I'm as much fanboi as anyone when it comes to Stardock games, Aganazer, but..are you serious?

There is such a huge amount of stuff that is missing, not working, or causing peoples computers to crash that the game isnt in a very good shape as it is right now.

And besides that comes the balance issues, and while some may say thats a small part, I can tell you that you can win the game without any issues in 150-200 turns as it is right now. (For those curious, try a game where you just pile-on strength, and some HP and go nuts with your sovereign...)

So what is missing and not working?

You could win MoM in just a few turns if you zerged their wizard tower on a small enough map. Is MoM a terrible game as well? Hell, I have done the same in Civ IV as well! I guess its broken to.

Yes there are some balance issues, but in a game like this taking advantage of the perceived balance is half the fun. There are plenty of things I would like to see tweaked, but I could say the same about any game with as large a scope as this.

I am NOT a Stardock fanboy either. I hated GalCiv2 at release (more of a MOO/MOO2/SotS fan) and never bought any other Stardock game since then.

Brad has been known to mouth off a bit much for someone in a position as he, recall that issue with Impulse a while back, something about a game not working and him freaking out about it.

Likewise, Elemental hasn't lived up to all the promises the devs have made. They should have kept it as a paid beta for a longer period, but I suspect they may have been rushed a bit by the impending release of Civ 5.

I'm still interested in Elemental, but I'm wary of Stardock's release style as of late.

What about Elemental didn't live up to the promises? As a game described as the spiritual successor to MoM, its already 10 times more stable and bug free than MoM ever was.

So what is the big deal here about release? And I don't mean the ivory tower comments of what should happen on a perfect release, but how did this release really effect people in a negative way?

As far as I can tell, most reasonable people that got the prerelease version had to wait one day for the Day-0 patch that makes the game awesome. One day. As for the rest, both of them that ignored the blinking update-tab in Impulse might have played a gimped version of the game. Sorry, but I don't see these issues being worth the attention they are given.

I'm also willing to give anyone some slack that has been working 12+ hours a day, even on the weekend and had already commented about not sleeping much. I've said worse things when I lost an hour of sleep on a weekend with nothing important to do for days.

I played for about 12 hours yesterday. No crashes and only a few cosmetic bugs. The camera for bow shots gets a little strange, but that is it. I didn't feel like I needed a tutorial at all unlike Civilization which is less intuitive. Even those crystal resources made sense to me because the items that require them were listed in my tech tree right there under magic items. There were a couple balance issues, but in a game like this its not essential and MoM was exactly the same in that regard. My biggest complaint is that things (goody huts, MOBs, etc)  respawn too frequently.

I've been following this one for a while as its alias, ZRPG. They are definitely on the right track according to the discussions on their forums.

If Age of Decadence is any indication this one should be out some time around 2019. Can't wait!

PC Gamer warns...stay away from Elemental.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/08/25/elementals-disastrous-launch-stay-well-away/

What they didn't say is how long to stay away. Turns out it was one day. Compared to the year plus I've been waiting for the game, it hardly seems worth making a stink over.

I've been playing all morning and it seems solid and smooth so far. Fairly intuitive as well. Only time will tell if I can finally uninstall MoM, but it looks promising so far. It definitely has that free form style game world that AoW and HOMM always lacked.

Would it have been so hard to delay the release by a few days? This game's day-0 patch seems to be more significant than most.

I've been avoiding the beta builds so I don't get burned out on it, but now I am avoiding the release builds as well. Then tomorrow, when the big patch hits, I am fully expecting a whole new list of problems that I will have to wait another week to be fixed. I just want to play the damn game! Or at least play it in a form that resembles a final product.

but release day patch 0 is today? Not tomorrow

O'RLY?

Your last post seemed to imply otherwise. So its safe to play now?

here's an interview about Neverwinter from Massivley.

I like Jack's tone in that interview. Cryptic has definitely been humbled and now they are the underdog. Assuming the company doesn't crumble around them, its a favorable position to be in.

Would it have been so hard to delay the release by a few days? This game's day-0 patch seems to be more significant than most.

I've been avoiding the beta builds so I don't get burned out on it, but now I am avoiding the release builds as well. Then tomorrow, when the big patch hits, I am fully expecting a whole new list of problems that I will have to wait another week to be fixed. I just want to play the damn game! Or at least play it in a form that resembles a final product.

Have to say, nothing about what's been revealed so far gives me any confidence in the game giving me a compelling reason to play it over DDO or the previous NWN titles.

Answering purely on a hunch, I think it will have some compelling reasons to play it over both of those games. Of course it all depends on the implementation and how well Cryptic plays to their strengths while minimizing their weaknesses.

The advantage it will have over DDO is the adventure editor. With the right tools and rating system it could potentially have an immense amount of interesting content. Also, designing is a game unto itself. There is no creative outlet in DDO beyond character design.

The advantage it will have over NWN is mostly accessibility. No need to download adventures from obscure websites as it will most likely be integrated right into the game. There is no need to work through confusing firewall settings, port redirections, and all that technical garbage that prevents most people from hosting a NWN game. Even besides that, IMO the NWN multiplayer gameplay was clunky as hell compared to any MMOG.

This is exactly what I thought it would be. I think it sounds awesome for many reasons.

1. The original NWN and NWN2 were great, but they needed a more accessible way to share adventures and find groups. With Cryptics MMOG background I would assume that this will be nicely integrated into the game.

2. Cryptic sucks at making open worlds. I don't want this game to be another attempt at an open world game. It would be another disappointment if it were. Coop adventures are instanced by nature and this falls right into one of Cryptic's few strengths.

3. Its 4th edition, which is better suited to computer games than any other edition of D&D. I was wondering when we would start seeing 4E games.

The first time I heard the rumors, which is a long time ago now, I knew that the only way this could be a success would be if it had a good adventure editor. That will bridge the gap that DDO left, making this game have the potential to overcome Cryptics greatest weakness, a lack of good content.

I'm going to have to redo how I handle wormholes.

It looks like a Drake is disposable enough to take risks in. About half the corp is flying them now, even the newer players. It won't be long before we could put together a pretty mean fleet for some harder wormholes and L5's. If only we had a player specialized in a Basilisk for shield support.

The drake I'm flying now is fitted specifically for L3's and is undertanked and overpriced for anything else. Pretty soon I'll probably put together a cheaper tankier version so I can tag along on some more difficult content. I was just playing around with this build on EFT:

[Drake]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II

Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Invulnerability Field II
Invulnerability Field II
Photon Scattering Field II
Y-S8 Hydrocarbon I Afterburners

Advanced 'Limos' Heavy Missile Bay I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Advanced 'Limos' Heavy Missile Bay I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Advanced 'Limos' Heavy Missile Bay I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Advanced 'Limos' Heavy Missile Bay I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Advanced 'Limos' Heavy Missile Bay I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Advanced 'Limos' Heavy Missile Bay I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Advanced 'Limos' Heavy Missile Bay I, Scourge Heavy Missile
[empty high slot]

Medium Core Defence Field Purger I
Medium Core Defence Field Purger I
Medium Core Defence Field Purger I

Hobgoblin II x5

Well,  scratch the Drake from  my above list.  Was in a wormhole and was stupid last night.  Got complacent and got smoked.  Will have to replace it tonight.

Doh! Hey at least it wasn't your Raven.

I'm pretty much trying to follow the same path as you going from a Drake to a Raven. I've also got the same Mining-Osprey and Salvager Cormorant. I was blown away by the salvager ship. So easy to get together, such low skill reqs, and so much profit. The 10 mill I spent on it paid for itself in less than one day of mission running.

I've got about a month of training left to get fully proficient at the Drake with T2 drones and all the missile support skills training up to a respectable level. That's when I'll start looking at a battleship. The Raven is the obvious choice, but I'm tempted to spend an extra month training up projectiles and cross training into Minmatar ships. The Typhoon has got to be the ugliest ship I have ever seen, but I'm dying to try one someday. Missiles, Artillary, and a drone bay twice the size of the Raven's, what's not to like about that? (well, except the training time!)

Hopefully it won't be too long before I can tag along on some of these L4 and wormhole missions without being a liability to the fleet.

A new RPG would be seriously awesome.

I've been using one since last Christmas. Its a nice and comfortable mouse. Very high quality. I normally like Logitech mice and dislike Microsoft mice. This mouse is definitely leaning toward the Logitech side of ergonomics and feel which I like.

Now those buttons on the side... They map directly to the 1 to 0 keyboard keys and can be switched to the numpad keys with a hardware switch on the bottom of the mouse. Any game that uses the number keys will work with the mouse. The only problem is that I don't really like using the number buttons on the NAGA. They disrupt mouse accuracy. Since the buttons are on the side you are kind of pushing the mouse a little every time you hit one of these buttons. I thought I would like them since I don't have to move my hands around as much on the keyboard, but I've found that mouse accuracy is more important in most cases.

For most games you're probably better off with a regular mouse and a N52te Belkin speedpad. I love my N52te, but my NAGA is just a high quality mouse.

From what I understand you can pretty much make any of the base logic gate with enough redstone.  From there you could create an adder, a memory cell, pretty much whatever you wanted.  You could create a simple CPU with a series of switches to program op codes, a couple of registers, and then a single button to step execute the command and ready for the next. 

Now if only there is some way to make an oscillator of some sort. Maybe a slime bouncing on a pressure plate!  What frequency do those guys bounce at anyway?

For anyone that doesn't read the blog, there is a great interview here.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/07/29/community-heroes-notch-for-minecraft/

And it looks like the game is getting quite popular. Its approaching 1000 sales in the last 24 hours!

Are there plans to tweak the water physics to make it spread more, i.e. if you redirect water to an enclosed pit it would eventually fill the pit to the top instead of stopping at a certain point?

It used to do this. I think he changed it so that it would work better with infinite maps and to allow players more control over making waterfalls and things like that. I used to completely flood caves all the time. It would scare the crap out of me and all my torches would disappear.

With over 500 purchases within the last 24 hours, I'd say this game is going fast somewhere

Earlier this year when I bought it there were around 200/day selling and I thought that was incredible. The best part is that nearly all of the money is going straight to the talent. If only the music industry worked like that.

My favorite was probably Gothic 2.

After that I'm torn between Ultima 7, Ultima Underworld, and Ultima Underworld 2.

Aganazer if you need a corp get with me, Soulchilde or PRMGR and we can get you into the one we are in.  Oh Falchion is also in this.  

I might do that. I got my two best friends into Eve. They are on trial accounts but with any luck they will stick around. We have talked about joining a corp. What is your corp about? Any wars or any particular career specialty?

So far I've bought a Kestrel, loaded up with light missiles and am working on the newbie epic story arc. After that I have no idea what to do. I guess I'll just play it by ear until I get all of the second tier of learning skills trained up.

Grizzley25 is in Amarr space but we don't have a specific faction identity. We're more focused on gathering resources for a POS, raising ISK, and just getting bigger ships. We're not a big warring corp (unless someone wardec us). The corp CEO and the officials are pretty good about running missions and helping you get ahead.

Is there anyone in particular I should look for if I wanted to join? Would there be any problem bringing my two friends in with me? We all started together a few weeks ago and are still complete newbies, but I'm sure we could contribute some. Oh and both friends upgraded to full accounts so it looks like we will be sticking around for a while. 

Just yesterday I upgraded my frigate to a Caldari Caracal cruiser. Those level 1 missions are feeling really wimpy now. I am looking forward to trying out some level 2 missions.

Aganazer if you need a corp get with me, Soulchilde or PRMGR and we can get you into the one we are in.  Oh Falchion is also in this. 

I might do that. I got my two best friends into Eve. They are on trial accounts but with any luck they will stick around. We have talked about joining a corp. What is your corp about? Any wars or any particular career specialty?

So far I've bought a Kestrel, loaded up with light missiles and am working on the newbie epic story arc. After that I have no idea what to do. I guess I'll just play it by ear until I get all of the second tier of learning skills trained up.

I got into the beta a few weeks ago. Its an alright game I guess. Its an Eve clone in every way imaginable. That can be both good and bad. Its good because it can build upon an existing and proven framework, but its bad because not all the mechanics translate to mechs very well. Targeting for example, in Eve it makes sense that it would take 5 seconds to target something when you are in space and the target is 20 kilometers away, but in Perpetuum you have the same delays and your target is about 50 meters away. Also, without warp the travel times in Perpetuum get tedious. Its also hard to justify playing Perpetuum when Eve is more advanced, better developed, and already has a huge subscriber base. It reminds me of all the WoW clones that are struggling to keep players since there really isn't any reason to play them instead of WoW.

OK, wow.  I just fired this up tonight to get my bearings, and talk about throwing a lot at the player out of the gate.  I set up my my minmatur guy through the opening tutorial.  It looks like a lot of depth in the game, but the initial learning curve is surprising.

I just started a few days ago and the tutorial took me 23 hours. The tutorial! If that is not an indication of a deep and complex game then I don't know what is. Its not like it was boring or drawn out either. I enjoyed every minute of it. I still feel like they barely introduced the various game systems.

If it were any other game I'd probably be half way to the level cap after 23 hours.

If I could truly edit the decks and create my own decks then I would be unstoppable. Maybe those pre-constructed decks are a good thing to keep it challenging and balanced.

I still can't help but be disappointed that they ripped out the deepest and most thought provoking aspect of the game.

Free beta keys here:

http://www.mmorpg.com/giveaways.cfm/offer/149/Mytheon-Closed-Beta-Key-Giveaway.html

This game is now officially on my radar. I launched two interceptors and took it down. I have sent a team to investigate.

Its about an FBI agent? Somebody should tell the developer that they bought the wrong IP. This isn't X-Files.

are they fighting giant My Little Ponies in the beginning?

Henceforth they shall be known as the great mythological My Little Ponies of the Apocalypse!

You might want to check out the Din's Curse demo as well. Its very Torchlight'ish but with worse presentation and better everything else.

Am I the only one who thought this game resembles X3 a bit? Imagine if someone combined the graphics of X3 with the strategic scope of DW. That game would be Epic. I would love
to plan my empire from FPV .

I was thinking the same thing. Both have similar living galaxies. Both have a lot of automation. I can't even imagine how cool it would be to combine the best of both games. A feature like Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising had where you can take control of any unit at any time would be so much fun.

ugh...okay, that sounds rather invase - Thanks for the tips, though, I appriciate it. Ok, I'll see if I can find out how the heck to do that without reinstalling windows. Although, it seems kinda shoddy programming if thats the reason.

Sorry if I sound offensive, but...I get annoyed at pc games that doenst work ;-)

You shouldn't have to reinstall windows to change the number settings. At worst you might have to go to the regional settings on the control panel.

Since the error specifically mentions a feature that was just added in this patch, I would suspect that the game was originally fine with multiple languages, but this one just slipped in with the patch. The developer was definitely leaning on the Windows OS for a lot of their GUI and this is a very common problem with Windows apps. I know its caught me off guard plenty of times with the medical apps that I write.

Again, I could be completely wrong about this and its something else entirely. If its what I'm thinking though then its something relatively painless to work around.

switch what? My entire windows system? I'm guessing you mean just the language bar settings?

I'd try that one first, but I'm not sure if changing it there will change the all the settings like date and number formats. You might need to change it for the entire windows.

I could be mistaken about it, but it looked like it was crashing while reading the configuration.

Sure Bael...sorry, but I kinda wanna like it, it just doenst seem to want to let me :-D

I'll pm you the screenie I took the 3rd time to see if it was just two flukes.

I'll try uninstalling the .net then and reinstall it somehow :-)

hmm, cant send pm's with pics it seems, so I'll post it here

Since its a niche game, I would suspect your language settings somehow interfering with field formats in the configuration. Try switching to American English and see if it still crashes.

Anyone have any tips to eliminate the quandary and paralyzing effect of having so many options, and choices that could ruin the game play later on?

Its a good idea to have a character design in mind before you start ANY MMOG, but much more so in Fallen Earth.

The best place to start is here:
http://www.globaltechatlas.info/2009/08/character-planning-guide.html

Print it, live by it.

The AP quest guide is another must-have. Its on the same site along with a million other great guides.
http://www.globaltechatlas.info/2009/05/some-tutorial-helptips.html

This is one of those games where its best to read up on everything before you start playing rather than after.

I think it was around '94 that I spent a few hundred dollars on a Roland sound card so that I could have real wave-table sound rather than the FM synthesis on the Sound Blasters. It was like the coolest thing ever for the games that supported it. My TV-Blaster worked great for the 320x200 games and on a 27 inch tubed TV I thought I had the best gaming setup in the world.

If I had to pick a time that would be close enough. By then I had discovered the "real" games like Ultima Underworld, Ultima 7, X-Com, Master of Orion, and Master of Magic. The days of Eye of the Beholder II, Stunts, Doom, and 4D Boxing were all behind me and the future of gaming was looking so bright, and it was, and it is.

For fence sitters - James Allen of Out of Eight Reviews gave Distant Worlds an 8/8!

http://www.outofeight.info/2010/04/distant-worlds-review.html

I think James Allen has a big soft spot for 4X space games. They seem to consistently get about 1 point higher than other games he reviews.

I guess I know what I'm doing tonight! Here I had blown this game off after watching the not-so-impressive video they released a while back.

No single player=no purchase

Too bad, as it looks sweet.

It says "Single & Multiplayer" on the web site. I think that is multiplayer only for the first beta phase.

It looks like we must be close to release.

Release was just announced. The new price is $24.99 with a 30 day money back guarantee.

I find it fun to make my own storyline for this one as I go.  If I wasn't so lazy I'd write it down as I complete towns and put together a huge AAR telling the tale of the hero.

It saves everything you say in chat and every chat message to a log file. The log file alone can tell a good story. You can add in your own comments as you play to fill in the details. It couldn't be easier to make your own storyline.   

It looks like we must be close to release. There were Aganazer-credited fixes in this patch that I suggested months ago. I am guessing that he has cleared out his high priority list and is working on a "nice to have done before launch" sort of list.

I merely object to being charged money to do it.

I don't mind paying for anything that I enjoy, but don't tell my wife that!