All the gripe...
Elemental Forums
I don´t know if this posting is a good idea, but I just felt I had to say this.
I really do understand how some people may feel disappointed about Elemental not being the game they had envisioned.
It happens when you really anticipated something.
I was disappointed with Master of Orion 3, I´m disappointed with there being no Wizardry 9 or Might & Magic 11.
But being disappointed is one thing.
The quantity of rantings about how bad EWoM was and how slim the chances were that the next patch or patches would make it a better game, that´s something that irritated me for some months now.
And now some threads with such rantings were locked.
Normally I would be upset about such "show of force" from the forum's moderation.
But honestly - in this case I can understand it.
I don´t know Brad or any of the crew, I don´t even know much about them, but as far as I can tell chances are that they are human beings.
Now imagine you had made a really big mistake at work. It would bother you not only because you blew it, but because you had really cared for that project.
That would probably be the moment were you would just love to have people who supported you.
And say, your family supported you, your friends, even the guys at work.
But then random people on the streets would begin to attack you.
You would walk home after work and someone would come up and tell you how much you sucked and that he didn´t think that you would be able to ever make up for the mistake you had made.
At first you perhaps would be puzzled but would want to defend yourself while on the other hand listen and make clear that you wanted to try to make up.
But these people would just keep on coming. Every day, for months and months.
"You ruined it for me!"
"How could you not see it?!"
"You´re still not good enough!"
"Are you worth my trust?"
There just is a time when you have to stop, when you have to let go.
Even if you had spent hundrets of dollars, that wouldn´t give you the right to pay back the devs in gripe and spite.
There are several other things though that you can do, and I guess they have already been said.
1. Accept the loss and openmindedly anticipate what the expansions could bring.
2. Accept the loss and walk away.
3. Don´t accept the loss and walk away furiously. Or at least keep your anger for yourself. Or, even better, channel it into useful stuff like suggestions!
Honestly, being disappointed is one thing, using Stardocks benevolence to flood the forum with rantings like "When will the game be fun?", "Will the game ever be fun?", "I don´t think the game will ever be fun!", "This game took the fun away from me!", "I had imagined something else?!", "Why, Stardock, why?!?", etc. pp. is something completely different.
To stay with Monty Python - it´s like the Spanish Inquisition, just that it´s not funny. It´s "running the gauntlet" for the developers.
And what worth does it have to write how much you disliked that game? It has been made clear many many times that EWoM for many people is not as much fun as they would want it to be.
If you wanna say something like "I hope AI gets improved in the next patch." or "I don´t like how armies are handled, I would propose a different approach.", do it, that´s cool.
But if you got nothing more to say than that you don´t like the game - just keep it for yourself. Please.
Now I have my issues with EWoM too. I would love to communicate my ideas to the devs and to have the things implemented the way that I would think they should be done. But then I read in the forums and find so many people having totally different priorities and ideas, sometimes diametrically opposed to what I would want to have.
And I´m thinking "Crap, how in the world should the developers be able to see that my vision alone would be the true and only one?". 
No, honestly, it becomes clear even to me that it´s nigh impossible for the devs to make the game the community wants because there is no such one game.
This means that they are practically on their own, and perhaps that´s not that bad, because it means that they will develop a game that makes sense to them, that they made the plan of.
They still have the forum to pick up suggestions, to filter out priorities that are widespread in the community.
And for that I would like the developers to like to visit their forums and not to be put off by the 93th angry ranting.
I would really like to let the developers work and see what they will deliver; if you don´t feel that way, perhaps getting a refund and focusing on another game would be best for you, me, the developers, and most probably quite some of those people that are still here with Elemental.
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