I dont think copyright covers stuff like spells. Names and description? Yes. Art? Yes. Effects themself and concepts? No.

I'm likely in the minority, but I -like- that spells and magic aren't common place and thrown around like water in the ocean. I like that using a nuke spell in combat is a balance between the long term and short term. I like that there aren't loads and loads of high powered spells that basically turn non-casters into meatshields. Frankly, I'm tired of magic trivializing everything else in the game as if you have a guy that every other unit is based around... that's just boring and uninteresting. I like my magic to be mysterious and wondrous not the fantasy equivalent of a 100 ton battle mech fighting infantry armed with rocks.

Now this isn't to say magic is currently 'okay'. It isn't. But I'd rather see magic get turned into support and 'subtle' effects rather than nuke 'em till they glow. I'd rather see more of people with magical abilities rather than magicians and sorcerers. I'd rather see a continued emphasize on the fact that Elemental takes place in a world that was ravaged by magic; that elemental takes place in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world where magic is rare.

I think the one thing the OP left out was choosing your magic books.

If you look at the bookshelf between the pile of coins and the magic wand you can see that wiizard knew one book of nature magic, one of sorcery/air, one of chaos/fire and 4 books of life magic. Clearly Freya 2.0 here spent most of her 13(?) points on all those talents listed.

You could have up to 13(?) books in one type of magic and the number of books determined (randomly) what spells you could research from that group. And some of the talents were dependent on knowledge. Like node mastery above which (iirc) doubled mana from all nodes (big magic batteries like shards but with potent guardians) but required you to know one book each in red, blue and green (which were the three colors of nodes).

Most of the default leaders had one or two colors of magic plus an appropriate talent. Unlike Elemental where all the mages have full access to every spell in all 4 elements and either life or death, and you can learn a few more lists from quests. In comparison to MoM, differences in Elemental Sovereigns are very superficial currently.

While I think that MoM is a great game in its own right, I think that Stardock is doing the right thing by making Elemental as much their own as can be.  There are plenty of elements of gameplay in Elemental that only need some minor balance tweaking to be effective.  There are plenty of others that could be improved a good deal, and perhaps they're draw further inspiration from other fantasy 4x games like MoM (Heroes come to mind).  But Ultimately, Elemental has to be Elemental, and not MoM.

I have and always will love MOM. It was the game that inspired me to purchase a PC. I actually saw and game and a big, thick hint book and purchased both months before I could even buy a PC.

Over the years, I have lost track of how many games I have played and loved (and hated!), but MOM and MOO2 rank very high up on my list of all time favorites.

Yes, I too was hoping Elemental would recapture some of that Magic from MOM, but for all its goodness, it is no MOM.

I sit waiting and hoping they fix this game up, because in it's current state it is just far too messy (just my opinion folks). It really does make me sad to think after 16 years, some very basic things are being missed in Elemental. I would look hard and look close at what MOM did right and try and get this game moving past the 'Ok, its FUN, but I am already tired of..' into 'Man, I can't STOP playing this game!'

I don't want Elemental to be a MOM clone. I don't think most of us do. What I do want is an immersive game of the caliber MOM was. It was very 'deep' to me.

Elemental does NOT grab me like MOM did.

 (I see the poster above me also got the urge to get his PC because of MOM. Talk about an amazing game huh?)

Here are some things of the things MOM did SO right that I can only wish Elemental did..

From the beginning, I sat there pondering choices at character creation that would impact my game, long term.

Should I spend my 'picks' on 10 books of the same type of magic, thus allowing me to eventually research all 40 spells of that color? Should I dabble in several book colors, knowing full well I would not be able to research all of the spells, but knowing I had a chance of discovering some of the magic spells from loot for the color of magic I had books in? The traits in Elemental are either lackluster, broken, overpowered or a combination of the above.

Speaking of the books.. each one had a theme. All books had great summons, cool damage spells, but some (nature/life) had great city and unit buffs. Sorcery was the great antimagic color, or spells/units that bypasses defenses. Death magic carried negatives to diplomacy, Life carried positives. In elemental I just grab every single spellbook, cause I don't know what kind of shards I might get. Very..boring choice to make. All of the skills to pick were pretty awesome too. The real expensive ones? Like starting on Myrror, I knew right off I would be starting with less spellbooks because of the cost of the pick, but I also knew my world around me would be rich with resources, I would get to pick one of 5 very hardy or magic races with awesome special units and the nodes and towers and such around me would be tough to conquer, but offer awesome rewards. It was a strategic choice I was given and I loved it.

"The player can customize some aspects of generation (land mass size, strength of magic, etc.). The player can also customize the skills, spell choices, and appearance of the player's wizard, as well as choosing one of fourteen races for the wizard's starting city." (taken from the wiki)

Yes, I loved being able to manipulate some variables of my world before entering. I loved trying to match up specific races with special units with certain types of magic for great combos. Loved running around searching for the 'good' mineral veins so I could upgrade my units later on with magic weapons, or looking for nodes close to my city, knowing the awesome magic power I would glean from them.

Heroes came with their OWN mana pools, which grew as they did. I loved knowing magic was a strong part of my game, and that each combat I was going to be able to cast up to my heroes maximum mana in spells IF I CHOSE TO, but also knowing the distance my heroes were from my capital city would affect how much of my personal 'magic' pool they would be dipping into. The pool of mana I had was the limiting factor on spellcasting, and it was great. It worked out so very well.

In Elemental I am annoyed at how little magic I can cast and how extremely long it takes to get mana back. War of MAGIC? Really? It feels more like war of 'I am out of mana, most of my spells missed, and now I am fleeing for my life or club whacking and praying' in the early parts of the game.

Loved seeing my heroes level up, being able to equip great items. Being able to enchant and create my OWN magic items, limited only by the cost of making them. Want an UBER weapon? Going to cost you a LOT of mana and a lot of turns to cast it. Was awesome that you could imbue weapons you created with charges (1 to 4 charges!) of spells you personally knew, like charges of battlefield only summons, or a healing spell!) Lord, Elemental needs stuff like this.

Anyway, I could go on and on..

I really hope they get their stuff together with this game, and at least look back at what games like MOM did well and try to incorporate it, while maintaining their own individuality.

Platoo, verata , noctoo !

By the power of the Necronomicon, Gods of MoM i invoke you here and now !

(I am watching Evil dead 3 atm while i sometimes stop to check the forum )

Then why do you make that choice?

'Then why do you make that choice?'

Because we dont know what to do ?

It has been confirmed they intend to expand into item enchantment and creation in the 1st expansion.   So this is going to happen.

This was covered in early development.  They opted not to have generic 'shaman' type units that use magic like generic arrows or whatever.   And honestly that is not one of the things that made MoM special.  It was extremely powerful, and I enjoyed watching my wizards rain fireballs upon the enemies, it is exactly like normal ranged attacks except it effects magic resistant units and drains mana instead of ammo.  

So if its going to ever be in, it will be mod work (unless they change their mind, or special magical creatures come into account)

yeah, like how charisma effects this in Elemental?  

(actually fame did very little in MoM.  Supposedly it did after the 1.31 patch, but I played the old disc version and Fame really effected very little then other having some enemy wizards kinda* like you more and having a slightly higher chance of random 'bad' units appearing to try to join you.)

remember random huts that give you awesome gear?  I got this awesome bow from a hut next to my starting city that made my sovereign totally awesome.  (functionally the same, and I got a more active role in actually walking to the hut in Elemental)

We just need more gear to collect (since right now the amount of gear is a fairly short list.)

yes and no.  They would have to go out of their way to make it similar enough that they could risk losing to a copy-right lawsuit.  Having new models, 3D graphics, a different name, different music... and everything else was basically direct copy with a name change, it wouldn't violate copyright.  And even if it were (which I remind, it wouldn't because the old wizards/spells/monsters/items/terrain/worlds are all stereotypes) there really isn't anybody who would be able to carry the lawsuit out.  That is why MoM is often mixed with 'abandonware'

Brad specifically decided they were NOT going to make a master of magic game.  They were just going to make a similar game that also filled some of the gap left by Age of Wonders and Heroes of Might and Magic (though HoMM has actually had a sorta recent sequel that was pretty good, except in the DRM department)

I agree that I wish I could see Master of Magic directly ported to the high resolution/3D screen with multiplayer capabilities and updated UI and game concepts.  I still would like to ensure this is going to come true at least as a mod to elemental... (sadly beta 5 was kinda skimmed over, so I'm not exactly sure when I'm going to start on that.  I guess as soon as I'm done with my other projects or next time I'm unemployed)

Another thing is MoM has really big shoes to fill for a small company.   The OP here is to prove it.   I mean, did you play MoM?   To make my point let me quote from a discussion between myself and a roommate.

Roommate: "So, is it the next Master of Magic?"

Me:  "well, its got a ways to go, but I expect after a few patches and an expansion its going to be much better. Its still a little buggy"

Roommate: "Well, I haven't seen any bugs so far.  It looks pretty good, except for the combats a little slow"

Me:  "its true, just once in a blue moon.  Like sometimes it just will crash.  You have to save often."

Roommate: "So it EXACTLY like master of magic."

 Me:  "huh...   yes... yes I guess it is like master of magic, except the spell catigories are a boolean flip, not spell books.  Just follow the same gave save policies and you'll do fine"

Roommate:  "I put up with it to play master of magic, I can put up with it for this game.

(I let him play my game for a bit and he enjoyed it very much.  He plans to buy it as soon as the multiplayer is ready.)

(in case you missed the point.  Everybody who is complaining about it being buggy and unbalanced... are not allowed to mention the words "master of magic" in the same complaint.  Failure to do so will break the rules of irony and likely make you just look like a fool.

That game was so freakishly buggy some people do not even consider the game playable until 1.31.  and it has NEVER been remotely balanced.  To this day some of its special abilities don't work and spell damage math doesn't calculate correctly.)

Because it is the logical one. Currently the spellbooks in Elemental are binary propositions. You either take them or you don't, unlike MoM where you could take none, a few, or many books in the various paths. The key to MoMs spellbooks is that you could never get them all, each one you took in one element meant you were giving up a book in another element (or traits). Making the choice of which books to take was agonizing, and entertaining. The choice you made there completely changed how the game played and so offered immense replayability.

In Elemental all of the spell books are cheap, it's easy to pick them all, especially since there's largely nothing else worth spending points on. You have no idea which shards you'll be near and they're all nearly the same anyways. Picking them all is a no brainier which is boring.

Btw nothing to do with the tread , but the game lacks undeads so bad !!

EWoM will have an extraordinary lifespan.