[ioticus]

Chazar said:

Hmm, maybe the fact that this bug went unnoticed for so long shows that the spells we not regarded as useful by many players? Of course, it could have been the other way around: players ignored the spells because of the bug, but I really doubt it if you look at this forum and see how neatly almost all parts of the game have been dissected by the players...

In any way, I tend to agree that non-functioning spells are certainly worse bugs than merely malfunctioning spells. However, long-term-unnoticed non-functioning spells might first of all be rather a balancing issue...

Or maybe the spells were broken in a later patch. The spells look very useful to me, since you're getting a 20 point defense bonus for each earth gem invested. That's pretty cheap, I think. It could make the difference of getting reinforcements to the castle in time or losing it to an attack. It's not just that though, I think it gives the defender a cool way of boosting his defense if he buys a low defense building like a watch tower. Especially for a high level earth mage, Arcane Masonry would be a nice spell since you can increase your defense by an additional 25 (beyond the 100 base) points per earth level above 3!