With any luck, this weekend I'll have games up that you guys will be able to join and see the new demigods in action.
Look for "Frogboy 3 vs. 3" on the game list starting this weekend (or possibly Thursday depending on my schedule).
Great article today at Town Hall.
“4 reasons the American Dream will be over unless we act”
Great quote:
"In 1985, just 16.5% of filers paid no income tax." Today, "roughly 120 million Americans – 40 percent of the U.S. population – are outside of the federal income tax system."
Meanwhile, the top 50% of income earners pay 97% percent of the income taxes. "In 1945, 41.9 workers supported each (Social Security recipient), while todayonly 3.3 workers support each retiree." That number will continue to shrink.
In other words, we're developing into a two-tiered society. Some people like to think of it as the "haves" and "have nots." However, it would be more apt to describe it as the people who pay the bills and the people who live off of the fruits of their labor.
But don’t forget, if you object to the unlimited looting of your labor, you’re just selfish and greedy.
I was too lazy to do a clean install of Windows 7 on my Thinkpad T400. I didn’t want to monkey arounhd with reinstalling all my software. In hindsight, I probably would have been better off doing so as there’s so much crud on my system sucking away its life that I am regretting my decision not to just start from scratch.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091103121605.htm
So it increasingly looks like sugar is really really bad for you – at least in the quanitites that the typical American now consumes.
I consume more than my share of sugar and I hate to sound unconcerned about my own health but you know, I might lose some years of life becaue of my love of sugar but I’d rather have sugar than a life lacking in sweetness. 
I’ve always wanted to do this but never had the opportunity to try it out since schedules are usually too tight for it. But would anyone here be interested in playing a game of Elemental…via pen and paper…over the Internet through a series of posts?
I would need 5 volunteers who are in the beta, are active players and would have enough time actually play a game back and forth online (almost like PBEM). We’d set up a simplified rule set but the idea would be to work through game mechanics and decide what is, and isn’t fun.
I would be your DM for the game. Respond here if you’re interested, have the beta, and have time to play.
Last week we spent time beta testing the new Demigods internally.
We couldn’t have released them externally even if we wanted because all the IT resources were consumed by the Impulse release of Dragon Age: Origins (a totally awesome game btw). Despite some sensationalist EA-bashing I read online, the launch of the game was pretty smooth outside some hicups with the free DLC that EA gave away which had been resolved within 24 hours.
If you ever wondered what a Baldur’s Gate – in spirit – game would be like if made today, BioWare has delivered it. It’s really that good.
Anyway, enough plugging. Besides, I’m bitter that my schedule is so tight that I don’t get to play it as much as I want – for now.
SO WHERE ARE THE DEMIGODS?!
So how are the new Demigods finally going to get distributed?
Assuming all goes well with QA, this Wednesday, we expect to release v1.2. This isn’t a promise, this depends on QA.
Version 1.2:
So here’s what is in the new build we have:
#1 New AI options
Game options can now set what happens with AI Players. THIS IS A BIG DEAL for those of us who play online because AND in skirmish because you can now control how tough the AI Players are and what they give you when they die.
So in MP, someone drops, you have an AI Player you can now make it so that they don’t give much gold and toughen them up or some combination.
#2 The Mod Manager
Players can make mods and share them with others. You can enable mods and if everyone else has those mods, voila they’re on like game options.
If someone has mods enabled and a user doesn’t have it, they can’t join the game. This is for security purposes – these ARE mods afterall made potentially by third parties. We plan to get some mods out there as soon as possible so people can see what’s possible.
When I get time, I want to try to make “Brad’s Item Pack” which adds new items to the game.
#3 Gameplay balancing and tweaks
These probably won’t be in this build as they’re still being tested but amongst the changes:
Trying out the new Demigods
Once the updated version of Demigod is out, I will start talking to people via Ready to Play. At first, I’ll just be playing with people and I’ll have the Demigod. Other Stardockians will be playing as well this way. Then we’ll start adding the new demigods to people’s accounts and they’ll be playing it.
From there, we’ll get more feedback and submit that to GPG to tweak the demigods further and then everyone will get them in a follow-up to v1.2.
In our previous games, the story (or better yet, what little there was of it) was kind of crammed in after the fact.
There is a lot of backstory to Galactic Civilizations but when it came time to put it into the game, it was the last thing. For me, my priority in Galactic Civilizations was computer AI. More accurately, Galactic Civilizations was mainly an AI project for me that we decided to let other people participate in playing though, truth be told, I enjoyed watching the AI play each other more than any other aspect of the game.
By contrast, with Elemental, story is a big deal. AI won’t be taking a back seat by any means. It’s just that this time, we have a lot more resources to give the story the justice it deserves.
As a result, Elemental will still heavily focus on the “sandbox” mode (create your own world to play in) but its “Campaign mode” will let players really explore the world of Elemental and learn its various secrets and histories.
Our story so far…
Long ago, the world of Elemental was lush with magic. Men, dragons, beasts and even plants made free use of the abundance of magic to enhance their lives.
So much magic, however, attracted the attention of the immortal titans who lust to control magic. In time, they used their sacred shards to absorb all the magic they could hold. These titans intended to take their shards back to their own world.
To the horror of these immortal titans, once filled, the shards could not be moved. They were rooted to the world where they sat.
Greedy to control one another’s shards, the titans endlessly warred amongst themselves. Eventually, some of these titans took men and used their power to twist them into creatures better suited for war and conquest – The Fallen. The Fallen come in many shapes and sizes but are all, ultimately, derived from either men or dragons.
For centuries, the titans waged their wars. This war ended aburptly in a titantic battle that resulted in the cataclysm – the breaking of the world and the destruction of nearly all the life in the world.
Life is starting to return to Elemental now. The immortal titans seem to be gone. But the land has been ruined. With magic, the land can be restored to life. But only a select group of beings known as Channelers can still make use of magic.
Soon, these channelers will become great kings and emperors of the world as their abilty to restore life to the lands and make use of magic will attract the struggling peoples of the world to their growing civilizations.
What happens from there, however, is up to you.
The World of Elemental for us
There are literally hundreds of pages of backstory, histories, adventures, and lore that have been put together. Elemental: War of Magic, will be the first game that makes use of it but the RPG we’re starting to work on will make use of it too and there are other games in the design process that will exist on it.
It’s a world that we hope you enjoy being apart of and look forward to exploring it with you.