After 25 years, Master of Magic has recently added an official update!
Well technically, some guy on the internet spent five years making a binary patch to fix a lot of bugs and add a lot of balance to the original game. Then some tiny publisher bought the official rights to the original game from whoever owns the Atari brand these days. The new publisher worked out a deal with the random internet guy and his patch became an official update.
I've been playing the heck out of it lately and it's great!
I just found out about CoM a couple months ago and have been playing it a fair bit since then. I get the complaints, but it's still pretty playable to me, and it's been quite a long time since I played the original, so I may not quite remember how it used to play. It's overall enjoyable and I'm impressed that the guy make the changes he did by patching the binary. I think there's a few aspects to the CoM patch.
1. General bug fixes (fixing diplomacy to actually work, making some spells actually do what they say they do, that kind of thing). While these cause some changes to gameplay, I imagine most people aren't complaining about this.
2. Balance fixes - things like not being able to pick 11 books, start with a rare summon, and wreck the world early on (hello, formerly completely broken Wraiths). Certainly it's a reasonable change to make, but it's definitely not fun for people who just want to, well, wreck the world.
3. AI/Balance changes. The writer of the patch has some design goals that aren't the same as the original game - in particular, more of a focus on magic in big overland spells and such, and less on invincible heroes. This, coupled with some AI fixes in prioritizing spells, really messes with people used to playing the old game. Between these and the resource buffs AI players get even at pretty low levels, you're going to be facing some pretty ugly combats by midgame. Certainly in my play so far this is least "fun" part I've found - basically fighting uphill by abusing the remaining problems in the AI (e.g., not protecting navies well), and not really getting to use heroes against the AI unless you have the right defensive spells, since the AI is much better at just pelting your heroes with direct damage.
Overall I think it's a better game, but possibly not a more "fun" one, depending on your tastes. I remember seeing Brian Reynolds (Civ 2, Alpha Centauri) give a talk once where he said that while everyone complains about how 4X game AIs just cheat with more resources at higher difficulties, the large majority of players just want to be able to beat the midrange AIs with minor exploits, and improving the actual logic of the AIs actually made them enjoy the game less. I can definitely see that happening here as well.
Edit: I should add that there's at least 2 big QoL improvements in CoM: build queues (slightly wonky, but better than nothing), and an earlier win condition for conquest, so you don't need to bother conquering the entire world once it's obvious you're going to win.
Last time I checked, "Caster of Magic" is a mod for Master of Magic. It's based on the fan-made patch 'insecticide', by kyrub. Insecticide is very conservative about gameplay changes. I don't know about CoM (I didn't try it because I didn't like the change list), but kyrub actually scaled down some artificial AI bonuses because smarter behavior makes up for that.
Overall, I think the author of the article didn't research the unofficial patches very well.
I was filled with nostalgia seeing the title; alas, this is not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Magic_(1985_video_ga... , which is 35 years old by now - an update for this would really be impressive, given that the platforms it ran on were C64 and ZX Spectrum.
While playtesting kyrub's 'insecticide' patch, we found an amusing bug. The Invulnerability spell is impossible to dispel! It's the last on the list of spells, and suffers from the off-by-one bug.
This is why Guardian Spirit + Invulnerability starting strategy is so popular. The invulnerability is literally impossible to dispel without the player-made patch!
There have been a lot of upstarts to new gaming, such as Stadia which people are basically waiting for google to prematurely kill.
It's hard to make a splash without solid first party games / exclusives. The incumbents flush with cash can do those, but upstarts?
Usually these new platforms launch with at least 100 million in marketing. It would seem one thing to try aside from bootstrapping a billion dollars in high risk first party dev/publishing, is to take a small amount (10 million) and do something like this:
Acquire beloved old games, fix them up a bit with "new stuff", from a swathe of former platforms over the years. At a minimum, a lot of those, like this one, have fan patches, romhacks, custom level packs, that can be curated and packaged.
I think we'll see a lot more of this, just like the 90's saw a huge influx of people purchasing and fixing up old Mustangs and Camaros as a business for those people that could afford the car they always wanted as a teenager.
You can actually see this happening with titles on Steam, but generally not with items this old. A "remastered" version is released 5-10 years after the original with updated graphics and some bug fixes, maybe even some updates to take advantage of what became standard in the genre afterwards. It doesn't always go well though, I was just reading today about Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning on Steam (am update of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning from 2012) where people are complaining that while they did make it look somewhat better, and they did add a few useful enhancements to the looting system, not only did they not fix previously well known game breaking bugs, but they introduced new ones in addition.[1] The reviews were saying the original was better (and still great), but alas, it's no longer for sale (on Steam at least) because of the re-release.
What's interesting is that based on some of the material on the page, there's an upcoming addition/DLC coming out, so if played well, this strategy could be very lucrative for a team that's design and content creation oriented and skilled, while not having to worry as much about the technical aspects of designing the game and engine. There's something to be said for this. There's a reason Fallout: New Vegas is considered by many to be the better Fallout 3 game. There's a much more cohesive story line to it, and more interesting content in general, and I have to imagine not having to worry as much about getting the engine right freed the studio that made New Vegas (Obsidian, which is not the studio that made Fallout 3 and the engine which was Bethesda) to focus on that.
I thought this was about the 1985 RPG of the same name. The amazing Rob Hubbard soundtrack immediately played in my head when I clicked through, only to find screenshots of a completely unfamiliar game. It took me almost half an hour to figure out that my brain hadn't played tricks on me, and that there are two completely different games with the same name!
One of the amazing games!
At some point I really wished there were a remake (that would be as close to the original as possible just with updated graphics, etc.). Though there are games that borrow some of the mechanics I still think MoM had a great balance of playability, depth and atmosphere.
Well technically, some guy on the internet spent five years making a binary patch to fix a lot of bugs and add a lot of balance to the original game. Then some tiny publisher bought the official rights to the original game from whoever owns the Atari brand these days. The new publisher worked out a deal with the random internet guy and his patch became an official update.
I've been playing the heck out of it lately and it's great!
https://www.slitherine.com/game/master-of-magic-caster-of-ma...
Also available on Steam and GOG. But, I'd suggest giving the new publisher the revenue directly.
Documentation of the changes: http://seravy.x10.mx/CasterofMagic/CASTEROFMAGIC.HTML