Thanks, that did the trick. Interesting thread. I'd sensed that there was a fair amount of tension between Snowbird and the original Russian-language fan community surrounding Genesis. That certainly articulates that frustration in much more detail and helps me to get a better sense of what's going on.

Whatever the mistakes, both in software development and in relationship management with a passionate Genesis fan base, the patches have been coming out steadily and they've already fixed a number of big problems. MotBW isn't yet a great game, but it's already a darn fine game and is, I think, probably the best strategy title released for $20 at launch that I've seen in a long time.

Snowbird continues to experience some technical missteps, but the pace of progress on the game is encouraging. I'd encourage anybody who's been deterred by posts on this forum to check the game out and see if it's still in rough shape.

My own sense is that, for folks who haven't played Genesis yet, the game is getting a pretty warm reception. For folks who love Genesis and were hoping for a more glorious version of that, the current state of the game just doesn't measure up to that lofty standard. But I do think it's moving in the right direction.

Let's just hope that the game reaches the level which was initially promised - fast!

The level of interest in the game has already waned, simply observe the level of active threads and participation in this forum! What really is at risk is people will write this game off and simply move on; not hard when there are far more deserving candidates around.

I can name quite a few franchises which have simply lost their way like this - personally acquainted with HOMM and Civilization series. While the latest iterations in these series have finally stabilized - for a given value of stable - they simply haven't reached the level of sales of their predecessors.

And to quote a recent example: the recent implosion of the Simcity franchise. The resulting fracas must have scared off a lot of buyers, picture the dismay in finding a warning to buyers on Amazon's website!

Let's hope they can deliver on their promises fast! Obviously I have a vested interest too - $14 worth [$20 less $6 for free EG, which was worth every cent].

Of course, in the case of Civilisation (and presumably SimCity and HOMM too, though I'm not familiar with the communities for those games) their predecessor has continued being played and enjoyed, and the community has remained active primarily around that game. A similar thing seems likely to occur here.

I agree.

Also to try to be a bit fairer to Snowbird games re time in patching a game up to fully working I looked back into the past at the original Heroes of Might and Magic 3: Restoration of Erathia as this game had 4 patches from V1.0 to V1.4.

It seems that Version 1.3 for Restoration came out just after the release of Shadow of Death which was in March of 2000. So H3 released Feb 1999, patch 1.3 lets say April 2000. Not sure of any fatal problems with the early version however so cannot say how badly patches were needed if really at all other than few fixes that made things smoother.

Since Heroes 3 had all it's features, namely multiplayer, all working on release the issues were few imho unlike Masters.

I would argue that Snowbird has it easy -

1. Public betas essentially get you testers for free
2. Given the existence of EG before and a hard core community around it, it was easy to set a benchmark for gameplay (excluding graphics)
3. Existence of the original codebase and developer, for support

One more advantage that is arguable is existence of multiple game engines which can be licensed; makes it possible to take an informed decision on buying or development.

In any case given what other indie or small game developers have done; the performance so far has not been comparable. Let's hope things improve quickly...
For Civ & Simcity... things are still really going well. Check out some of their fan sites for the level of activity and new content coming out!

The problem with EG is that it really appeals to a very narrow crowd; lacking even animation, (english) manuals and most importantly marketing (for that initial push). MotB would have pushed the game more mainstream if every thing had gone to plan!

I don't know if I'm playing a recent patch or what (version 1.1.1), but to me the game is perfectly playable, and has been a whole lot of fun for several weeks. As a note, I couldn't care less about multiplayer so if that's your thing, then maybe my opinion doesn't count. But as a single player game it's very awesome. It crashes once in a blue moon (like, maybe once per 5 hour session if that, but since there is automatic save game, you never lose much).
I totally recommend the game as it is now if you want to play single player. I have no experience on multiplayer.

That's good to hear!

I will probably check it out later... too busy trying to beat Faster Than Light right now! Summer sale was too tempting!

Oh, wait. So I can't get Google Translate working on the original page, but the remake of Eador was... not made by the original devs?

Why does this remind me of the kerfuffle that went down wrt Nicalis and the Cave Story remake?

Original dev took part in the development process.
When he announced that he would work on 3d remake, he was excited, said that publisher accepted almost all his ideas for remake (3 A4 pages of text), we had long debates about forthcoming units on forum (Elementals were basically approved, with Water Elemental being neutral healer), and in the end we have this...
I will take someone else's words: whole 2 new items, 2 new sites, and 2 new province types - desert... and another desert. And unavailable for player guard.

The publisher's website says the next update will fix diplomacy and alchemy, which are the only remaining unimplemented features that I've noticed.

There are still minor issues, including rare game crashes, but at a level that you can see in many games.

So if you're holding off until it is 'finished', I suggest that the next update will be that point.

Official website:
http://snowbirdgames.com/?cat=5&lang=en

UPDATE: Said patch is now out (1.1.2). I've played for a few hours and it looks fine. Finally the AI can declare war on you!

I agree. The game is effectively out of beta now. :)

They still need to get Hosteat MP released to be on par with Genesis in terms of functionality. There are a few other bugs I've found, but none are huge, and none are nearly as big as some of the video bugs that plagued Genesis when it first hit English-language markets.

The only real area where MotBW is trailing behind Genesis is the opponent AI, particularly on the shard map. That's a work in progress.