I’m as sensitive as the next guy to being milked for add-ons, but does this bother you any more than, say, Paradox selling expansions for their games or Firaxis’ add-ons for Civ IV? I don’t mean to dismiss your concerns, but it strikes me as exactly the same sort of situation.
-Tom
Like Tom said, this isn’t a re-working of FE, it’s an expansion. The only difference between this and something like CiV Gods & Kings is that if you already owned Elemental or Fallen Enchantress, you get a discount on the price.
I’m not sure if it’s stand alone or not, so I suppose that could be a difference as well. In that case, use Age of Wonders 2 and Age of Wonders 2 Shadow Magic as my example!
No need to stone him, he surely didn’t know about the discount, which is really needed to consider it an expansion, as the price is higher than FE
What? Who is throwing stones at him? I was just answering his question, and I was trying to be nice even. WTH?
uhh it’s a manner of speaking? joking with hyperbole?
Just pointing out both you and Tom answered the same post, after me, usually when one is enough. If not, when several people jump to answer the same post, it may seem (to him) he questioned something wrong or was overly negative.
At least is how i read the situation.
edit: but my fault, I forget hyperbole is like irony or sarcasm over the internet, and sometimes it doesn’t transmit well.
Going back to the original discussion, already in progress.
Is this going to be worth your money? In my view, FE/LH is not worth the price of a AAA game and $32 is starting to creep close to AAA prices. To be clear, I don’t have LH, just FE. But in my opinion FE is not a great strategy game for a number of reasons, including the weak AI, the schizophrenic diplomacy, the lack of overall multiple strategy paths as compared to deeper games and a host of other issues. It is by no means a bad game, but it’s not superior to other strategy titles. FE is more of a collection of systems that never quite come together as greater than the sum of its parts. LH is an attempt to get a third bite at the apple, but with gameplay improvements and enhancements. So far nothing has led me to believe that it’s a massive improvement over FE and provides that magical gameplay experience that is the hallmark of all great games. As such, I’m in “wait and see” mode on LH.
So my advice is if you’re going to purchase FE, purchase it to play FE and not to get a discound on LH. I think FE at $12 is a reasonable price for a decent but flawed fantasy strategy game. If you like it enough, you have the option of pulling the trigger on LH later for a discounted price. If not, you’re only out $12.
$32 is “creeping close” to a $60 AAA price tag?
Given its age, it’s not unreasonable that you could find higher-tier titles from the same era for $30 or so nowadays, or, if we want to make it more analogous, a Steam deal of an older AAA title and its recent expansion at that price point. Given that the $32 price point is the result of some deals/luck anyway, it’s not unreasonable to consider getting another title on sale as being comparable. Moreover, $32 is pretty well over the “impulse buy” price range of a lot of indie titles or smaller offerings online. It’s perhaps not a perfect comparison, but it’s definitely not out of line.
$32 is the price of the new, unreleased expand-alone, not of FE.
From the FAQ
Who gets Legendary Heroes for free?
If you purchased War of Magic before 10/31/2010 then you will be receiving Legendary Heroes for free. If you will be receiving Legendary Heroes for free you will receive an email from Stardock when the beta starts.
How much does Legendary Heroes cost?
If you own Fallen Enchantress then Legendary Heroes will cost $19.99. If you don’t own Fallen Enchantress it will cost $39.99 (since it contains Fallen Enchantress).
Just to clarify, in this case $32 gets the OP both ($12 for FE, and then $20 for LH). LH on its own without any discount from a purchase of the earlier game(s) is $39.99.
Dangit. TurinTur beat me. sigh
Yeah, which is why I included all the text about this being a special deal to get the $32 price point; the $39.99 one requires even less conditionals to say it’s approaching AAA prices (without quite arriving there, which, of course, is what “approaching” means!).
True, the only triple A game I’ve spent over $30 for in a long time is XCOM:EU, all my recent AAA titles come from Steam or GOG sales at less than that by waiting a bit (it helps to have a huge backlog and tons of classic games from GOG to play while I wait).
Actually it’s all these Kickstarters that have hammered me lately, coughing up more than new release AAA prices.
But if LH is worth it is a tough call as I have gotten FE given to me for buying the original Elemental, but for some reason it hasn’t really grabbed me. Not really sure what it is because Kael has done a good job of putting all the pieces together but it’s more than just the X’s and O’s it just doesn’t have that ‘magic’ feeling or mood that I get from Fantasy Strategy games like MoM, AoW, HoMM or even Eador:Genesis that just keeps me coming back to them over and over again.
But haven’t played Legendary Heroes yet and I keep reading things that make it sound really good, so this could be the best one, looking forward to it being released.
Thanks for posting that - I didn’t even know the codes were available, and I just logged into my Stardock account and see one waiting for me, so I’m all set. I’ll probably not dive in until it’s officially released though, depending on what’s going on when that happens.
You can see the full FAQ here. Some people don’t know that FH is also free for those who ordered WoM back in 2010, so just an fyi. :)
Are there any good total conversion mods for FE?
Part of the reason why the ‘style’ of the game has never grabbed me is that I have very, very little interest in playing a fantasy TBS where my only faction options are 10 different shades of humans. I recently listened to the 3MA podcast with Derek Paxton (Kael-the lead designer), where he said that the game lacks some of these clear faction differences (like unique/specialized units) because it substitutes in this custom-unit-builder instead. That’s a nice idea in theory, but it still suggests a lack of compelling faction differentiation (in terms of background lore/fluff), and it makes me think that I’d end up with very similar units in most games because I’ll be driven towards a few optimal designs.
The art style also didn’t appeal to me for WoM, but it seems like it has improved a bit over time. (Judging from screenshots only, the terrain and unit models still look less interesting and more ‘gamey’ than either Civ IV or Civ V. Part of me suspects that it’s a question of Elemental being more ‘cartoony’ with its art, but much of Civ IV is cartoony as well).
Anyway, when WoM was first being hyped, I saw some talk of the game using xml or some other bits of modding openness that would allow fans to make Lord of the Rings conversions easily enough. I think I’d be way more interested in playing if I could play an elf or dwarf or orc faction–doubly so if it came with scenarios that modeled the War of the Ring or other fantasy universes/settings/conflicts.
Stormworld is the closest thing.
I think it was mentioned that the unit customization cost the change to make more unique races when dealing with the current tech.
One of the design issues with the Elemental series is the shoehorning in of GalCiv2 mechanics that happened early on in development of War of Magic- and how many of them didn’t fit a fantasy game all that well. You see some of the impact even into LH, despite all the improvements.
I do think if Stardock started an Elemental 2 from scratch, it would be very different than LH.
That’s funny MrPinguin - I had exactly the same notion back when WoM was first announced/discussed, and while some folks agreed, most preferred a “fresh” setting to the same old elves, orcs and dwarves.
As I wrote all these years ago, the familiarity that comes automatically with having these “familiar faces” is not to be underestimated. Also, “fresh settings” often end up being medieval with mild fantasy influences or having exactly the same familiar faces, but reskinned and bearing a different names.
It doesn’t help that the fresh setting is pretty dull (I haven’t read the novel and thus cannot say good nor bad things about it, I only know what’s in the game) and that the art style leaves a lot to be desired.
Another issue that corrupts the game to this very day is the fact that, having finished the game (actually only the engine, in hindsight) 90%, it only occured to them that you need a world with races and mechanics and whatnot.
Brad stated it only occured to him/them AFTER release that this is important - which should unlock some kind of game designer achievement…
I dunno, they DID start Elemental pretty much from scratch, after all. But I’m sure some lessons have been learned and some errors would not be repeated.
I’m still glad they didn’t manage to secure the Master of Magic brand like they initially intended to - as MoM2, WoM would be a disaster of MoO3’ish proportions.
rezaf
While I agreed with you back then, I also though a fresh new setting with different races could be great if they managed to avoid the “reskinning” problem you mention. Unfortunately Elemental managed to hit the sweet spot of having the worst of both worlds as far as I could tell: instead of diverse races with interesting strengths and weaknesses they had a bunch of humans with minor differences a la Civilization, but unlike Civ they also traded the familiarity of known factions for a bunch of newly made up goofiness that didn’t have a compelling story if the book was any indication.
Near release when everyone was still hopeful they said you’d be able to mod in your own different races so you could have Orcs and Klackons, but that obviously never happened and now it sounds like there’s fundamental problems that make it impossible? I would be interested to know if Kael has managed to actually pull out some interesting differences and compelling background from the generic mush of the original factions, that hopefully manages to transcend the “10% bonus to *” that eventually made me stop playing GalCiv 2 (even after its expansions). I don’t really remember hearing about improvements in that vein, but the other Elemental thread is a giant trainwreck.
That’s really hard to pull off, though. Orcs, Dwarves and Elves (etc.) are less “races” than archetypes, archetypes that are neccessary in most scenarios. You can find equivalents in most settings, and if you don’t, it’s often one weird setting.
Yeah, that’s a pity. Then again, as I wrote upthread, I don’t feel any amount of modding could save WoT.
rezaf