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One shard to rule them all.

<span class="bold">Sorcerer King - Rivals</span>, a stand-alone expansion in the ruthless fantasy world of deadly magic and even deadlier tactical manoeuvres, is now available, DRM-free on GOG.com with GOG Galaxy support for achievements.

The Sorcerer King rules supreme but not unchallenged. As he marches towards godhood, aided by his endless minions and terrible powers, you are in the unique position to make a critical choice: will you try and put an end to his tyranny or will you claim the ultimate prize for yourself?

Two new factions join the fray: become the dwarven king of the Frozen Realm or achieve Ascension with the help of the undead armies under the control of your necromantic spells. But whatever your choice in tactics, sooner or later you will have to conquer the numerous new quests and face the Sorcerer King's new lieutenants, whose only purpose is to eliminate any threat to their master's malevolent plans.

Fight for peace, glory, or supremacy in the stand-alone expansion <span class="bold">Sorcerer King - Rivals</span>, DRM-free on GOG.com.
Those who already own Sorcerer King, get a 50% loyalty discount.


https://www.youtube.com/embed/r_jfg2WmoEA
Post edited September 23, 2016 by maladr0Id
Been looking forward to this :)
Campaign or just free play?
uh, lot's of releases today... is this Christmas already?
Wishlisted for now. There might be 3-20 DLCs still coming.
*scratches head*

Why standalone expansion? Is there a particular reason? Why not release it as a normal expansion and offer the original with a discount for those who don't have it yet?
To offer a loyalty discount to the owners of the main game compares very favourably with the too common a practice to punish the early buyers by offering, upon a dlc release, a combined discount on the main game + dlc but no discount at all on the dlc. Thanks !
So... should I still be looking to buy the original game and this or is this one of those new editions that basically replaces the original that Stardock seen to do?
Great, have original on GOG so I was hoping this one will get here as well :)
Greetings - My apologies for the confusion but the 25% discount on Sorcerer King: Rivals was an error in communications on our part. The updated price will be reflected on GOG.com shortly.

Anyone who already owns Sorcerer King will continue to receive the special discount price to Sorcerer King: Rivals, which does not expire.
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sd.yarlen: Greetings - My apologies for the confusion but the 25% discount on Sorcerer King: Rivals was an error in communications on our part. The updated price will be reflected on GOG.com shortly.

Anyone who already owns Sorcerer King will continue to receive the special discount price to Sorcerer King: Rivals, which does not expire.
And when will Stardock let us to redeem the games from our Stardock account on Gog ?
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Vythonaut: *scratches head*

Why standalone expansion? Is there a particular reason? Why not release it as a normal expansion and offer the original with a discount for those who don't have it yet?
This was from Ashes of the Singularity but a lot of it applies to this game as well:

The Expandalone cleansing thread
Greetings!

There have been a number of users who have expressed confusion as to why Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation is an expand-alone rather than a DLC for the base game, Ashes of the Singularity.

Whenever possible, we prefer to keep the game as a single code base under a single product ID. It's a lot easier for us to manage and market and it's a lot easier for the customer to understand. We did this, for example, with Galactic Civilizations III: Mercenaries which is an expansion pack to GalCiv III that we sell as a DLC to GalCiv III.

So what is different here?

Basically, it's the scale of the changes in Escalation that necessitates it. Under the covers, there's going to be a lot of data changes to the way we handle the new maps, the new units and the new features and at the end of the day, it was a lot easier for us to do this by having Escalation have its own install directory that is different from the base game.

Let me give you guys a super obvious example of something that came up during balance testing in Escalation:

Escalation has a unit called the Strategic bomber. It does massive damage to structures. Escalation also still has the Hades bomber which exists in Ashes. But to balance the two, we made the Hades do a bit less damage but increased its AOE - but only in Escalation. Thus, you have a given unit with slightly different stats between the base game and Escalation.

And that sort of thing goes right down the line. Obviously, with enough time and tech, you could virtualize all this so that it would know if you were playing base Ashes to use this Hades bomber but that is a non-trivial technical challenge when you can do what has always been done in RTS games: Create a new install directory. But to do that, you have to be a new, stand-alone product ID.

Price wise, for existing players of Ashes of the Singularity, it's no different than any other expansion. Like the Mercenaries expansion for GalCiv III, Escalation is $19.99 for existing owners. The only difference from the customer is that it's a different item in your Steam library.

Historically, this has been the way expansions were done for the same reasons as they are done here.

Examples:
Galactic Civilizations II
Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar
Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor
Supreme Commander
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance
Sins of a Solar Empire
Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Fallen Enchantress
Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes
Fallout
Fallout: New Vegas
Galactic Civilizations I
Galactic Civilizations I: Altarian Prophecy

In each case, the base game and the expansions were stand-alones rather than handled as DLC. And in each case it was for the same reason, under the covers, too much "stuff" had changed to easily support the different code-bases.

But the main point I want to communicate here is: Nothing changes for the end users other than there will be an extra item in their Steam library and a specific forum here on Steam for the expansion.

New users: $39.99
Existing customers: $19.99

During the development of Escalation we put in a lot of work so that future expansions can be internally versioned easier. This was one of the things we did with GalCiv III: Mercenaries that allowed Mercenaries to be handled as a DLC instead of an expand alone. On the other hand, Mercenaries was released nearly a year after GalCiv III.

We don't expect future expansions to require a separate product (or at the very least, we'll be able to develop it such that there's a launch menu that lets you pick so that it's still a single product on the Steam store).

Anyway, I hope this helps make things clearer and on behalf of Stardock, we are truly sorry for the confusion and general messiness of this. Normally, the sausage factory of game development is well hidden and this is a case where it was seen by the public.

I want to emphasize that the base game of Ashes of the Singularity will continue to be frequently updated. Under the covers, the source control system lets us easily integrate changes in one into the other so both will get updated roughly at the same time.

If you have any questions, post here.

Thanks!
Original Post
Post edited September 22, 2016 by tremere110
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tremere110: This was from Ashes of the Singularity but a lot of it applies to this game as well:
Oh, alright then, puzzle solved -- Thank you!
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Post edited September 22, 2016 by Fairfox
Cool release, but I haven't even had time to play Sorcerer King. So wishlisted for now as I'm not eager to grow the backlog.