🚀 go-pugleaf

Here are two previous posts related to this, if you want to get a
primer/background of what I'm talking about, please check these out:
- http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsxp.games/browse_thread/thread/67d4a325d8b72066#
- http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsxp.games/browse_thread/thread/f5e80485741e885a/8a18c4a742de42d6

In my opinion Ironclad Gaming is simply a puppet/shell creating by
Stardock to bare the brunt of any criticism that comes from its over-
priced, over-hyped, blatantly outsourced piece of dog turd: Sins of a
Solar Empire.

SoSE contains an "Add-on" system which is really useless, because
their isn't enough people playing to even utilize it.

The quality and budget of the game does not correspond with the $50.00
price tag on the game. Nor does the buggy, laggy quality of online
play.

The typical bureaucratic drivel sent down from Stardock for it's
overpriced malware is blaming the crashes on the user, or his system,
and not the outsourced, neckbearded programmers who still use OS/2 as
a main operating system. Sins of a Solar empire is no excuse.

The game has a terminal illness, after famine.

The famine is the fact that single-player play is boring and
aggravating. Allying is a pain and you have to do long, complex,
usually impossible chores to grain "reputation" with up to 9 factions.
Other computers will not ally with you unless you do 3-5 chores,
multiply that by 9 and you got 27-45 chores. You may as well just
spend the whole game doing repetitive missions like "Give this user
credits" or "Kill this ship".

Then, finally, you go online. This is where you get to see the flimsy
nature of the game.

You go online, in a game, you will notice that things are normal.
There may be up to a 5minute wait for users to fully load the game. In
this 5 minutes, anywhere from 1-5 of the game drop. Then a decision is
made whether to rm, or remake the game. You decide to remake, this
happens again, then after some a few tries (and 40 minutes) you
finally got a good game.

15 minutes into any game:
goku2342: sry
goku2342: g2g diner
goku2342 has left the game.
sensie: omfg
wizardpeen: WTF

But eventually, at the end of the day, you get around 3 people who
build forces to massive you play like 5 hours in. Then you either (A)
Get backstabbed or, more often, (B) Get a minidump.

The so-called minidump error is shrugged off as an error collection.
It has something to do with "Sync" or something according to the
forums. Either way, most successfully played games end up like this. A
system *ding*, a minidump output at C:\Users\zonday\Stardock Games
\Ironclad Online\Blah\WTF\134-123-2008.txt, you press OK, and the game
just goes away.

Ok. What kind of error, goes into a game that's already released, that
just plain closes the game, almost all the time, and there is no
serious effort by the company to fix it.

This is because the game was on a low budget, and because of the
structure of the network, the game is prone to crash like this. The
only way to fix is to start again with an increased budget recode the
back end from scratch.

Yeah, Stardock... errr. Ironclad Online will sure be more than willing
to sacrifice their board of directors a mansion in Miami just for
you. :) A punch of punk gamers whose mother's don't give a damn if the
game sucked. Go do your homework.

And before I get done here, I can't go without mentioning Galactic
Civilizations. You know, that one game Stardock nags you about? It
fails even more. If anything, Sins of a Solar empire is a massive
improvement of Galactic Civilizations 2.

It really seems that no matter what mode of operation these guys do,
they consistently go under budget, low quality, hastily, and
overpriced, and then at the end of the day leave is unmaintained. And
really, seriously, it's not even funny. People don't have the balls to
say anything because they care so much about sucking up and their "e-
reps". Grow a pair.

I would like to mention that nothing here is meant to be portrayed as
fact, and is simply my opinion as a game developer for a major game
making corporation in USA.

In conclusion, do yourself a favor and wait until Starcraft 2. Trust
me, you'll be satisfied ;)