You questions betrays the answer.
Yes this game does have the best gamplay graphics mechanisms etc. It is a substantially better game than the others you mention. Gas Powered Games did a really good job. A few tweaks were needed, but nothing that could not be patched out in no time.
It even had a large initial influx of players. So you would think that it had all the ingredients for success. But as with other games published by Stardock they screwed up their side of the deal. The networking and game stats were awful at launch. It was full of connection bugs. It was painful to try and play and favour points kept getting wiped. As a result all the initially interested players were dropping away as fast as joining, so the game never managed to achieve critical mass, and the game never took off as a viable multi-player sensation as it could well have been. Only the most committed stardock fans stuck around. I myself dropped out for a good couple of years after launch after getting so frustrated with the connection problems.
Once you have failed to achieve critical mass you’re in trouble. Number of games going gets smaller and wait times shoot up. Players drop away faster.
We had a boost when the game went to steam, but this game has a high learning curve and many of us were several epochs in by then. You have to be willing to get annihilated over and over again. But what’s worse, you need to put up with your teammates wailing on you for ruining their game. Then once your stats are like 20 games played 1 game won you have to join a lobby, wait in it 25 minutes, then get booted without a word when 6 experienced players are ready to go. I remember telling everyone back then give noobs a go or the game will never launch, but then then another player would join the lobby and immediately comment “kick the nub”. No wonder only a handful of player joined us since this went on steam.
What we needed was more Darkaliths that mentored noobs, and a lot less IN1’s* that abused them. But on average we had more of the latter types than the former types.
That said, my demigod experience is now to start a lobby and wait half an hour while watching a video or playing some windowed indie game and then once you have your first game going you can roll from one to the next pretty quickly.
I would love it if there was a Demigod 2, but I think Gas Powered games was on the verge of going under and had to sell out to another studio, unless the new owners want to take a massive gamble there will never be a Demigod2. We will have to just keep going between those of us that are left. I’m actually amazed it has hung to life this long. It would only take for about 10 of the regular players to drop away from here to push the wait times beyond reasonable. And final death would await.
*To be fair and not wanting to be misleading IN1 did abuse the vast majority of all players not just noobs. And it was funny watching him suck up to the pro-set.
