I really don't know what has happened to Stardock over the last few years but that quote from Brad is typical of their current attitude.

While I wouldn't call it a great launch, I also think people are overreacting.
The game is playable And, we always knew there would be the day 0 patch. They just took about 12 hours too long to release said day-0 patch.
Yes, there were people with technical issues. I myself had many CTDs. But that is (sadly) true of most gaming these days. And while performance was definitely crap, it was still playable.
Nah, where Stardocks screwed up was the one thing they used to be amazing at: Public Relations.
Because they chose to do an (effectively) open Beta, people know that there WERE beta copies. And because they decided to push up their release date (because Best Buy broke said release date), they DID release the game in a somewhat poor state. But, it was still playable since Day -2.
But people got the whole "I shouldn't have to wait for the Day 0 patch on Day 0" in their minds. And, rather than having a team of moderators and PR guys to handle that, the community did. And the community basically said "Shut your face, they are giving us a game" and "It isn't the end of day 0 yet!" which just didn't help. Then, of course, Wardell threw a hissy fit.
Plus, Stardock's own PR was that "Day 0 is going to blow your mind. GalCiv 2 didn't even have starbases in the gold!", so nobody was really certain what Day 0 would bring.
However, the problem is that, as Quintin mentioned, most of the news sites don't have their copies yet. So they are (for the most part) going to have to base their impressions off the community. And the community is in a huge frenzy because they didn't want to wait for the patch last night and some people are having technical difficulties.
So while I feel the need to stress that Stardock did NOT release an unplayable game, I think they have probably learned their lesson about pushing the release date forward on any game that is planned to have a 0-day patch.

That's my main beef. Quite frankly their PR has been shocking of late and Brad in particular is really rubbing gamers up the wrong way. Over the past year we have heard:
If you don't like Impulse then don't use it, we are not changing.
We want to charge €49.99 for a $49.99 game and we don't want to pay VAT so we are not selling games in Europe any more.
And this latest outburst from Brad saying that if you are not happy then sod off we don't want you as customers.

Stardock Rescind Own Bill Of Rights.
LOL wow, Stardock really have gone to shit. A shame really as Impulse had potential and Steam needs strong rivals.

You do get a sense that someone, somewhere screwed up. They shouldn't have followed Best Buy in jumping the gun, at least.

Always fun when someone clearly isn't following a thread.
Also: what little potential Impulse had is long dead. They have worse download speeds than Steam (for me, at least), their download/install process is painful as hell (it installs when it finishes extracting/downloading, which means you really shouldn't play games that are system intensive or can't alt-tab), nobody really knows how to archive stuff, and it sells games at a higher price to Americans (let alone the people with squiggly moneys).

Nah, I think they made the right decision there. They still kept their hardcore fans this way. Currently, they are just having some bad PR with the rest of the market, and that can be overcome with all the planned DLC (a free quest pack is planned for next month).
If they didn't push forward their own schedule, the hardcore fans would have gotten discouraged and made an even bigger stink.
That being said, I think they should have just released the Gold version on Sunday, and tried to get the Day 0 patch out yesterday morning. The pre-day-0 patch, while great, is what pushed their team too far.

So, Games for Windows Live has been universally rejected by pretty much everyone, including most publishers, GameSpy is very old and disliked, Impulse Reactor's had a very rocky start and Activision hasn't announced that all their PC games will use Battle.net yet. So, it leaves Steamworks with the monopoly on matchmaking and DLC sales, for now (i.e. until Activision wakes up and licenses out Battle.net, or a young upstart e.g. Desura happens to be successful).

So the price is high and there are some more patches needed. But maybe afterwards the game is worth its price. Downloading from Impulse is surely not much better or worse than from Steam. I normally go for a coffee when a huge download starts. ;)
So, what is the game like? What can you do? What is your impression about the gameplay side? How are the battles? How is the AI? How fits technology, diplomacy, ... together? Is it a (good) successor of Master of Magic? Just play it (if you can) and give some personal reviews here about the content of the game.

As I mentioned earlier: The game needs a lot of modding to fulfill my desires, but it has a strong foundation (outside of the CTDs).
Strategic Battles: Fun, with a good sense of chance. You don't have the Civ-style "Wait, a guy with a club just killed my tank?" but there is always the chance that they might kill your Sovereign. Would be nice to have a "flee" option.
Tactical Battles: Fun, but needs some work. Only really comes into its own when both sides have ranged units (otherwise, you just wait for them to charge you). Also nice to be able to withdraw (or cut off a retreat by controlling the map).
AI: They seem good at expanding in a manner that annoys the piss out of me on overcrowded maps. I have only played on Nornal, so I am not sure how competent they are. As it stands, they apparently war with each other, but I have never had war declared on me
Tech: I like the approach, but the game really suffers from not having a (visible) tech tree. I feel like I am researching aimlessly. And I would prefer more synergy between the fields. To summarize: you research a field (civics, warfare, magic, diplomacy, adventuring) and make a breakthrough. The breakthrough gives you a choice of which tech you want to unlock (with some more rare than others). So a bit of randomness, but still direction.
Diplomacy: This is pretty piss-poor. The value the AI assigns to treaties of any form are so high that they just aren't worth it. Plus, I find that I am always at a disadvantage in negotiations (oh, you guys get 4 tech points per turn while I get 0.5. What the hell?). This is what I hope gets the most love. Hopefully the current system is replaced with the more standardized approach where you can put multiple treaties on the table and the like (I might be more willing to tolerate getting screwed on research if I at least also get screwed on trade).
Magic: There are enough spells to have fun, but I would really prefer a lot more. Stardock's system was to try to avoid overlap and redundancy. But redundancy breeds choice and variety. Even if they were superficially the same, it would be nice to be able to have a fire bolt and an ice bolt at the same level. Or to have a Summon Bear and Summon Wolf. This will probably be my first foray into modding Elemental (probably this weekend :p).
Adventuring: It is a fun way to get experience and fight without declaring a war you might not be prepared for. But it does tend to result in your war party being pretty far from your land, but the Teleport spell helps with that.
The meshing: I think they did a pretty good job, although I find strategic spells and persistent enchants to be a LOT more useful than tactical spells (I can waste 3 mana on a fireball that kills one guy, or 5 mana on a bear that will kill forty guys over the next year), but that might just be me (most of my guys are sluggers anyway). With a bit of work and a lot of additional content (good thing modding is so easy :p) this has the potential to be an amazing game. As it stands, it is currently just a good one.
Honestly, I paid for the LE, and I feel like I got what I paid for. Am I a bit disappointed? Yeah. But, outside of diplomacy sucking (the tech tree and spellbooks can be fixed by either looking at the XML or waiting for an online resource), all of the things I find lacking are VERY easy to mod in. So I am not too concerned.

I'm sad to say that this doesn't surprise me at all. Brad has to be one of the most immature CEOs in the history of PC gaming and should be forbid to ever posting on any forum.
IMO it was a matter of time before they ditched their own bill of rights. Stardock is using the requirement of Impulse for updates as their form of DRM so burning an unfinished beta to the retail disc ensures pirates won't get the complete game. If they were sincere and stated this from the beginning they would avoid a lot of the negative PR.

Actually, they basically DID say that it wouldn't be worth playing Gold and that people should patch the moment they get the game. They didn't outright say "this is to stop piracy" because nobody really says that. EA and Bioware didn't say that about all the shiny DLC. Even Ubi didn't really say that about UbiDRM.
But yeah, Wardell is a whiner. Reminds me a lot of Relic's old PR person (before Buggo, who was awesome).

Woah there! DLC is not DRM no matter what the haters say. Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 were perfectly playable and complete at launch without having to download anything extra and certainly no day0 Patch. Yes the DLC has DRM but you can play and complete both games without Shale or Zaeed respectively. They are free extras for buying the game nothing more. It's not even playing in the same ball park as buying the retail Elemental and having to download a patch before the game is even playable.
Also to the people calling the DLC DRM have you actually checked the XML file? There is a line in it that says:
RequiresAuthorization = 1
Guess what happens if you change that 1 to a 0? At least this is true of the old DLC, haven't checked RtO or the later ones but those earler DLC's had utterly pathetic DRM.

You're not forced to register either DO:A or ME2. You can optionally choose to do so and optionally choose to enter your one-time limited codes for the free DLC. But you don't have to. It's simply an incentive they hope will get people to register (and buy the game in the first place).
I see nothing wrong with the way EA are doing that. It's certainly not causing me any problems =)

I hardly see how changing a value constitutes a crack. I am aware PC games have bugs both DA:O and ME2 had them but not to the level that Elemental has. Even Stardock have said not to bother with the Gold version but that leaves people up shit creek if they don't have a net connection or if they don't want to sign up to Impulse.