@nurnberg: Yes, some people are having problems with the game, probably due to hardware issues (I've heard that AMD processor-users have had serious problems). That said, so far, I haven't had any, and the game plays just fine for me. As with all really complex, huge-world games, there are going to be bugs. There's going to be lots of patches, of course, as well as the usual 'unofficial patch' mod (eventually).
In any case, I'm sorry you, and many others are having problems. But it's not as bad as you make it out to be for the rest of us. Remember that if the game is getting good reviews, it means that, clearly, not everyone has been having the same issues as you are.
There's something odd about your scale. Shouldn't 5 be mediocre, and 6 should be 'ok'? If you think the story is truly bad, why do you give it a score above 5?
What evidence is there that games can teach leadership skills? What's the evidence that the person learned the skill IN the game, as opposed to outside the game? I've had experience with dealing with 'leaders' both in rl and in mmos, and on average, I'd say that the best of them are not playing MMOs, or were good leaders before they encountered MMOs (I actually introduced a boss of mine to MMOs -- he was a good leader in rl before then).
Remember that correlation does not equal causality. Unfortunately, that's one of the most common logical errors that people make in rl -- it's kind of why superstition and pseudoscience and conspiracy theories are so rampant today. Wow, you took vitamin C and your cold went away? Nevermind that colds ALWAYS go away without doing anything. So you took a homeopathic drug, and you felt better? You do know that homeopathic drugs are purposefully diluted down so that there are 0 molecules worth of active ingredients in them (look it up).
Anyway, I'm not saying that you can't learn from MMOs, just that in my experience, it's (mostly) not the good leaders in MMOs who end up actually leading, but those with the loudest voices and the bossiest personalities and the biggest egos. In MMOs, you REALLY have to work to seek out the good leaders, because there are just so many truly bad ones.
Fortress Fallout was a dumb name anyway, and it's possible that the only reason why someone would call there game that would be to bank on consumer's confusion, and so that it would come up in search engines for people looking for news about the other Fallout games. I've seen stranger things than this, so it's plausible. It's not so much that Bethesda owns the word Fallout, but that it was a cheesy thing for the other company to do, if it turns out that's how they were thinking.
As far as Scrolls is concerned, that seems less likely to me, and can understand the ridicule they are getting over that. If you search for Elder Scrolls, it's the Bethesda products that will go to the top because they are better matches.
@Karmazyn Check out some let's plays to see what it's like. The game is not for everyone.
BTW, you CAN play in short sessions because you can save anywhere. True, it may be more satisfying to complete a section of the game all in one sitting, but it's still fun otherwise. You are going to want to save frequently anyway.
@miser_cz Just because a reviewer has a different opinion, doesn't mean their opinion is 'clouded'. It just means it's different. But I agree that people should read more than one review of any game that they are considering purchasing.
BTW, I was a backer, and I'm pretty happy with it so far (then again, I haven't gotten that far into the game yet). It's certainly not a perfect game, camera controls could be better, and so on. But it's fun and I've been enjoying it so far and I'll probably have to have at least a second playthrough when I'm done with it., I'm glad that I backed it. A lot of people are complaining that it's not enough like the first two Fallouts. Well, it was never supposed to be, other than in superficial ways.
The Ig Nobel Prize is my second favorite nerdy award, after the Darwin awards. Here's their official website, for anyone interested: http://www.improbable.com/ig/
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