Given the conditions Atari wanted for a MoM license the results for MoO are not unexpected.

Well, after getting MoO3 modded to no end, it was quite playable.

But let's face it: After the desasters that were MoO3 and Temple of Elemental Evil I would hardly be willing to buy a game published by Atari. Same with Ubi after the new version Pools of Radiance.

If I could be sure that SD would not be leashed by the publisher and made to release a buggy piece of mess just to keep a release date I guess I would probably reconsider though.

I would guess StarDock (that is, Brad Wardell) would only be willing to make a MoO3 or StarControl3 (the others don't count) if they would get total controll over the licence. (Which seems to be what prevented them from making MoM2 since Atari didn't want to give those licences up.

I have faith in Stardock, I just don't have faith in Atari. Too bad they can't update Mail Order Monsters and Archon as well!

We are soooo lucky to have elite forum users who possess the inside info on what's happening in gaming-business meetings. 

Personally, I do not want to see a (true) Master of Orion 2 sequel. MoO 2 have a special place in my heart, but I want it to remain in that place, I want it to remain a sweet memory.

Besides, the game is like 10 years old now, its like two (game) generations ago. I don't want Stardock to pull a necromancy stunt and revive MoO from the dead. I dont want to play a zombie game that will always drag along some cherished but outdated feature/detail.

No, I want Stardock and all game companies to make NEW games. To push the genre in new directions, even if they fail, but I still want them to try.

In short, I want something new. Not a remake.

Incidentally, it turns out that wasn't the entire article.  Here's the whole thing:  

Stardock's recently-announced Elemental: War of Magic is the developer's own internal creation -- but it's no secret that the Michigan-based company originally intended to secure the sequel rights to Microprose's 1995 game Master of Magic.

As it turns out, that's not the only lapsed property the Stardock team dreams of getting its hands on -- and not the only one currently owned by Atari, for that matter.

"I actually pitched Atari on a whole idea for a true successor to Star Control," CEO Brad Wardell tells Gamasutra, noting that the game would follow original series developer Toys for Bob's Star Control II rather than the Legend Entertainment-developed Star Control 3 ("We just pretend that never happened," the CEO says of that release).

The exploration-driven space strategy game is said to have influenced Stardock's Galactic Civilizations series as well as Ironclad Games' Sins of a Solar Empire, also published by Stardock.

Novato, California-based Toys for Bob has actually floated the idea of making its own Star Control II sequel, with co-creator Paul Reiche III indicating he has tossed potential design ideas around, but with the company now owned by publisher Activision the proposal seems to be stuck in limbo.

Wardell also mentioned Simtex's Master of Orion as a franchise he would like to see Stardock continue. Like Star Control, its third entry was developed by a different studio -- in this case, Quicksilver Software -- and was not as well-regarded as the original games.

"We'd like to do a Master of Orion 4," said Wardell, noting that those rights are owned by Atari as well. "It would be an updated Master of Orion 2. There would be more to it, but that would be the basis of it."

He took the opportunity to deliver some stern words to those entrusted with a series they did not create: "If you're making a game that ends with '3,' or Something: The Sequel, it should be similar to the original game," he claimed.

Wardell noted: "Don't go off and say, 'I have my own artistic vision.' Okay, good -- so call it something else. Don't ride the coattails of the people who came before you to launch your own artistic vision."

And Elemental, influenced by Master of Magic but not officially based on it, is not the first time Stardock has developed its own property inspired by a best-case hypothetical scenario.

"I would never have done those Galactic Civilizations games in the first place if someone had made a Civilization-in-space game," Wardell laughed. "If [Sid Meier's] Alpha Centauri had been in space [rather than on another] planet, I never would have made it."

The CEO told Gamasutra that Stardock is building up a second full internal development team, and is tossing around various project ideas. "We'd like to do a roleplaying game too," he said, pointing to BioWare classics like Baldur's Gate II and Knights of the Old Republic as examples of the route he would like to take.

It would be "the same style of isometric gameplay -- not first person -- where I have a party that I'm interacting with," he explained, even calling out a specific Baldur's Gate II character.

"I think there are a lot of people who want that. They want to have a party again. They want to have a Minsc-type character in there. You can't have that interesting banter if it's just one guy running around."

"Someone's going to have to do it," he said, tossing out the idea of Demigod collaborator Gas Powered Games as a theoretical example. "If it's not another studio, it's got to be Stardock."

OH YEAH! Baldur's Gate like games. GIMME, GIMME, GIME...!!!

Dragon Age . . . ?

You control the entire party. Four people, I believe.

MOO III had some really nice features, both eye candy and not, that I really liked - but

A: they lost something along the way - the species became 'dry' somehow, without the personality they had in MOO II (I never played MOO I/Starlords). For some reason I don't quite understand, I had the issue with Civ III too - loved Civ I and II, enjoyed Civ IV, Civ III didn't quite work somehow.

B: it was buggy in constantly irritating ways. Not necessarily the worst bugs in the world, but stuff that got on your nerves - finding out a defense didn't work right, a constant this and that kinda thing.

Temple of Elemental Evil I enjoyed right till, for some reason, My PC would go to a slow crawl fighting the Balrog. Since I was typically losing anyway, that was a bit of a problem for me - {G}.

Now the RPG I want to try at some point is Planescape - I'm kinda hoping it comes out on that 'old game' site at some point. That and if I could get ahold of the Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II expansions I could be tempted to give them a run through again. I still consider Baldur's Gate the the best computer RPG where it *felt* like you were in a campaign and could actually do something the DM might not be prepared for - illusory of course, but a knack that even Neverwinter Nights never quite matched - {G}.

Mmmm Nethack!

Jonnan

ebay is your friend.  Seriously, I got both games and expansions for $20 as a bundle, if I remember properly.

Star Empires IV is very good, I also enjoyed Sword of the Stars.  The former is far more like MoO2.   Sword of the Stars brought a few new ideas to the genre and it that "just one more turn" special medicine that kept making me miss my bed time.