Talk:Etherlords

Vote for Deletion
This article survived a Vote for Deletion. The discussion can be found here. -Splash 01:03, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

M:tG
I recently obtained a copy of Etherlords I from my local game shop and as soon as I began playing, it was obvious that the game is virtually identical to Magic: The Gathering. I am under the impression that there is a patent (albeit a controversial one) on the gameplay mechanics of Magic, which this game clearly mimics. How does this game survive having so much in common with Magic? Does the company pay royalties? I'm very curious.

-> I think that Etherlords has about as much in common with MTG like with any other collectible card game. And there are many, many of them. Just some differences between Etherlords and MTG: * no tapping cards in EL * mana increasing gradually based on the character level and is not regularly gained by cards * much simpler system in EL - only 2 phases rather than... well, i think it was 7 in MTG * colours decide the whole deck. cannot mix colours. so there is no coloured ether, also.

It's not "virtually identical" ;). It's just similar. A bit more similar to MTG than to other CCGs, but well... ---

The Magic patent is based heavily on the mechanic of "tapping" cards sideways, and Etherlords doesn't use cards to represent creatures that are in-play. While it is fairly obvious that combat in Etherlords borrows heavily from Magic's duel system, there are enough differences (namely, that Etherlords is much simpler) that it's dishonest to claim that they are "virtually identical". Plus, dueling is only a part of the Etherlords game -- there is also the adventure map portion which has no equivalent in the Magic card game.24.6.99.30 02:55, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Not an RPG
The description previously referred to the title as a "strategy-based role playing game". This is incorrect, as it is not a role-playing game at all. The hero characters do not persist between scenarios, nor do they have distinct personalities. Just because things can have "levels" does not make the game an RPG. Etherlords is purely a strategy game with some gameplay contrivances that loosely resemble selective elements of an RPG system. I therefore removed the "role playing" portion from the game's description. 24.6.99.30 03:19, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Do you gain levels over time? If so, then that would be a definite RPG characteristic. SharkD 03:34, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Home page
I have updated the link to the official site. It used to point to etherlords.com, which is a site primarily for promoting EL2, and as of this date the site's section for EL1 is broken. So I changed the link to point to Nival's (the developer) EL1 page, which still has good info as well as hosting the patch. Note that the publisher of EL1, Fishtank, seems to no longer be in business. So I think Nival's mini-site is currently the best "official" site for EL1. 24.6.99.30 10:02, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Etherlords.jpg
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BetacommandBot 05:15, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

4X
At the risk of sounding too much like the "it's not an RPG" guy, I'm not sure this game qualifies as 4X. It is essentially the Heroes of Might and Magic series combined with a card-dueling element. The empire-building stuff that makes up most of the 4X strategy sub-genre is basically absent. Your "empire building" is limited to securing a few pre-placed structures on each map, if my memory serves. --Daeval (talk) 19:52, 6 April 2008 (UTC)