after the debacle was fully realized, that he had analyzed what happened.  He apologized.  He made restitution (by, in essence, replacing the defective EWOM with FE).  It wasn't 'free' in the sense that SD was making right a wrong they inadvertently committed.  And knowing how much Froggy loves gaming - I suspect he was a bit embarrassed. He wrote something to the effect that he had programmers, designers, etc. working without a centralized handler.  So, each group designed, developed, etc. as best as they knew how, but really did not have it fit well into the whole.  Froggy changed the structure and manner of organizing the game development in such a manner that there was centralized leadership.  He also hired several very experienced and successful game makers.  (Soren and Kiel come to mind, I'm certain there are others.) Froggy even shared his home with Kiel for one year.  How is that for new employee relocation assistance?  In any case SD took a hard and self critical look at their process - saw what was wrong - and addressed it aggressively.  The result?  FE:EH.  Whats not to like?  Froggy re-earned my trust.  So I committed eleven weeks of my discretionary funds to go the elite founder's route.  I don't believe we will be burned this time.

That pretty much summarizes my feelings too, and that is why I also got the founder Elite badge right now. Had not Stardock eventually made a very decent game out of elemental, I am not sure I would have wanted to endorse their next game with 100$.

But my previous comment was more in reference of the torrent of posts, often containing endless walls of text that were posted daily during the time of the Fallen Enchantress Beta.

Tons of people were posting about what they thought the game should or should not be, basically trying to tell StarDock what to do with their game and it was a complete mess to sift through to find the good ideas and bug reports from all the rambling

Well I noticed a lot of people missing. I remember a post where a lot of people are waiting for the game because of Elemental. I have one thing to say about that this game has been around since `1992 how old is that game. I remembering seeing a post about they had to create a new department to make Elemental, I heard about restructuring of the company. Plus I played Galactic civilizations 2 the ultimate edition. It would take a lot to screw this up. As long as they get the Ai right this time around. Not to mention when a demo comes out more will come. Not to mention how many are on these forums just read.

The grumpy guard. Just there to make life hard.

OK, I'm in. 

Let the Elitezation of the Galaxy proceed. 

I prefer Jokes, long complicated conversations, or detailed scientific stuff, but thanks anyways!!! Oh yeah at least keep what made the game good!!!

It's tomorrow. The prototype era is over. The age of Alpha has arrive.[e digicons]:')[/e]

DARCA

Posts worthy of eating lots of popcorn. With extra butter.

Prepare yourselves for GLORIOUS whining threads!