It's too early too take such a poll yet. For starters, I don't even see much "rage" at the moment. There is a significant amount of dissatisfaction, as has to be expected from a sequel that's a rather wide departure from previous installments of the series. But whether that develops into "rage" or simply fades out as people get used to the game is something we can't know yet. From the current reactions I'd say that both roads are possible.
Also, in my opinion, the assessment that there was "rage" at Civ4's release is simply wrong. There was a too high amount of people who had technical issues, these were dissatisfied. However, there was very little criticism (compared to other game's sequels) about the direction in which the game had developed. Most criticism focused on technical issues, the high demands of a 3d engine that many players regarded as unnecessary fluff, slow turn times, etc. About the only gameplay issues that saw significant coverage were the implementation of artillery as kamikaze defense softeners, and complaints about an inability to wage war due to being broke. The latter faded out as people learned the new economic system, the former was solved by a mod for the people that wanted it. But in general, the majority of complaints about Civ4 were in the line of "why doesn't let the engine let me play this apparently great game?" or "why can't I play larger maps?".
This was probably due to the fact that many changes in Civ4 were very obvious improvements. Nobody
liked the corruption system in Civ3 or the fact that the AI automagically knew which of your cities had which defenders, or where on the map an oil or coal resource would show up thousands of years in the future. Some people might not have cared much, some disliked the Civ4 economy, but
nobody said "let's go back to the corruption system and AI omniscience, these were great features." I think Civ5 has a bit of a harder time than Civ4 in that regard because its predecessor had no flaws which were so obvious that a consensus has formed about them.
In any case, Civ4 was perceived quite well. In polls, about 80% of voters immediately preferred Civ4 to Civ3 (except one poll which had its results skewed by some massive campaigning in the Civ3 forum). While the number itself doesn't say much due to the way the votes are collected, you
can compare it to other polls taken for other games in similar circumstances. For example, take Oblivion, another sequel to a much-cherished predecessor, which also departed significantly from the previous game's direction and design philosophy. In polls in the Oblivion forum, barely 50% of people preferred it over Morrowind.
There weren't a lot of people upset about civ4. The only people who were upset were people who didn't get their pre-orders on release day and people who had technical issues preventing them from running the game.
Yep. You said in fewer words the things that I needed a novel to bring across. Perhaps I should work on my style, but then again I really
like being a bit obsessive with details.
