Two short points:

Quote Originally Posted by Odin
A lot of us here have been around the bloc on many games, this is hardly a new circumstance and expecting CA to change a business model (which they may or may not be contractually obligated to enforce) negates your power as the end user, and devalues your critiques of thier practices.
Despite my reservations when the demo came out, I expected that SEGA's ownership would have an effect on the final product, so I purchased M2TW. I expect that others felt the same way. OTOH, I'll look at Empires but unless I see a complete reversal of gameplay I wont buy it since I definitely didnt get my moneys worth from M2TW (which I could only stand for 50 turns or so).

As for the mods here, they've been pretty impartial most of the time but during the backlash against RTW they were overly protective of their relationship with CA. CA totally overreacted to the attempts to organize and voice our complaints and they incited the worst excesses. IIRC, CA were particularly incensed by the movement to publish our opinions at Amazon. IMO, the reason this thread exists, and may be considered helpful, is because CA's attitude/reaction to criticism has changed. Perhaps they're more used to it now.