Yep, same here. Personally I've reported lot of CTDs while I was betaing EWoM, and all of those have been fixed, so basically I don't have any CTDs now. + I never had any problems with the tactical battles. [White screen?] The problems mentioned in the PC GAMER article are specific hardware related issues. [My system: E8400+GTX260+x64 Vista]

I wouldn't say that.

Normally I would agree that the wide variety of hardware and drivers cause problems, however, look at the change log here http://elementalwarofmagic.wikidot.com/change-log and search on the word "crash".  I see 5 bug related crashes, 1 caused by certain hardware (video cards), and 1 that could go either way.

# Fixed a crash related to city tiles on DirectX 11 based setups with a game within a game

# Fixed a crash related to children being born during a reloaded saved game that could cause a crash on 64-bit machines

# Fixed a crash related to reference counting on the Dynasty screen that happens on 32-bit Windows XP machines

# Fixed a buffer overrun issue that caused random crashing on SSD SATA drives while saving a game.

# Fixed crash related to very very fast machines loading up data.zip before initialization causing data to not be fully enabled which would result in a crash when the object in question was accessed.

# Fixed some crashes on load from if a unit type was retired while a unit of that type was in a training queue, since the unit type would be removed from the global vector but some things would still be looking for it on load. Now the function to remove a retired unit type checks the training queues of all the cities, too, and when the AI retires a unit type, it removes it from its list of designs.

    * I think this also fixes some crashes on load from the testers downstairs, where I would see units looking for AI designed unit types that weren't in the unit type list anymore, as well as the loading in of the AI designed unit type vector, but I'm just making an educated guess based on the fact that the AI automatically retires unit types it designs itself. This does fix a reproducible crash related to training units at least, though.

# We finally found and killed a battle engine related crash that we think was the cause of virtually all end of turn related crashes.

Anyhoo, a lot of this would have been found with a good beta, hence why I'm waiting to buy until things are sorted out.

Ok but the WOW release problem was the server issues (holding times) the game itself was pretty polished once you were able to log in. And yes this is one of the exceptions. But I have seen far more where the games were released in a terrable state and they never really recovered.

I'm not recommending this game to friends until I see more stability.  I'm fine with waiting around as the patches are pushed and looking forward to things, but I'm not going to tell a bud to pick this up not knowing how MP will work in action and knowing they will likely get random crashes or suffer performance issues like me.  I think I'm going to try to resist the urge to play elemental (it is fun and full of potential) until another patch comes out and see if that improves things for me.  I think PC gamer was a bit harsh, but I actually think its good of them to wait to review the game.  Imagine the review it would have received on their magic, crashing every 10 minutes systems... it would be like a 50 out of 100... so - good of them to at least hold off on the review for now. 

The best way to improve a RTS game into something superior is to make it into a TBS game.

I think the top half of the review is fair. I won't comment on the personal back-and-forth that goes on at the bottom.

Elemental, in it's current state, isn't worth buying (for me), since I'm still experiencing the white screen/game slows to a crawl every tactical battle after the first. The author isn't trying to convince people to never buy Elemental, and he's obviously a fan Stardock's previous titles. He's generous to delay reviewing the game until the stability issues are fixed rather than immediately after the day-0 patch was released. 

And CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS are not?   Yea right.

I'm really tired of people making excuses for these companies releasing broken games at $50 a pop. "Long term support" is not a given, and small companies--like Stardock--are known for shutting down at a moment's notice. The product should be in working condition as soon as you pay for it; no waiting for the developer to get "some rest before activating and supporting that feature."

Raise your expections and stop being satisfied with shotty work!

Didn't galactic civilizations 2 get an update a couple of months ago?  It was released in Feb 2006 and was developed and published (?) by Stardock.  I'd say that track record alone should provide some insight as to the level of support and patching we can expect from SD on elemental, a game they personally develop and publish.  Re: all of your other points, I expected more at launch as well and was disappointed, BUT - I have no doubt in my mind that the game will receive the support it needs.  There's no third party involved here. I expect we'll see alot of patching for the next 2-3 months followed by monthly or quarterly updates.  Should it need that many patches after being released?  Should MP be available at launch?  Etc etc.  I think those questions are rhetorical. 

It'd be cool if PC Gamer had the balls to issue a retraction now that most of the major issues have been patched. 

To be fair, that follow-up is considerably less acrimonious than the "Stardock just killed my dog" tone of the initial article.

I think what annoyed me about the first article is that writer apparently thought his experiences and opinions were universal, which is not the case.

I stopped reading when Greg Vederman left.  In my opinion the quality took a huge dive when he left.  Though arguably it had begun its downward slide before he took over as editor in chief, and he was given the thankless task of trying to hold back an avalanche, which to his credit he largely succeeded, but there was nothing to stop it once he resigned.

Dude, seriously?

Shards still don't work. The combat system is utterly mangled. People are whomping maxed out AI with all factions due to game crushing imbalances. There are a million other gameplay issues.

People are still reporting serious issues with 1.06 even for tech stuff? You think the major issues are addressed? Not even close.

We just entered the Gameplay Beta. The reviews I have seen are extremely generous.