This thread is probably dead, but figured I'd add to it anyway. I'm a rebel!
Tops:
- Game is open ended, unbeatable and still has plenty of goals and fun
- Constant support by the Dev team, who are actually pretty damn good at what they do. They're not just volunteers, but actual honest to god experts who know what they're doing
- Following along with #2, Tom being willing to trust the Dev team/older players and step back more into the developing realm
Flops:
- After the War Islands didn't develop into the "expected outcome", war, overall, went down in quantity and quality.
- The Economy system is very important... but also full of numbers and other non-easy things to learn/play. The rewards for figuring out the system aren't in line with the effort required to learn the system. The small(er) number of players who do learn or try to learn the system eventually get fed up and abandon it, to the determent of the whole realm.
- The squeaky wheel gets the grease... except the whole Estates thing. It honestly is a good idea, but the pace of the game started to fall apart when there were more features then players to support them. Yeah, it's a cool project, but once it became clear that the player base was contracting someone should have rewound the clock by 6 months to see what BattleMaster had gone away from
