Elemental: War of Magic v1.1 heralds new beginning

Elemental: War of Magic's version 1.1 patch notes -- reportedly 19 pages long when printed out -- represent developer and publisher Stardock's attempt to forget the game's horrific launch and bullishly move forward. According to Stardock, the free update reimagines the use of mana in the game, adds new spells, overhauls the user interface, rebalances the game and improves the AI. The takeaway: this is a "new" Elemental.

Stardock has been on a quest to reanimate the game (and potential franchise) from its D.O.A. state. The company hired grassroots talent and slowly turned sales around by offering free expansions. The publisher also announced that anyone who buys the game by the end of this year will receive the first expansion pack for free. We're currently contacting LL Cool J to find out when we can officially give Elemental "comeback" status.

Elemental: War of Magic v1.1

Reader Comments (16)

Unless they invest in some kind of re-launch for it I imagine it won't help improve the sales or amount of people playing, especially with Civ V just patching and releasing expansions at the same time as well.

@Whittaker
i would hope stardock and crew are doing this for there reputation over sales but probably doubtful. but i hope this patch works out good because i do like the idea of creating my own monarch and troops in a galactic civ fashion.

@Decanus
It's not sales, but reputation is money in a way. And Stardock did have a pretty great reputation before this. I imagine many pre-ordering customers were pretty shocked (and felt pretty burnt) when they found out the state of this game.

@Whittaker They DO have expansions coming along. Who wants to buy an expansion for a broken game?

Either way, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

I just can't understand why they would release the game in such an obviously broken state in the first place. Even ship-first-patch-later must have its limits.

I don't think you're wielding that LL Cool J reference correctly, Joystiq.

@Acosta02 Man's got a point. Remember, according to LL "Don't call it a comeback"

Do they have a tutorial and game manual yet?

@Gel214th Yes douche they do

If they want sales it is easy. Put it up on Steam during the Christmas sale and mark it down 75%. They will have plenty of sales then.

@C1 I totally agree with this, but stardock has their own Digital sales service called Impulse, right? I don't think we will see their games on steam unless they admit totally defeat in that sector lol.

@Poor Tom

Everyone and their cat wants to be part of the digital distribution bandwagon these days. Steam is the clear winner in the digital distribution arena with content across many publishers/developers and 30+ million accounts. Am I or the average user going to keep a dozen digital accounts for games across the internet? No.

@C1 Yeah, that's why I only ever do my retail shopping at Walmart, as they are the clear winner in retail. All these other little guys need to throw in the towel. Who wants to drive to a bunch of different stores when you can get everything there?

Oh...no wait...that's dumb.

@C1 I take you never tried Impulse have you? Its leaps in front of Steam (read Scheme) in every aspect. I have 19 games including Elemental and 7 applications there. Never had any problem with any of it. I have 3 games on Steam, Earth 2160 didn't work at all. Yeah Valve loves to sell steam-incompatible games. ET: Quake Wars was (or wasnt?) installed like when i tried to apply patch/mod or anything "Quake Wars isn't installed" was only what i got so Warez it was afterwards. And Left 4 Dead 2 is kind of working if I don't mind kicks out of the game something like bad Steam ID. So I'm sorry if I don't share your enthusiasm in using so-called popular distribution which was long time only one available. Same goes for scamming paypal. I kinda like alternatives to monopolistic "mainstream".

@C1
I refuse to shop on Steam because of the DRM issues I've had in the past. That's why Impulse is for me, no DRM.
So yeah, surveying the situation, I'd have to say that comparing digital distribution to Wal-Mart is really accurate.

Anyone tried out the path yet?

Hows it unfold?