Quote Originally Posted by Turin
Well what I'm really trying to get at is this: remember when you first started playing RTW back almost a year ago? Remember that "OMG there's this this and this to do and... OH! wow!" and so on and so on. It's not till a week or two in that the defect start to get to you. It's the same thing for BI. The "Oh wow I'm playing BI" feeling wears off REAL fast. For me it didn't even last into the first battle.
I don't have the game, so I may completely wrong in my assumptions.

With RTW, we discovered a totally different map, graphics, management system, etc... Thus, yes I do agree with you when you say there was that "newness effect" and it took us two weeks to realise the game was full of bugs and not challenging at all. Yet, this time, people have had time to get used to playing with the new system. Moreover, it's an expansion, not a brand-new game as CA hammered it.
I knew there would be threads like "BI is a marvel" and "I want my money back". I'm not relying on them at all. What positively drew my attention were Kraxis, Doug or CBR's posts. They've been playing the TW series for so long that I know they see beyond the glossy graphics and features and are sensible enough to understand that any AI has its limits. Not many people had high expectations for BI, but these "veterans" are obviously favourably impressed with the game.
Perhaps RTW bored you so much so that you lost all desire to play the game even before you played this first battle?