Talk:Master of Magic

NPOV tag

The criticisms section has some claims that are unsupported and aren't NPOV

If you could have a "critics such as Y claim" type of statements, it would ease the NPOV issue. i kan reed 20:03, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry, I overhauled the whole page :) -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 20:09, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Quality

Who wrecked this articles quality? There were over 20 mistakes in both spelling and grammar in the opening section alone! Ive attempted to fix them but I dont have time to go over the whole article right now. Poor form guys. --Havoc8844 22:43, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Strategy guide

Am i the only one who thinks this is starting to read like a strategy guide? i kan reed

Correction to the 'Magic types' section.

The statement that a wizard following the Mirrored Path (Life or Death) can find a book of the opposite color is not correct. A wizard with Life magic will be finding books of Life even in dungeons/temples/lairs populated by Death creatures and vice versa.

Once or twice I found Life books while playing Death / Death+Nature. I'm not sure if it was with 1.31 patch or before though.

The retorts of Infernal/Divine Power can be found regardless of Life/Death alignment but their effect is identical. It is possible to find both retorts in a single game though their effect will not be cummulative.

MoM 2 / rebuild attempts

"Most of them never advanced past the alpha version or were abandoned; however, one was completely finished albeit with substantial modifications of the game rules."

can someone verify this please. I'm not aware of any version tthat could be considered remotely 'finished'. Thanx chrisboote 14:28, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Leylines is a game inspired by MoM. It was finished and you can play it. The rules are quite different, however, from the original MoM, hence this sentence. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 15:37, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I went looking for Leylines and I could find links to it in many places but not a single one worked - even on foreign sites. The official site is very short on information and there is only one screenshot. There is so very little information about this game out there that I wonder if it is a hoax. 70.242.200.239 19:26, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

While it is not remotely "finished", I am still very much actively working on my MoM remake (see http://www.roughseas.ca/momime), so can this please be relisted? MoM Clone, the only other remake which seemed to show some promise, does unfortuantely seem to have been abandoned. [Implode]

Sequel talk?

This article contradicts itself by saying that Stardock is currently developing a sequel (at the top) and no sequel is planned (at the bottom). Which is it? Last I heard, Atari (vis a vis Infogrammes, who got it from Hasbro, who bought Microprose) had sold the rights to all old Microprose stuff to Sid Meier. Anybody got anything here? I didn't see a citation, so...

both are rampant speculation. I'm currently feeling too lazy to clean it up. i kan reed 13:12, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Nah, Stardock did try to bid for the license, but it fell through. So they decided to go ahead with their own mom clone (will be called something else obviously). That's the "Sequel" that is being referred to in the article (also see cite). I'll fix it Aarontay 19:20, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Artificial Intelligence

I remember with the original boxed game that wizard fortresses were poorly defended and it was easy to take them over and win. Years later I downloaded a different version from their website that fixed this. Did anyone else have this same experience? Should this initial shortcoming be mentioned? Also, I'm surprised there's not more mention of the "hero" strategy where a single hero is built up to exceedingly powerful proportions and can basically walk from town to town leveling it. Any thoughts? Bbagot 08:21, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Version 1.2 and 1.31 fixed many bugs and balance issues that were present in the release version, significantly increasing the difficulty of the game. The two things you mentioned were pretty much unchanged, though - a wizard's fortress doesn't increase a town's resistance to attack directly in any way, the only drawback to attacking a wizard's fortress as opposed to any other well-defended city is that the defending wizard gets his skill doubled, allowing him to cast more spells throughout the battle. You can overcome even this by making several 'feint' attacks on other cities in the same turn that you attack the capital to drain his casting capability, as the AI will always cast spells every combat round that it has the mana to do so. Also, losing just your tower does not result in the loss of the game - if you get banished due to bad luck and not weakness, your empire can probably hold off the attacker without your spells until you have a chance to cast the Spell of Return and come back to the game unless it's really early in the game.

Heroes still have the potential to become extremely powerful, but they are usually vulnerable to direct damage spells cast by your wizard. In later versions the AI uses this strategy very well, making it extremely risky to send your powerful heroes into combat against opposing wizards - high level heroes can dominate in combat against the environment but not warfare, unless you use strategies like the one I mentioned in the paragraph above to make sure the opposing wizard can't use magic against your heroes in battle. 70.242.200.239 19:45, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Magic: The Gathering similarities?

The game has uncanny similarities to MTG. Has this been discussed by any reliable source?-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  23:46, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Having played both games, I'm not really sure what you're referring to. Other than the fact that both games have magic of different types and allow you to cast spells and summon creatures (hardly unique ideas), there's not really much in common. Successful play in Master of Magic requires spending a considerable amount of time in properly developing your cities and populations. There's nothing even remotely close to those elements in M:TG. --Junior612 22:06, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

This is a really old and tired debate that has gone on the net for ages. Supporters of the MTG influenced MOM or vice versa would point out to the fact that besides the 5 color magic , there are many spells with exactly the same names (and not standard d&d names even) . E.g Dark rituals , mana leak. Their opponents would say this is just coincidence and/or that such systems are pretty generic. Obviously MOM is different from MTG in that the former is based on civilization and the latter is a CCG, but the feel of the magic system is quite close. The release dates of the two games themselves can't really help, because they are pretty close (there is some uncertainty on when MTG/MOM was released also, if you take into account play testing/beta), and nobody knows for sure except the designers of the magic whether they were aware of MTG when they were working on MOM. Speculation is that they probably weren't at least when they first started the project (assuming fairly long development times),but it is not impossible for them to become aware of it in the later stages.. but this is all original research.Aarontay 04:15, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it's fairly obvious that MoM was influenced by MTG. I was a player of the card game when I bought Master of Magic and (to me) it was obviously inspired by MTG when I first played it. As pointed out, many of the spells have the same names and the same general effects, the creatures often have the same names and even same relative strengths/abilities, and the categorization of the spells as "Common", "Uncommon", "Rare", and "Very Rare" even matches up with the cards. If MoM really did come first, then MTG had to have stolen a lot of it's concepts from the game. It plays like a card game version of MoM. 70.242.200.239 19:33, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Specific concerns on Gameplay section

I have a few specific concerns, so I'll highlight them here

1. Over-reliance on primary sources. Specifically, it makes it's own conclusions from the manual, which is a no-no according to WP:ATT.
2. Lengthy focus on material with low cultural impact. The section is very long and discusses details that are more or less irrelevant to the importance of the game.
3. Acts much like a game-guide, explaining how most of the game mechanics work, which goes against the policies regarding writing about video games.

If there appears to be a reasonable consensus/lack of discussion on the matter, I'll reduce the section to a simpler summary, which relies upon secondary sources. i kan reed 23:36, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

-I love the game, but I agree, especially regarding the sources. The manual was woefully inaccurate at the release of the game, and by v1.31 has even more inaccuracies. I think it could be described adequately in a couple of paragraphs if we cut out the game-guide material, i.e. "Master of Magic is an empire-building strategy game that is very similar to Civilization in it's gameplay. Players take on the role of a wizard with customizable abilities who can effect the game with a wide variety of spells. Many people claim there are many similarities between the magic system of Master of Magic and that of the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering." 69.155.215.8 07:16, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

2007 Rewrite

I am going to undertake the task to rewrite this article into more of a Wiki-article describing Master of Magic to those who have never played it, and less of a "game-guide" as per some of the observations above. The aim is to:

• reduce the gameplay section to be less detailed but descriptive enough to emphasize the spirit of the game (This will definitely help to reduce the length of the article)
• promote what makes the game stand out in its genre at that time without going into minute details
• point out with sources that it is a game entrenched in the minds of strategy gamers even till now
• bring in established sources for references instead of over reliance on the game manual (If anyone has any game magazines from the 1990's talking about Master of Magic, that would be great)
• remove any links to sites which might bring legal issues to Wikipedia (Unfortunately that would mean Underdogs)

It is likely that the structure of the article would be:

• Lead-in
• Plot and setting
• Gameplay
  • Magic
  • Combat
• Reception
  • Legacy
• References
• External links

There will likely be no development section as sources are scarce for it, and I believe MoM's development was low-hype and rarely reported of. Of course, if any one knows sources chronicling such details - like the history of its development, how and why decisions were to implement the game as it was, and such - that would be of help to establish such a section.

Any help (sources, screenshots) is very welcome. Jappalang 05:35, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Changes are in, please critique. Appreciate help on expanding product's development with source. Jappalang 03:46, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

This looks way better. So many fewer sources read "the manual." I'm kind of distressed that there really doesn't appear to be any information about the history of its planning and development. There was no E3 until a year after MoM was released, and I doubt there's any internet documentation of its announcement. I've got access to lexisnexus so I'm looking there. i kan reed 05:11, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Follow-up: All I can find from print sources is some earning reports that state Master of Magic was among Spectrum Holobyte's top sellers, and a brief statement by a PR rep stating that "Master of Magic" was meant to be part of a broader series of "Master of X" games. The former is not really informative about the game, and the latter is trivia at best. I'm not sure there is published information about the development of MoM i kan reed 18:13, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

WP:VG assessment

This is still a B, and I reckon it's low-importance. This is currently nicer than a lot of B-Class articles, but there's still quite a bit of work to do before wandering down the road to GA. Here are some ideas for your idea-implicating pleasure:

• Currently the gameplay section is quite long and goes into excessive detail per WP:NOT#GUIDE. If it's not useful to someone who doesn't want to play the game, then it shouldn't be in the article.
• This article needs more sources, though I understand that given the age of the game in question this may be tricky.
• Do you really need all of those screenshots?
• There's a setting part, but no real plot part of the "Plot and setting" section.
• As is mentioned above in the Todo list, a development section would be really nice.

Hope this helps, Una Laguna^Talk 16:41, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the assessment, and feedback. I will try to see if I am able to brush up the article further. Jappalang 16:07, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Rating it as low priority within gaming is absurd. Should be high, or mid at least. Also, I didn't know screenshots=bad, but the banishment screenshot can be removed. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 16:26, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

I had a look at the article and this, and I think you're right when you say mid. My bad. Una Laguna^Talk 10:38, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Game Informer Nov 2007 article

Said issue of Game Informer has stated Stardock is making a remake/sequel of Master of Magic (as contributed by TheodoreLarson). However kryo of Stardock has clarified in their forums this is false.[1] (Link posted here instead of in the WP as it is a forum post.) So officially there is still no remake/sequel for Master of Magic. Jappalang 16:06, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Release date

I did a quick research on the release date of Master of Magic, and I've come to the conclusion that this game has been officially released in late 1994. There is a preview of Master of Magic in the Computer Gaming World number 122 of September 1994 ([2]) and a complete review in December ([3]). I also found another proof in the Google archive of comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic ([4]):

I called a couple of mail order software companies and they have a release date of mid October, which seems to follow the usual pattern of two or three weeks past the dates quoted by magazines that review the games.

So I think that the release date should be corrected since it seems that the year 1993 is completely wrong. --99.246.165.220 (talk) 17:29, 19 February 2009 (UTC) Luca

• Seems reasonable, unfortunately your first 2 links aren't all that useful. Just because a magazine reviewed the game on those dates isn't 100% proof of when exactly the game was released. It might have actually come out in 1993 (I remember playing it in the fall of 1994 and did not exactly have a source of 'current' games at that point, so it might have been 'old'). Anyway, we need a better source to change this. I've tagged it for sources in the meantime. DP76764 (Talk) 19:04, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

The MobyGames website (Master of Magic for DOS) reports a release date of 1994 and ALL the reviews mentioned in "The Press Says" section are dated 1994 or later. The Coming Soon Magazine website too (Master of Magic) reports a release date of October 1994, confirming my previous conclusions. Instead there is no reliable source that reports a release date of 1993, except for Wikipedia.--99.246.165.220 (talk) 21:37, 19 February 2009 (UTC) Luca

• Wikipedia isn't technically a 'source' ;) The Moby article might be adequate, I'm just not sure if it qualifies as a reliable source. If you look at the bottom of the article, it was apparently submitted by a 'user' at the site. I don't think that meets WP:RS standards. But what the heck, lets give it a try. DP76764 (Talk) 21:55, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I also found that both imdb.com ([5]) and Amazon.com ([6]) report a release date of 1994. I think we should change any reference related to the release date of Master of Magic (for example the first line of the page that states that is a "1993 PC game" or the 1993 in video gaming page).--99.246.165.220 (talk) 22:42, 19 February 2009 (UTC) Luca

• take a look here [7]. How could this have won an award in 1993 if it wasn't released already? DP76764 (Talk) 22:57, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

That's exactly the source of error! If you read carefully that page you will find only that "Master of Magic was named Runner-up Strategy Game of the Year by Strategy Plus magazine", without specifying any year. In fact the same website you are referring to states that Master of Magic has been released in October 1994 as I reported before ([8]). --99.246.165.220 (talk) 23:08, 19 February 2009 (UTC) Luca

• Well, that's sorted out then. =) Only 1 last piece to change from 1993 in the article. DP76764 (Talk) 23:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

"Master of Magic falls among the games which pioneered the 4X game genre."

That's not at all what the IGN review says. It merely lists it in the chronology of Simtext games, not in the greater context. That line should be rewritten, but I don't know enough about the game to rework that paragraph appropriately. 65.30.31.2 (talk) 05:29, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

this could really use

mentioning of the OS it was released for - rather basic info for an encyclopedia article --92.202.76.239 (talk) 19:01, 1 April 2010 (UTC)