Expansion for War of Magic

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.

Yep free!  Also, you will get another, yet unnamed Elemental title for free.  Lucky you!  And me!

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????????????

Nope... if people don't like FE, it's going to be the last game they make.

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.  

It sounds like there's no possibility of FE not being good though; apart from all the positive stuff we know about it, they're actually going to give it a proper beta (apparently) which should get problems remedied.

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.

you never know.. maybe sots2 people will hire them instead?

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.

Well, not meeting "anyones" expectations is certainly hyperbole.  Stardock has been very good to its customers for the failings of this game.  They DID patch it with 4 large patches.  They are going to either give the next game for free or at a discount for people who bought WoM.  

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.

It is strange to see people buying WoM this late in the game. FE is almost to beta and in a few months will probably be released. I guess not everyone checks the forums before purchasing, but as a lesson to gamers, you should. WoM is definitely worth what it costs now, but it is missing some polish. Polish that wouldn't really make the game that much better. Polish that we will see in the new game. It's still a fun game and still the most flexible game if you are learning how to mod. But FE is just going to be better. So my advice is wait for the sequel. 

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. 

Wow man I would be pissed if I bought a 130 dollar card to play a game I didn't like.
I wouldn't laugh about it. But maybe you have so much more money than me so that you can.

I did browse the forums but felt as if the patches were making progress and thought they would continue.
I don't take "risks" when I purchase things, I assume certain standards.

@Frogboy.

I'm seeing this alot more and that's because games get released before they are tested and produced internally enough.
Even people with really, really depe pockets do this. Partly as a promotion, partly to finance development. But then you get the bad stuff with the good.

Also I think you guys might've taken a bit to much water over your heads. If it would have succeeded on all points and been polished enough, especially with enhancing the AI and from what I hear the multiplayer then the game would've been getting award after award. This game has so many different aspects to it and various options and paths that I feel you just never had the co-ordination or time to finish it all. 2 different battlesystems, RPG elements in a 4X game, an extremely complicated economic system. In other games like Civ or Master of Orion there is no way to get permanently fucked over by not planning your food supply but here you can.  The potential of strategic planning and strategic warfare is huge here.

But for the same reason polish and AI is lacking on most fronts (certainly not building and expanding). Various functions are lacking to. You can't raze buildings, there's no dissent even when occupying an enemy town and other things like this that are very necessary. I think you'll win atleast a few awards by the time you release your third (or maybe even second) game in this genré.
But you can't blame me as a consumer for feeling a bit baffled and stupidfied when the tactical AI is a singleminded zerg hive collective for example that can't change target and calling that a finished product

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.

Most games these days are lucky to make it past the 1:1 dollars-to-hours of entertainment threshold for me. For console games, it's usually a lot less since they start at $60.

I've long since stopped caring too much about it in my own purchases, since they're pretty much all that way. I rarely buy more than one new game a month and always check reviews first, so it's not that big of a loss if one doesn't turn out so well. In the larger scheme of things, there are much worse ways to waste money.

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).

I'd say the 1:1 ratio is a pretty fair standard.  Of course since I usuallly buy games either on sale of after they've gone to deep discount it's rare I don't get my monies worth.  I even think I've met that with E:WOM (thanks to your MOD's) and with FE I'll be way ahead. 

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.