Stardock Pays The Price

1up actually gave the game a 7.5 if you look at the actual review.  They game it a C with the following summation statement:

"Which leaves me in the position of calling this a highly-recommended C game. Right now, you'll be getting a kind-of-alright single player game with the promise of a potentially great multiplayer experience at some point in the future. Personally, I'm looking forward to playing more when that shining day arrives, at which point I'll be re-reviewing the thing."

*Looks at the names of the companies reviewing*

Hmm... all one's that I would not trust if they told me the sky was blue outside my window right now (which it is). And didn't Gamespot have a big controversy about accepting bribes for good reviews?

The biggest reason why I haven't bought the game is because of the network issues I keep hearing about. My ports are already forwarded, but if others still can't connect then I have nobody to play with. The other reason is that 40 dollars is more than I'm willing to pay for what is little more than a pretty mod. Any of us that tried to play Supreme Commander know how terrible Gas Powered Games is with NATing and it will be a while before they get it sorted out.

meta-critic has it at 50/100 atm - which is what people will look at.

Like the end bit about "re-reviewing" - all reviews should do that imo. Maybe there is hope IGN/Gamespot will boost the score if connectivity gets fixed soon?

Ask the Ubisoft/Tom Clancy guys how that hope worked out after initial server problems wrecked console EndWar and H.A.W.X., or the GPG guys about Space Siege.

Yeah.  They should of let all the preorders in as testers with the server scaled down for stress testing.  Only people that preordered before phase3 where put in.

Not only that.. but to test the very buggy/poor overlay.

But hey, most testers did say the game needed to be pushed back.

I don't really think it's going to be a HGL though if it's fixed fast.  But who knows.  Kinda similar situaton.  But in HGL's case, their game was pretty unfixable without serious work.

And IGN reader average is 6.9 which is AWFUL.  Gamespot and metacritics userscores are around 8.0 though.  They'd probably be 8.5+ without lots of people down voting for the MP issues.

I"ve never been to Meta, do they allow voters to change/alerter their vote?  Or are negative votes cast in stone?  I have to admit, after reading the reveiws, I would not have gotten this game; but I got it as a BD gift, and I'm glad I did.  But I also agree with some of the reviews that DG seems to be a one-trick pony; but at least it's a pretty good pony. . .

I wouldn't have gotten it if I knew I couldn't play Multiplayer.

I'm from Singapore and I have games like Company of Heroes, Warcraft, Diablo, Battlefield, Team Fortress 2 are games that I have had no problems with playing and connecting to people in US West, EU.

What is so special about Demigod that I can't play with anyone outside Asia? When I asked GreenReaper what Stardock is going to do about us Asians, he basically said that we're screwed, the only way to play is to play with those in my region.

How sad is that?

If you have no problems connecting with CoH and have no lag but you do with Demigod its because:
A) Demigod is obviously still buggy for everyone - even peple from USA and Europe
Maybe your graphic settings are too high or your specs dont meet the min. required (or maybe they do..just guessiing.)
But yea, there is no reason why CoH should be playable with no lag and Demigod isnt.

Maybe you misunderstood.

It's not there's no lag in Demigod. It's that I can't even play Multiplayer to begin with.

I can't even get past loading screen on skirmish games.  Don't know what is wrong... Can enter tournament games no problem. 

That sounds like an issue of NAT negotiation.  Since you play CoH one can assume you have your setup right. But there's no reason Demigod shouldn't work.  I just think it's an issue that will have to be resolved over the coming days (I hope). 

I do not put much faith in reviews anymore.  Gamespot especially really ticks me off.  They released a poor review for Men of War last month then had to retract it because the review wasn't accurate and completely off base.  I'm one of those who will buy games with 6.0 or above ratings and occasionally I find the extremely poorly rated games(6.0 or below) actually fun to play.

I find Gamespots review inaccurate for Demigod. 

After receiving my boxed copy of Demigod today and played with it for a few I can easily say if there's a little DLC to enhance Single-Player and Multiplayer this game would be an instant 9.0 rating.

-Jollyrigger

Yes, Stardock made mistakes.  they pay the price.  some sales will be loss.  hopefully the multiplayer will be fix soon, if it's still like this in 1 month.  then the community won't be growing at all.

I wish Stardock good luck on this nat connection nightmare,  they been trying to make it better for months...

I can't connect to 40% of games in CoH, but it tells me beforehand.. *Shrugs*

It's fine except when I can't connect to a friends game i usually can.

Hi Frog,

Anyway I need to retract my statement. I was just a bit angry so I wrote something that was a half-truth.

I did manage to get 2 Custom games going. It was me in Singapore and with another guy in Malaysia. We're practically neighbours with a ping of 70ms. Connected fine and we played vs bots. We spoke and then he said he too could not connect to anyone else outside Asia.

I just wanted to say that if I could play COH with ppl who have 150-250ms ping at relatively ease, I should be able to do that with Demigod too.

The Gamespot review was a complete and utter joke.  Not like I expected anything from that site, but still.  IGN actually has a very fair review (if somewhat already outdated due to work by the devs).

Just so you (and everybody else who reads this) know, those sites only give above an 8.0 on games/companies that pay for advertisement space on their site.  Forget the "oh, that was only one time thing" bull that some people might say, but it's been proven time and time again that those companies are using their reviews as a buyout.  I don't trust a damn one of them.

However, if you look at the non-mainstream sites, the ones that are like blogs and what not that are there for opinion only (and not in it for the cash), they are all saying that this game is awsome and definitely worthy of a buy.

Some dogmatic Grand Poobah, at Stardock or GPG, decided that the Game absolutely had to be released in April.

That was The Big Mistake.

(I have participated in the Beta since the very beginning, 7½ months ago.)

The question is: how good can they make the multiplayer and how quickly?  As someone said, if it's not addictive and simple within one month, the game is sunk.  I'm an avid SD fan and bought this solely based on their reputation.  If they can't / don't show the amazing support for this like the did SoaSE, they'll lose a loyal fan.  And worst yet, I probably wouldn't be the only one they would lose.

In addition!  They need to continue interest in the game by releasing NEW features that make people want to:

1.)  Keep playing

2.)  Buy it if they haven't

They've got a month to make it happen to or I truely believe this game will become lost due to technical difficulties at day 1.

If we're talking about major sites, why is Stupid Spot up in that list?  No one with half a brain listens to it anymore.

Has it really been that long?