Is development still ongoing?

[Guest mlepinski]

I'm VERY new to EleTD (I just stumbled across this site earlier this week, and have all of two single-player games under my belt).

I think the map is incredible, but it's hard to tell from the forums whether Public Beta 4.0 is the last EleTD, or whether there will be a "release" version of 4.0 at some future point.

In any case, to everyone who has put any time or effort into making this game as good as it is, thank you! Your effort is greatly appreciated.

[Cisz]

Welcome aboard.

Yes, developement is up and running. We just had a new private beta. I would bet on the century we finish the 4.0 in, but we will definitely finish it.

[Karawasa]

I should note that we are in the "polish" phase of the beta cycle (i.e. no new content, just tweaks and such to prepare for release). As Cisz hinted at we don't know when it will be ready, but I will say that relatively (considering when 4.0 PB came out) we are close to done.

[Guest mlepinski]

Wow, I'm impressed by how quickly you guys responded. Just wanted to let you know how much your development efforts are appreciated.

A few years ago a friend from college got me into playing Burbenog TD (and a few other maps of sufficiently low quality that there names have long since been forgotten). I enjoyed it for quite a while, but ultimately it had only so much replayability and I moved on.

However, I've got a business trip next week where I expect to have several evenings alone in a hotel room with poor internet connectivity, and so I was trying to think of offline ways to amuse myself. I thought "Maybe I could go back and try playing that tower defense map with the elemental governors single player". So I went to Google and typed "element tower defense warcraft" (having forgotten the name Burbenog) and up pops "www.eletd.com". I visited the site and quickly realized that this wasn't the map I had played before, this was something different.

On Wednesday, I read the documentation on the website, popped open a game on "normal" (single player) and quickly proceeded to get my butt kicked. (Which was good, because it meant that EleTD wasn't one of those cheap wussy maps, where you can get to wave 50 just by understanding the basics of TD and avoiding brain-dead tower placement). So on Thursday evening I tried again (single player normal) but I started saving the game every couple waves (which is obviously cheating, but it helped me learn the game). I'd play a stage, leak 10 creeps, and realize "Oh, I guess too many of my towers are doing Earth damage", or "Ah, I guess that's why mechanical waves are hard", or "Hmm ... I guess that wasn't a good time to call forth a Tier 3 Elemental" (and then I'd jump back to an earlier stage and try a different mix or placement of towers). Eventually I got to stage 60, but after several attempts I realized that (1) Beating stage 60 would require making different choices MUCH earlier in the game; and (2) It had been over two hours since my wife stopped by to say 'goodnight'.

In any case, it's obvious that I've only scratched the surface, but it's already clear that I have rarely (if ever) played a computer game with this combination of fun and strategic depth. And the presence of options like "Chaos" and "Random" ensures that the game will have re-playability long after I've figured out how to beat stage 60 (and who knows, some day I might even play multiplayer ).

So, thanks again!

[Cisz]

That's a really pleasant story.

It reminds me of when I tried to find something else after I finally beat Blizzard TD. It didn't take me long to realize that most custom maps are horrible. So I figured: If only there was some map with a proper versioning, like an official site, to find out what's map and what's fake. That was 2 weeks after the first eletd forum went online.

Hope you return to join the community, we can allways use some more people.