I'm happy enough.
So far, there wasn't much there that I didn't at least *think* I already knew, but having confirmation was nice. Having two "Mantic Original" armies for KoW was encouraging though. They'll have all the bases covered, so it's time to take a risk here or there.
Sci-Fi is where the money is, and it's time to take shots for it. Fantasy is what I love, but I won't begrudge them hitting Sci-Fi a bit.
As far as the ogres, I'm not terribly worried about not seeing them, and here's why: what would ogres bring to the game? Other than being large models (which may present certain technical and cost problems), how would they play differently from, say, orcs? I've been trying to envision what they would do to feel different, and I can't see it just yet in KoW. They're also sort of a trap in terms of style. If you make them just fat-bellied guys, then it's "just a GW knock-off". If you make them entirely different, you alienate a lot of the potential customers on an army that seems to be a low draw in the first place. So...again, it's not troubling me.
Similarly, I'm not worried about the delay in producing minis. There are bound to be some technical issues in designing the vehicles that they would want to iron out. Also, there are a lot of different troop types out there already, so getting ones that look slick enough to sell piles of minis to recoup the money may be tricky -- so you make sure you've got a good rule set which may tend to draw people into buying the minis in this case. Plus, there are plenty of people who have piles of minis for games already. For KoW, Mantic needed some way of generating money to get started and so they started selling minis. Right now, they've got seed money. Why not get the jump on the rules test and let the minis follow this time?
I dislike the "paid alpha" idea just in principle. Of course, I can be bought. I'd much rather see it be open to Mantic Fanatics only.
But also, every penny paid in website subscription fees is a penny not put towards a game. I may do it just to get access for this, but we'll see. My regular group are not strong fans of Sci-Fi anyways.
Overall, it wasn't earth-shattering, but I heard a lot of things I liked in it.
