3d battle scenes are looking horrible! :(

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Bah,
Entertainment economy doesn't work on a "quality price" basis, crappy movies and books cost as much as good ones !
It's just a matter of Return on Investment : how many copies will sell regarding development effort.
Dom2 costed something like 2-3 man/years, and will sell maybe 5,000 : that's only 250,000 bucks for Shrapnel and Illwinter to reward their work. not that much. Before that Illwinter sold the games but didn't expect to make a linving of it.

OTOH, a big hit can sell 1,000,000, and so generates 50M money : even if half of that is going to the retail stores, there still is 25M for publishers and devs ... That's more than enough even for a 2-year 20 devs teams !
AoW2 falls somewhere inbetween, I don't have the sales figures, maybe in the 100,000 range or more.

Anyway, Mortifer, I gave you 3 stars