Warhammer Online: Mark Jacobs on GOA, Forums and Accountability
MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood had the opportunity to speak with Mythic Entertainment boss Mark Jacobs about GOA, forums and Mythic accountability.
Just before the launch of Mythic Entertainment's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, I had the opportunity to sit down and talk about the game. We covered a lot of ground in our short interview, and in this half, we talked about talking about everything from the finished product itself to the GOA head start issue to Mythic's decision to forgo official forums and his thoughts on accountability.
I started out my conversation with Mark by asking him a question that I asked both Jeff and Josh before him. Was there anything that got into the finished product of the game at the last minute that you were worried wouldn't make it? His answer was the same as Jeff's. "I'm glad the auction house got in on time," he answered with a bit of a chuckle. "That one was touch and go there for a while."
After the auction house, Mark told me a little bit about some of the other kinds of issues that needed last minute resolving before launch beyond the shiny and obvious features. Specifically, he wanted to tell me about the crash to desktop issues that people had been having throughout beta and into head start. He said that just before launch, a fix had been implemented that would take the already small number of these, and cut them in half before the official launch.
"While they [the CTDs] were low to begin with in the Head Start, they were still higher than I'd like," he said. "So getting rid of 50% of them now is a really good thing."
From there, I wanted to ask Mark about the issues that European players had been experiencing with GOA in terms of everything getting started on time and a myriad of other issues.
So, how does Mark feel about how that situation resolved?
"Right now," he answered, "I feel great. I mean, GOA had a ton of people playing and everything is running beautifully. They've turned it around nicely."
"There were issues," he said. "As I posted on the forums, we were in constant contact with them. We had some very meaningful discussions with GOA over that time, and the results now speak for themselves."
He continued to comment on the fact that ever since the major issue was resolved, things have been running smoothly and they're doing a much better job of community management and Mythic is happy with this renewed effort.
From there, we talked about the decision to give those players who were inconvenienced by the whole ordeal a free week of play. Originally, I had thought that the decision had been Mythic's to make, but it turns out that it was entirely GOA's move.
"It's their money," he said. "We can talk, but in the end, it's their money and we didn't force them to do it. Did we talk about the issue? Absolutely, but in the end, they made the decision."
This conversation inevitably led to a quick conversation about the blog that Mark had written on the subject. (http://onlinegamesareanichemarket.wordpress.com/2008/09/08/oh-what-a-night-late-on-sunday-back-in-008/) Specifically, we talked about Mark's opinions on the subject of the way that some users choose to express their frustration with companies and / or people in situations like this.
According to the blog, Mark wholeheartedly supports the gamer's right to be upset or disappointed about a product as a whole, or an incident. He doesn't, however, support people expressing those frustrations in hateful and abusive ways. This is a big part of the reason that Mythic chooses not to use official forums for their MMOs. I asked Mark if this was a decision that they were still happy with, given that the GOA situation gave rise to a number of player complaints about the lack of forums.
"Thrilled, overjoyed, enraptured," he answered enthusiastically. "Look, here's the bottom line. What I said in my blog, and what I've always said publicly is that I respect the player's right to be disappointed, to be angry, to be frustrated. We are supposed to provide a service. If we don't provide the service then you have, as a customer, every right to be upset with us. What I don't support, what I'll never support is what some people see as their right to not only cross the line but then to erase it and draw a whole new line miles in the distance. You can't say the things that some people say. That's wrong. You can't make the threats that people make. That's wrong. You can't heap abuse on other people. That's wrong. Be angry, be frustrated, absolutely. Complain? Absolutely. I get it. But the stuff that some of those people are saying... the death threats, the vulgarity. No one should have to put up with this. I am still 100% behind the stay away from the official forum bit."
Just speaking with him for a few minutes on the topic really gives you a sense of how passionately Mark feels about this particular subject.
"... I think that when you do what we do with the Herald, which is a tremendous flow of information. When you do what we do with in-game feedback, when you do what we do with community outreach... there is no need for an official forum. People point to some games and say 'look, there's a game that had official forums and succeeded.' Yeah, but there are also games that had official forums and failed. Then there are companies like us that never had official forums, and we succeeded with Dark Age. I don't believe that official forums contribute at all to their success and frankly, when people say that it contributes to the community... No, in some cases it contributes to a mob not a community. They're very different things."
From there, I asked Mark what he could say to people who complain that not having an official forum is a way to escape accountability for the company and for issues with the game.
"What is accountability?" Mark asked. "Is accountability the fact that you can get a community manager who has nothing to do with the game development (not saying Mythic but at a lot of companies the CM has nothing to do with the game other than being community managers)... to go on the forums and have abuse heaped on him? That's not accountability. That's like putting out a goat for the Tyrannosaurus in Jurassic Park. Accountability is when the players vote with their credit card. That's accountability. If they players feel we aren't doing our job, they should cancel. I've always said that. We are accountable that way."
"In terms of reaching out to the community," he continued, "nobody in this industry does it better than us. Not on the large scale. I can't talk about the smaller games, but if you look at EverQuest and WoW and LotRO or any of those games, we spend more time reaching out to the community than any other development team. I'm on the boards, other people are on the boards and we will continue to be going forward. We are accountable that way, but we're more accountable to the players by their use of their credit cards. If they don't like the job we're doing, they should cancel. That's the best way to send any developer a message."
He rounded out the answer by saying that, "If people think that accountability is just their need to vent their spleen at some community manager, that's not accountability. That's just people heaping abuse on somebody in order to feel better."
That pretty much does it for the first part of the interview. Next time, look forward to my conversations with Mark about the Warhammer IP, Games Workshop and Mythic Entertainment's relationship with EA.
He really has his head in the dirt. He will come around and be eating his words.
Very nice interview, Jon. Well done. I'll look forward to Part 2.
I've heard Mark's logic on Mythic's aversion to Official Forums and I still disagree. Saying that community managers are somehow disconnected is a flippant statement and simply untrue. Many is the time I have seen on Official Forums where a Community Manager would continue pressing the development team until they got an answer to some particular community concern. Tiggs and Caydiem immediately come to mind. Did they suffer abuse? Definitely. But they managed to keep us informed and make us feel like we were valued as customers. Mark either suffers from selective memory or limited experience. He really should know better.
Its all looks good. Someone made a comment about sticking his head in the dirt. Sorry I just don't see it.
I work in software, I know it's hard to get a release out of the door and on time. WAR obviously has some outstanding issues - I found at least 10 bugs within my first few days of play and I had to wonder what the beta testers were doing - some of these bugs were blantant and surely quick wins for the developers. But it is early days and I'm sure the developers will not have had much slack time since the launch, they'll be releasing bug-fix patches for months (same thing happened with WoW).
But anyway... the comment about getting the "auction house in on time", great, but after my brief encounter with it I think it still needs some work. It's buggy and the UI is frankly a nightmare. The rest of the game looks amazing and they've really done Games Workshop proud by materialising their vision, but when it comes to dialogs these guys need to get some business oriented UI/UX experts on board to smarten that bit up.
I completely agree with the forums position. In my opinion Warhammer Alliance is the best forum I've ever used because I know I'm not going to get flamed or banned by a mod for disagreeing with Mythic/GOA like I did on the Age of Conan forum (and then never touched the game as a result).
In conclusion, overall I think WAR is awesome. They've pushed the envelope in terms of some MMO concepts and stripped out some of the crap that people can't be bothered with. I can see elements from WoW, Dark Age of Camelot (which I played for ages) and a fair few other games, but ultimately I think they've found the best combination of PvE and PvP in any mmorpg currently available, subscription based or otherwise. (That said, I don't understand why all the servers aren't Open RvR, but hey ...)
So Welldone to Mythic and I have to extend my congratulations to GOA as well who have surpassed my expectations (given my previous experiences with DAoC). Oh and let's not forget Games Workshop who own all the back story and lore - this is their vision that's come to light!
you have no idea what you're talking about. mythic certainly know what they're talking about and communication with the players is amazing..you don't see blizzard taking time out for stuff like this. Guys like mark are the type of people that deserve 10 million subs and not those cheats at blizzard.
But in this situation you get the best of both worlds. There's at least one developer I've encountered on Warhammer Alliance and that person has been responsive and informative, plus you get the herald and a freespeech forum all in one place. You just don't get that with owned forums (e.g. Age of Conan, forum fascists
).
But in this situation you get the best of both worlds. There's at least one developer I've encountered on Warhammer Alliance and that person has been responsive and informative, plus you get the herald and a freespeech forum all in one place. You just don't get that with owned forums (e.g. Age of Conan, forum fascists
).
I beg to differ. There is no such thing as a "free speech" forum. With fansites, there is no accountability and some toss around the word "ban" as a fun thing to do. AoC's big problem, apart from having a dismal launch was their attempt to get cheap damage control by appointing volunteer moderators. People had a right to be upset, the forum mods made things worse. Developers will often post on the WoW forums, particularly on the Test Server Forums. The same can be said for the City of Heroes forums. Official forums are an added value to subscribers. The only games that I can recall that don't use them are Dark Age of Camelot, Tabula Rasa, and now, Warhammer. See a pattern here? Heck, even Dungeon Runners has their own forum.
Remarkable that he really compares us, the customers, to a Tyrannosaurus. There is no excuse for the lack of official forums. Period.
He's very clearly not describing every customer as a dangerous dinosaur. In the context of what was said, it's clear that he was talking about the specific people who express their frustrations in abusive and threatening ways.
You don't agree with the call, that's fine, but you're taking that statement way out of context.
I beg to differ. There is no such thing as a "free speech" forum. With fansites, there is no accountability and some toss around the word "ban" as a fun thing to do. AoC's big problem, apart from having a dismal launch was their attempt to get cheap damage control by appointing volunteer moderators. People had a right to be upset, the forum mods made things worse. Developers will often post on the WoW forums, particularly on the Test Server Forums. The same can be said for the City of Heroes forums. Official forums are an added value to subscribers. The only games that I can recall that don't use them are Dark Age of Camelot, Tabula Rasa, and now, Warhammer. See a pattern here? Heck, even Dungeon Runners has their own forum.
Personally, I don't see the added value. I'm getting more with Warhammer Alliance in my view:
- Free speech (imho, though you obviously think different),
- Devs who want to be on the forum, rather than community reps who are hired for the job
- Mythic (and GOA) don't have to pay for an infrastructure to support another service, meaning they can push that money elsewhere, hopefully where the players need/want it.
- Forum reliability. The WoW forum was up and down like a yoyo, I don't know if that's improved or not, but it certainly couldn't handle server load when I used to use it. With both US and EU players on it, Warhammer Alliance seems solid, though I accept that peak usage is probably yet to come.
Cheers,
Brindy
My opinion: It's a cop-out.
MMOs will always have some variety of out of game community. If a company doesn't provide an official spot for that community to gather it will gather somewhere else on someone else's dime.
All Mythic is doing in this case is shunting the responsibility for community management off themselves and onto other sites (WHA, this one, TTH, etc).
I appreciate the fact that no one likes to have abuse hurled at them, I also appreciate the fact that many MMO players of this day and age feel overly entitled to door say whatever they like because "they pay their money". None of these things abrogate the responsibility (IMO) to provide an official area for the community that will form anyway.
Now when Mythic has a customer-relations problem it will be the third-party sites that take the brunt of the flames, threats, disappointment, etc. (witness the GOA stuff - it produced another whole forum here) It's poor form in my view to offload problems you cause (and the known consequences) onto someone else entirely.
Do I think it will kill WAR to not have forums - no, of course not. I do however disagree with the concept and believe that fundamentally it's taking the easy way out.
We are entitled to our opinion and we will never all agree.
I do find it refreshing that an actual Dev comes to the forums to answer issues. Being older and somewhat new to posting on forums, I agree with Mark.
There is no excuse for threats and the use of expletives to get a point across. IMHO there is no accountabilty for those words that are spouted on forums. Yet people expect mods, CMs, and company reps to put up with it. Well they don't and they should not have to put up with it. Some will come here and state that the customer is always right or they will loose money. You are correct as long as the person complaining presents the facts and what did not happen in a reasonable manner, we are obligated to listen to them and do our best to correct a problem, if one is there. I can tell you a customer spouting threats and expletives in a business establishment will be lead to t he door by security. Yet in these forums some people forget their manners.
I learned a long time ago you get more with sugar then you do with salt. Regardless of what is typed, there is still a person with feelings that has to read our remarks. Dignity and respect goes a long way.
Mark is correct, We as consumers exercise our right with our wallet books.
The choice of having a company forums is the companie's choice and does not betray anyone. Having read the WOW forums several times, I would never want one myself.
A cop-out doesnt paint it with enough crap...
What we have here ,is a VERY easy to see attempt at lessening the spread of harmful (to the game) information.
Nothing less,nothing more.That they choose to cover it in PR crap, and serve it to the interviewer who just bobs and takes it as gospel, says more than people should need to know about them.
For those perception challenged,they choose to not have a forum,becuase they understand thats where the information they dont want talked about would be........
And of course,this isnt the reason they admit to.No... no... its becuase they dont feel the forums would serve a useful purpose....all the while promoting the forums of the surrogates they use to spread their side of an issue .....
Becuase if they had their own forum, their control over the information would be direct and hence even some of the MMO fans would spot it.BUT with the forums they think work just fine, the forums they support,those forums hosted by surrogates,they can pretend to have a degree of seperation from the control while wielding it just the same.And some of you will buy it.
Remember this is a Dev from the very same company who hired Lum, just to shut him up.And the head one at that.
Barnum had nothing on these guys.Deception to make a sale......
I love WAR, and MJ. He is, however, dead wrong about the "abuse". If you have customers you're going to have those douchebags that take life a little too seriously. It comes with the gig, plain and simple. You can't just ignore everyone, because of a few losers think everything should go their way 100% of the time. That's called bureaucracy, and its ugly, very ugly. Other than that WAR rules, and please make a DAOC 2.
This type of behavior is not exclusive to the MMO genre, nor teens and people in their twenties.
I was a closed beta tester so I can tell you, we reported many bugs and issues that weren't taken care of. Most bugs were, of course, but the UI was one area many testers made suggestions about improving. The beta forums wouldn't take any feedback other than suggestions for improvement. It was the most restrictive forum I've seen, and I do understand why after having been in Conan's beta forum. That was a nightmare.
Mark's a smart guy, and I really like how he thinks. Whether you believe it or not , having forums are a breeding ground for hateful people with spiteful posts - take WoW's forums for example. Forum's aren't needed, they're a small added convenience that generally not even half of the players will use. It's added bandwidth and people to hire to moderate them - that's money that could be better spent elsewhere.
Many people shoudl also get it into their heads that quitting is the best way to tell the company off. You waste your time talking about everything you hate in a final post, as there's a low chance someone from the company will read it, and no one else gives a crap.
I am also tired of people threatening to cancel, then a few months later, threaten to cancel again. If you hate the game your playing so much, just cancel already. Unfortunately, many can't, because they fail to realize that even while they may hate many things, they're still addicted, so it's not as bad as they think. It's those that cancel without forum posts that should really be paid attention to.
And yada yada.
I think Jacobs' response to the knee-jerk, vitriolic nonsense that spews forth from certain customers' wounded sense of entitlement is spot-on.
The customer always has a right to communicate his disapproval in a professional manner, and be responded to in kind. What a customer does not have the right to do, however, is be abusive. Your rights end where someone else's begins, and a representative of a company shouldn't have to put up with that kind of nonsense.
Re: Lack of Official Forums. I don't know that I completely agree on principle, since I believe that one of my favorite MMORPGs ever -- Tabula Rasa -- was weakened by a fragmented community. I think an official site would have done wonders for that game. But I definitely see Jacobs' points about the mob mentality that tends to manifest itself on official forums. And anyway, forum frequenters represent only a portion of a total playerbase.
First things first, I have a lot of respect for MBJ (Mark B. Jacobs), the man is an absolute genius of game design, he was directly responsible for Public Quests, which IMHO is a HUGE advancment for the genre, and a hell of a buisness man, and on many, many things I agree with him. But I still don't agree w/ his stance of official forums. Especially when Mythic sends their community people to post on half a dozen community sights around the net, and even Mark himself makes it a point to regularly post on forums. All the people want is a central place to have a direct discourse w/ the developers, and not have to hunt all over the intraweb to find it.
Mark's biggest contention w/ official forums is, and always has been the abuse and straight-up ruthlessness that the anominity of the web provides people w/ to just be mean and say pretty much anything they want. He DOES take it too far though. When the whole grace-period being shortened thing came out Mark went to the VN-boards and posted quite a few times. In more then one of those posts he complained about the horrible, horrible things people were directing at him, which, in all honesty weren't all that horrible. He really doesn't have a problem w/ people expressing their dissatisfaction w/ the game, or what-have-you, he just doesn't like the personal attacks on him, or his employees. It's understandable, but I still say an official forum would do more good then harm.
Take the beta forums for instance. I am (was,now that beta is over) an Elder Tester and participated in the beta for many months before release, and I can say without any kind of hesitation that the moderation on the beta forums were the BEST I have ever seen. It was VERY direct, efficient, and no-nonsense, and you know what? It allowed us testers unprecedented communication w/ the devs b/c there was no trolling, and if anyone did say something they weren't supposed to, the comment was erased promptly, and the person warned, or banned if they were a repeat offender or the comment harsh enough. It allowed the devs to get feedback and bug reports w/ such quickness, that things got done faster then I have ever seen in any previous beta tests I have participated in.
I have no doubt that official forums would be handled in the same way, and if so, would only be a credit to the company. IMO he really needs to relent on this hatred of official forums b/c they would make things much easier on the players, and his community team. It's time.
Nonsense. Community managers are great for an MMORPG which has developers with bad communication skills.. but why would Mythic need them? The devs regularly post on Warhammer Alliance and their direct personal input is far more valuable than some canned message being passed along by some guys who run a forum.
As a follow-up, regarding Mark's philosophy that the best way for a customer to express dissatisfaction is to merely cancel their subscription, I would question why it is that Mythic gathers no feedback when a customer cancels. When you cancel your subscription, Mythic asks you nothing. You click the button and your next billing is cancelled, no questionaire, no follow-up email except to say that you have cancelled. To me, that indicates that Mythic doesn't really care why you cancelled.
Mark Jacobs appears to live in a bubble of his own reality. The world is as he understands it and there is no variation from that. Things have changed a lot in this industry since 2001, but Mark still sticks to his guns that his way is the right way. I would love to see Warhammer succeed out of love for the franchise, but Mythic seems determined to run this game into the ground like they have with Dark Age of Camelot, another game I have loved that has dwindled to a sorry state because of management that is too stubborn to admit that there might be a better way. If EA doesn't somehow intervene, I fear that within a year, WAR will be reduced to merging, then clustering servers to maintain some illusion of a healthy population. It's sad when EA appears to be the only hope.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
I love Warhammer and I loved DAoC but their lack of official forums has always been a cop-out.
Does seem they are scared to do it, if they are so open to talk to people like everyone says why not just have official forums, i do feel like he is just passing the buck onto other people look at this site, there is no official site so the war forums here are filled to the brim, Fansites like WarhammerAlliance and others don't really let you speak your mind so people are trying to find other places to talk, its a shame really.
I'm glad there are companies out there that just suck it up and have official forums.
GOA is still awful, can't believe he would even support those people, feel sorry for the people overseas.
Hey, guys. Go a little easier on Jon. This isn't ABC News here and he's not Brian Ross. Whenever one of the folks from MMORPG does an interview, they ask questions and the designer / company rep answers. It's not Jon's place to press for more. Frankly, the guys here get more feedback than a lot of the larger sites. Mark Jacobs is apparently so sure of himself and his position that he appears to answer very forcefully. He knows people won't like the answer so he fires it back like a cannonball. Really, the only thing the interviewer can do is take the answer and record it. Press for more and the interview can come to an abrupt end.
No game company is obligated to provid a forum. There are other forums available that get monitored and in-game tools to provide feedback. Most forums contain excessive abusive feedback that gets repeated thousands of times. If you're unhappy with the game you can express your opinion to them directly, the fact that they're not giving you a tool to share it with the rest of the world is fine.
Perhaps when the MMO community matures a little and learns some manners in regards to providing constructive posts and not polls on who's leaving at the end of the month they'll provide official forums. Till then I can't blame em.
The fact that there are so many posts here saying it's a cop-out to not give you a place to abuse them proves this point. Otherwise why would it be considered a cop-out?
This response is such a joke. We aren't dissatisfied with not having an area to "abuse," we're dissatisfied with not having an "official" area to discuss this game we love with the official development team or PR heads.
There is a lot of garbage on the official WoW forums. But guess what? There's infinitely more positive and productive posts that outweigh the negative ones. Not only that, but there's tons of information about the game centralized into one forum. I don't want to have to shoot to two or three different fan sites for an MMO just to find discussion on my specific class/race selection. The companies who developed and produced the game should to provide the necessary hubs to discuss their creation. Not having that because they fear having "their feelings hurt by some forum trolls" is a complete cop-out. No way around it.
You need official forums because its a place for the community to go and you can't blame official forums for a failure of a game.... like SWG that game failed because of Lucas Arts and SOE ruining it, not the forums because they ignored them.
when i first heard that they weren't going to be doing "official" forums a year or two ago i was like "wtf, how can you not have forums". now i honestly don't care all that much, i've dealt with the cesspools of the WOW forums and the Age of Conan forums enough to realize that while there can be some decent info gained from the forums, sometimes it's just not worth it. and as far as the person saying that there is more positive and productive posts than negative ones--that is true, but usually the negative posts get bumped more often and fill up the front pages which makes finding the positive and productive posts a pain in the ass sometimes.
as far as having a place where you can discuss your different classes/races, i've found that it's not uncommon for the forums to not have the information i'm looking for and end up having to go to several different sites anyways. without having an official forum, people are going to migrate to a couple main ones--warhammer alliance will probably one of the big ones and i would expect to get decent class discussions there, just like i would from an official class forum.
honestly, if you provide a forum it's also your job to keep it clean. one of the reasons the wow-forum has such a bad rep is because there is either too much or too less moderation - another example would be the lotro forums: tidy and informative, not the swamp ppl say "official forums always are".
on another note, as CM/CSR/mod you sign up for a job that may require to get dirt thrown at you. if someone can't handle that, sorry - get another job.
this kind of job is usually the only connection between you (the player) and the company, so when players get angry or dissatisfied they point their anger at the only company ppl available (with the whole "internet overreaction", face to face these ppl would behave quite differently ;) ).
ofc, a forum costs money (platform, moderation etc.). they can safe some by just putting up forums without much personal - like blizz - or just scrap it alltogether to safe more. but if you do that you shouldn't expect an objective opinion somewhere else, especially in a FANforum (imagine the hardcore-pve'er posting in a pvp forum.. riiight).
so yeah.. having no offical forum is either stupid arrogance or simple greed. especially if you pay a sub to play, f2p may get away with it.
He's very clearly not describing every customer as a dangerous dinosaur. In the context of what was said, it's clear that he was talking about the specific people who express their frustrations in abusive and threatening ways.
You don't agree with the call, that's fine, but you're taking that statement way out of context.
no official forums means that if a dev makes a post somewhere, i have to search and find which forum he posted on and find what he said, or hope that everyone on whatever forums i may read, copies that thread.
no official forums means that when devs make announcements or CUSTOMERS have technical issues, they don't have an easy one-stop reference.
no official forums means that all the players who make guides on classes, questing, rvr'ing, or whatever... have them spread out all over the internet. can i go hear and find guides on all the different war classes? or do i have to search all over the 'net in order to try and find guides about things?
no official forums means that the gaming company cares THAT little about their customers and their customers' convenience that THEY (the gaming company) can't be bothered to put official forums.
honestly, i'm enjoying war. but the disrespect inherent to no official forums is appalling, ESPECIALLY with mr. jacobs giving the reason he gave. if i have to hunt and search to find BASIC gaming information (which isn't covered on the official website, in the book that came with the game, nor is it in the in-game help); and there's not a one-stop official forum to go look and i LITERALLY went to over a dozen fansites in order to find what i thought should be simple instructions... that irks me to no end.
mythic needs to pull their heads out of their asses, put up some official forums so that technical support and guides to everything are easily available to their paying customers.
if they are too chickenshit to do this... i don't see a reason to continue to play and support a game full of devs who are skeered that someone might say something bad about their game.
reminds me too much of the WONDERFUL people who created vanguard.
i can, and am, overlooking a lot of "not quite right" stuff in war (which is NOT their first mmo, so you should expect a quite stunning launch)... lack of official forums is NOT something i plan on overlooking... ever.
see my reply below yours someplace...
but... where do you go for those nifty technical problems? heaven forbid a gaming company have a single place where all the players can go to see how to tweak vista, or what settings on a video card might need to be changed, or a plethora of common problems that not only official people comment on, but also players. how many different fansites is reasonable for you to be expected to visit? are these fansites going to have mods that ensure a lot of false information and/or viruses aren't being passed to trusting folks?
wondering about trying a new class and don't want to gimp it from the go and have to pay for multiple respecs because there are things you really just didn't understand? go find a nifty little class guide. see a bunch of them for witch hunters right now? what about squig herders? heck, the game has been out for nearly a week, between beta testers and hardcore fools, there IS lvl 40 experience out there and i'm sure there's several people already throwing guides online... where? could you point me to which fansites EXACTLY have nifty guides about the how's and why's of those two classes?
hey, i'm on such and such server, playing X faction and i'd like to see, at a glance, which guilds are there and what they're saying they are all about... how many fansites, EXACTLY, have a crapton of guilds from all servers and both factions, posting recruiting adds... like guilds would do on official forums?
when devs make posts of interest to the entire community... how many fansites is it reasonable for me to visit in order to see these posts made by the devs of the game i paid for a box and a monthly fee, to be a reasonable number? is my sense of entitlement so out of whack to think that this and the above reasons are legitimate and far outweigh someone's sense of "don't say nuffin bad about me cuz i'm skeered"?
these, and more, are reasons why a gaming company, in this day and age, refusing to have official forums, are complete bullshit.
A while ago, official game forums were a big part of the online community, where people exchanged views and generally had fun, also voiced their their frustrations but most of the times in a more or less civilised manners.
Since MMOs went up in numbers, official game forums became a combination of whining and verbal abuse, with some imformative posts.
Good way to get sick of the MMO you enjoy playing is if you strart reading the official forums. The sheer amount of whining and complaining gets to you in a way even if you enjoy the game at that time.
Forums or no forums, I have never seen any MMO developers go forth and communicate with the community on all bigger un-official forums, posting elaborate and informative stuff and not just some run on the mill default answers like most other companies do. I appreciate that much more as a customer than having an official forums. They also tend not to hinde when they screw up something, and generally admit their mistakes and try repairing it and that also goes a long way with me.
All in all Mythic people were more active with the community in terms of quality and quantity of the communication, forum or no forum.
Sadly he only focusses on the negative bits of having official forums. : /
I for one always enjoyed the interaction in especially the realm forums; people organizing events, making art, posting rl pictures, stating their respect for certain skillful oponents, getting people to join your guild, publishing their guild's latest achievements and yes, making new friends.
I hope he'll reconsider his stance on this.
The negative issues he describes can be delt with by mods, simple as that.
Aye, it costs them a little more money but it gives the community one central board for out of game interaction which is to me, an important thing to any mmo.
Besides, they shouldn't be afraid that the posters will flame WAR to death on their hometurf like on the AoC forums since it is a kick ass game anyway and they have always been open an honest with us.
GOA didn't solve crap. Many people(Including myself) still can't log in on peak hours. Some can't even log in at all, except for late nights and early mornings. Horrid lag spikes for some as well.
so, all this communication from mythic... how is that helping me if i'm looking for technical support help? if i'm wanting to see what all guilds are recruiting for a specific faction on a specific realm? how does that help me, as a customer, if i'm looking for player created guides? if i'm having those technical problems and i'd like to know that someone isn't pulling my leg or trying to do harmful things to my box?
that's great that YOU, as a customer, appreciate random podcasts from a jolly developer during beta. how exactly does that help the rest of us customers with any of the above?
can you tell me where i can find all of the above in one convenient location, where i can rest assured that i'm not being led astray?
if not, then it's complete rubbish.
communication my hindquarters. i re-read the interview and jacobs doesn't say that a certain part of his paying customer are dinosaurs, i don't even see it implied that he's referring to just a part of the paying public.
It has always amazed me how fanboys can support any decision their favorite companies makes, no matter how terrible that decision sounds. ”No forums” is a cheap move. It is not only saves money for Mythica but this is the perfect way to avoid any responsibilities and in the same time keep "carrot on stick" on unofficial forums for customers. Developers can promise mountains of gold on those "unofficial" forums and diaries. And if anyone later asks "where are all those promises?" they can simply answer "you know, it was just a thoughts. Unofficial opinion". Perfect!
Expanded version of BG from WoW (as WAR is) is a fun game, but Mark's bragging reminds me of Brad McQuaid.
you know what, the more i look at the whole accountability crap that jacobs put out there in that interview... the more i believe that someone THAT bloody arrogant and that honestly gives that little of a crap about me, the customer... he got me on paying for the box; but they won't see another cent from me.
i wish i'd have read that before buying the box. my biggest complaint with SOE is the way they treat their customers.
tie that into the frustration with the lack of documentation about basic gameplay and my having to scour the internet to find information that should be on their website and which WOULD be on official forums... yes, i think i will do exactly as jacobs states and canx my CC... and i'll go the extra mile for his smart-alec generalizations and do my best to spread the "truth" about this game and company.
big ups. now we know without a doubt that soe isn't the exception to the rule.
Hi Stradden, you forget to ask him about the choppy/ lag/ hitches that quite alot of players are experiencing. And how come there's no reply from the Dev regarding this issue?
he can refer to Warhammer-alliance tech forum....
Thank you
Funny, I thought this too. Portent of things to come?
Avoid responsibility? First how do they avoid responsibility when you cancel? 2nd, how does an official forum make them accept resposibility?
This response is such a joke. We aren't dissatisfied with not having an area to "abuse," we're dissatisfied with not having an "official" area to discuss this game we love with the official development team or PR heads.
There is a lot of garbage on the official WoW forums. But guess what? There's infinitely more positive and productive posts that outweigh the negative ones. Not only that, but there's tons of information about the game centralized into one forum. I don't want to have to shoot to two or three different fan sites for an MMO just to find discussion on my specific class/race selection. The companies who developed and produced the game should to provide the necessary hubs to discuss their creation. Not having that because they fear having "their feelings hurt by some forum trolls" is a complete cop-out. No way around it.
I see their devs on other forums... They're not exactly hiding.... They were also very clear upfront their would be no forums, we knew this for years and their other MMO doeesn't have them so how can you be dissapointed?
I see their devs on other forums... They're not exactly hiding.... They were also very clear upfront there would be no forums, we knew this for years and there other MMO doesn't have them so how can you be dissapointed?
I guess here is a good a place as any... Maybe you can ask him why he felt it was necessary to cut off any customers that bought the CE, when we are still being told that the product might ship either yesterday or today.
Nothing says fail, quite like telling some of your hard core customers that you don't deserve some leeway because of a problem way outside our control.
I can understand the no forums rule. It takes a significant investment to police them. Problem with that is that DAoC self destructed because of that. They had a few people monitoring the outside forums and did not listen to the problems these people encountered.
Mythic did about everything in it's power to dissuade the playerbase from playing DAoC through ignoring the problems discussed on the outside forums. Let us hope they listen better on the outside forums this time around. I personally still don't trust them to do so.
Forums...
Gross things mostly. The more I look at places like MMORPG or "Official" forums at other games...
The more I see the mob... the trash... the types of gamers no one wants in their guild or community.
Certainly there are good posts, good people, and good questions... it's why I wouldn't condone a complete obliteration of the population and a fresh start. One good person is enough.
But official forums? No.
Forums used to be something fans did to help foster a community. To collect like-minded people together who wanted to promote a game. Game-companies saw this and offered to host them for the players so that they didn't have to do it themselves.
That has changed. It is now a crib for babies to whine and give their complaints. Though quality community support and discussion still exists, the horrid amount of crying and complaining... the threats, the requests for nerfs...
the trash!
It is just more than anyone would ever want to manage. No... the day the community stopped policing itself is the day the "official" forums were no longer useful. This way Warhammer Alliance and other places can handle the trash and the devs can pick which forums they think help the game the most.
It is too costly and I never want to see an "Official" forum again.
While I agree with a lot of what you say, the lack of an official forum has me voting with my credit card already, as in not even buying the game. While the AOC official forums were some of the worst I have ever seen, lurking on there showed me the game was not ready and I would wait 6 or 8 months before I bought it to give them time to work out the kinks. For people, and I think most long term MMO players, the first thing I do before buying a game is have a look at the feed back on the O forums and how the company handles the feed back, positve or negative.
I hate the nerf this and that posts that show on a lot of forums. And mostly it is just crying. Because of this I usually stay away from "general" or class forums. Bug report forums, customer service forums, suggstion forums, and most specifically Realm forums are where I look. These tell me the stability of the game, how the company helps people with technical issues and what the community feels like in the realms.
With out these resources there is no way I am handing them my money.
He's very clearly not describing every customer as a dangerous dinosaur. In the context of what was said, it's clear that he was talking about the specific people who express their frustrations in abusive and threatening ways.
You don't agree with the call, that's fine, but you're taking that statement way out of context.
How cute.
I'm kind of glad they don't have official forums, go to Warhammer Alliance and you will see the devs posting every day, multiple times a day. If it's feedback you want to give, than use the tool inside the game.
I don't see what the hubbub is about. If you, as a potential customer, don't like the idea of not having an official forum, then you have but one clear cut and well defined option...Do not purchase the game
You guys are taking it too far comparing Mark to Brad McQuaid. First of all, Mark comes off confident, but I wouldn't say arrogant, second, and the main difference between Mark and Brad is that Mark has actually delivered on his promises and has the managerial skills to see his vision through to the end.
Also, the lack of documentation on the Website or Herald is kind of lame, but the manual included with the game was, surprisingly in this day and age, very informative and described all of the game systems well enough.
While I don't support the no official forum policy, I must say that the devs and community people @ Mythic do do a great job of communicating w/ their customers on the fansite forums. In fact, they post quite often and regularly, the only downside is you have to scour a couple sites to actually find said posts. Mythic does however, and this is very surprising, respond to the feedback submitted through the form on the Herald. When you put everything together, there probably IS as much communication going on between the community and the devs as there would be on an official forum. But I still think they should have one, centralized location for the community to get together and discuss things pertaining to the game.
Yeah, the WoW and AoC forums are perfect examples of how forums can degrade into cesspools that aren't useful for much. But then look @ the EQ2 and/or LoTRO forums, they are perfect examples of official forums done correctly, there is a constant flow of communication not only between player and dev, but between player and player as well. IMHO, if the forums are properly moderated they can be a HUGE boon to the community, and the positives far outwieghs the negatives. Again, Mark is only focusing on the negatives of official forums, he needs to go and look at the EQ2 and LoTRO forums and see how well things flow there.
Really the only reason they're here complaining about not having a forum seems to be because they can't complain there.
The only thing I can agree with is the idea that the O. Forums gives outside people the chance to see how the game is progressing.
But ya know what? Forums are slower to create changes than petitions have ever been. Ya know why? Because it's easier to sift through a database that can be checked and tossed if it's trash than having sift through a list of threads and then lists of posts for the worth while ones.
Not to mention, the devs as has been said actively talk to the players. It may not be an official forum, but how are the results any different? Players complain and ask questions and the devs respond just the same.
Really, there is no reason for the official forums currently because it would be a drain on resources that would only increase costs and delay progress on development and bug fixes because the devs would be dealing with more extraneous crap that they then have to weigh the value of because inevitably there's going to be more than one opinion from more than one large group of players on how to 'fix' something and they can't please both, which means players will just continuously complain more and more as they are known to.
so, all this communication from mythic... how is that helping me if i'm looking for technical support help? if i'm wanting to see what all guilds are recruiting for a specific faction on a specific realm? how does that help me, as a customer, if i'm looking for player created guides? if i'm having those technical problems and i'd like to know that someone isn't pulling my leg or trying to do harmful things to my box?
that's great that YOU, as a customer, appreciate random podcasts from a jolly developer during beta. how exactly does that help the rest of us customers with any of the above?
can you tell me where i can find all of the above in one convenient location, where i can rest assured that i'm not being led astray?
if not, then it's complete rubbish.
communication my hindquarters. i re-read the interview and jacobs doesn't say that a certain part of his paying customer are dinosaurs, i don't even see it implied that he's referring to just a part of the paying public.
You are kidding me ...
You know ... ingame is a good place to look for a guild ... and serious ones usually have their own sites where you check out what they do and apply ... I never ever looked for a guild through official forums and I was a member of one or two rather decent ones.
You are talking like you are browsing the net just jumping from official site to official site because you are paranoid that someone will do "harmful things to your computer" ... ever heard of firewalls and stuff? ... you expect me to believe that when you look for a piece of info on the net - lets say its an AMD processor, you only go to the official AMD site and read whats there. You never use Google for anything you look for on the intenet because there are evil people prowling about, waiting to do harmful things ... I find it extremely hard to believe that. Net is one big convenient location you can find anything you need ... especialy about an internet game.
He's very clearly not describing every customer as a dangerous dinosaur. In the context of what was said, it's clear that he was talking about the specific people who express their frustrations in abusive and threatening ways.
You don't agree with the call, that's fine, but you're taking that statement way out of context.
Welcome to MMORPG.com.
What it boils down to is that the lack of official forums are:
1. Cost cutting (no forum moderator staff)
2. Damage control, in advance. It's obvious that without official forums problems with the game voiced by current customers will have less effect on new purchasers.
Frankly I think that any game that doesn't have official forums should provide a full refund option for the game purchase if not satisfied.
In any case it's not the abuse they are worried about, saying that is just spin doctoring the real reason, which is to minimize the visibility of bad customer feedback.
I thought it was rather fitting that the guy said he was happy the auction house made it into the game before launch.
Considering that feature is broken in ways that make the simplest search and refined searches produce as many or more unrelated items as there are items that match criteria.
Also, the dude who thinks Mr. Mythic Mouthpiece is as balls and glory giving straight answers knowing not many people will like them.... fanboi much? Where did he ever say anything to the effect that Mythic can and will sell unreliable and unfinished products because it simply does not matter when their best estimate says it will show a profit.
Of course I cancelled my account already and I will sell it for more than i payed in. We all learned a long time ago that this industry is all about the hustle ( looking at you Brad ).
Honestly...no matter what is said here the only reason folks want official forums is to read about or participate in the Troll train. They find disatisfaction in fan forums cause the mod can ban you without catching flak for losing a customer.
Like it or not Offical forums are becoming a thing of the past, it's no huge secret that Blizzard is jobbing out all their forums (including WoW) to Activision, and activision forums are kinda like what Turbine use to have back in the early Days of AoC, you submit a comment or question and they decide if it's worthy to be posted.
I know why Blizzard is doing this they have found that devlopers just can't handle that kind of abuse over a period of time, look at what has happend just at blizzard in the last four years Caydeim transfered to another dept, Tseric went on a rampage and got fired, and just recently Jeff Kaplan went on a drunken (well who knows if he was drunk...but some folks over at Death and Taxes says he was) Rampage and perma banned a crap load of accounts.....he didn't get the boot, but some are saying that he is moving on to greener pastures once WoTLK ships. I can well inagine once Blizzard turns their fourms into the internets version of Dear Abby, other devlopers wil follow suit.....SOE has already said that DC universe will have fan forums only to build a sense of "community"
Like it or not it's all going the way of Disco.
Mythic has done a poor job in regards to allowing feedback and player opinion to be not even just heard but broadcast. The bug submission and feedback reports available in game are shockingly limiting, to the point of only allowing you 1 full sentance to voice your concern/ problem/ opinion.
I understand the desire to not have official forums, but this whole "let the credit cards do the talking" bit is pretty lame, it's really just saying that they dont give a fuck about player feedback, and ways to improve the experience, and will only respond to the playerbase when they leave in masse, making the "Why did you cancel" box there most relied on source of feedback information. That's fucking lame.
you have no idea what you're talking about. mythic certainly know what they're talking about and communication with the players is amazing..you don't see blizzard taking time out for stuff like this. Guys like mark are the type of people that deserve 10 million subs and not those cheats at blizzard.
Eh, the communication could be even more amazing if they had a forum... At least a technical one for technical issues.
And saying Blizzard don't deserve their customers is stupid. If WAR deserves it, we'll see a lot of players comming it's way too in the next year but Wow did bring in most of it's players to the MMO market. And I say if because we really havn't seen WARs full potential this early.
And no, I don't agree with Lethality but I think it's a misstake to not have a forum, whatever they think of "Mob mentality" or not. The biggest thing with a forum is to help it's players but it also gives the devs a chanse to talk directly to the community.
welp, according to jacobs, if you don't like that they don't have official forums -- cancel your account.
reminds me of smed, and he'll get as much of my money and ESPECIALLY my loving commentary as smed does. certain people should not be allowed to speak on behalf of their company. ever.
just fyi... you hit the "cancel subscription" button, and then you see "your subscription has been cancelled, playable until the end of paid time" or some such verbage.
they don't give enough of a crap about your opinion TO ask why you cancelled your subscription. unless they have changed it in the past 10 hours.
You are kidding me ...
You know ... ingame is a good place to look for a guild ... and serious ones usually have their own sites where you check out what they do and apply ... I never ever looked for a guild through official forums and I was a member of one or two rather decent ones.
You are talking like you are browsing the net just jumping from official site to official site because you are paranoid that someone will do "harmful things to your computer" ... ever heard of firewalls and stuff? ... you expect me to believe that when you look for a piece of info on the net - lets say its an AMD processor, you only go to the official AMD site and read whats there. You never use Google for anything you look for on the intenet because there are evil people prowling about, waiting to do harmful things ... I find it extremely hard to believe that. Net is one big convenient location you can find anything you need ... especialy about an internet game.
technical support -- here's an example...
hey, download this thing, it'll fix that problem.
not the meandering tangent you went off on. now, how many naive gamers would go ahead and d/l that trojan off a "trusted" fansite, thinking it would fix their problem?
any mmo worth a monthly sub has active and helpful technical support forums.
yeah, ingame is a GREAT place to look for a guild. 15 guilds on half a dozen servers later, i'm still wondering if there are any war guilds that have vent, or a website, or a clue wtf they're doing. guess i'm too stupid to find a guild that actually is up-to-par with what i'm expecting from a "good" guild.
guess i'm not like you and played wow for a while and found a good guild ingame.
i've played quite a few games and, from experience, have seen that it's pretty easy to search thru a LOT of guilds in a short amount of time (on official forums, which will have guilds recruiting for all factions on all servers because it's a centralized location that you know ALL players know about) and see if they do have websites and vent--quick and easy.
but hey, different people have different standards/needs.
then again, i'm not mark jacobs and completely oblivious of the OBVIOUS benefits to the entire playerbase of having official forums.
so tell me, where is the convenient guide on the ins and outs of witch hunter, squig herder and engineer? literally, a dozen fansites and their forums later, all i've found is exactly the same information i can find from looking at my toon ingame and talking to the career leveling guy ingame.
remember games like oooooooooo wow, cox, even something like eve... how you can go to the official forums and...zomgwtfbbq find dozens of guilds/corps to join in the area you're looking...
then...gasp... on that SAME forum... you can go to the technical support help and read what problems the devs ARE working on currently, how they're aware of certain issues, and stickies with lots of quick and helpful information or... make a post and get a half a dozen+ replies in minutes...
then... at those same official forums... you can learn all about whatever "class" you're thinking about playing and before wasting hours on a gimped build, or on a "class" you won't enjoy, you can peruse a few player-created guides and get the ins&outs very quickly and find the "class" you're looking for... at that same url...
i know, it's crazy talk. and it works for 99% of the MMOs in existence.
so, other than completely misunderstanding what i've typed (a second time), what again is your intelligent, logical objection to these actual reasons for having official forums, which far outweigh my wasted time and frustration at just being left hanging by a company making multiple MILLIONS of dollars?
those millions of dollars (1.5 million boxes shipped, was it? $50-80/box? multiple MILLIONS), they aren't worth making everyone's gaming experience better?
cancelling one account is the least of jacobs' worries.
no?
must be why no one ever badmouths soe... because that's all we games do... cancel our accounts and not anything else.
Avoid responsibility? First how do they avoid responsibility when you cancel? 2nd, how does an official forum make them accept resposibility?
i guess you could read my combined posts in this thread for indepth answers to your questions. some of which were made before your post. which begs the question, why did you ask something that was already answered in this thread?
just because ea and mythic are now one company; that doesn't mean that mythic is responsible for screw-ups caused by ea.
isn't that what they're saying?
just another incredibly beautiful level of the caring and thoughtfulness from the people behind WAR to their customers.
You missunderstood me ... I'm not objecting to having an official forum, what I'm saying is that it is not something that affects my gameplay one way or another ... If there are forums - fine ... if there are none - no big deal, I'll get my info elsewhere ..
Most of the reasons you list - not being able to find a decent guild, not being able to find decent info about classes etc - the game is not even a week old officialy. You don't find that stuff, because most of the other people don't have a clue. Its a 6 days old MMO and people are still discovering things. Unless the guilds transfered from another game, they are still organising, and the guilds that moved are most likely not activelz recruiting before they figure out things.
All that will come in a couple of weeks.
About the download - unless its an official patch for the game, I don't see the reason to download anything in order to "fix" things. Never in my years of gameplay have I downloaded a piece of third party code to fix anything in any game.
I'd really really like to know when EU players are going to get a herald and realm status web site? Goa have manged to get people in game but the web site is limping along.
Please ask jacobs to put some pressure on next time you talk. The EU clearly has a far inferior experience outsdie the game world itself.
GOA dont seem to have settled the accounts stuff in my view.
I am unable to get into the game. had an hour after loading.. recieved 2 (yes two) confirmations of account set up.. but now cant get back in the website doesnt show me a subscription despite above named emails confirming.. and te website help system doesnt even acknowledge reciept of my help queries...
At this rate my 30 days will run out without my being able to play.
Obviously that will finish me in the game.. there is no point paying while being unable to play and no point having help/support email sites that are obviously so burdened with problems that they cant ebven auto reply never mind resolve.
Out of AC UO AC2 DAoC CoH WoW CoV LotR AoC this has been for me at least the worst MMO startup. and some of those others had some problems
While I like most of what Mark had to say, I would firmly disagree with his choice on having official forums. The Herald is a poor substitute for them. I don't want the forums as a place to complain but rather as a single place to go to collect information and a place to build a community. As it currently stands, I end up going to 3 or 4 different forums and find all sorts of different and conflicting information. I don't feel that there is any sort of tight community involvement (outside of what your own guild can provide) and I don't think that's a good thing for the longevity of the game itself.
The no forum rule doesn't bother me either. I also agree with your second point. I tend to think they won't do alot of listening unless EA threatens to shut it down when it's no longer profitable. EA isn't SOE and is less likely to keep the product going on life support. During interviews Mythic reps be it Jacobs or whomever said something in the spirit of...this is what we are going to do, if you don't like it don't buy it. Mythic fits perfectly with the EA basic rule. Still unsure why Mythic decided to take the EA out of their name.
EA takes the same stance with their single player games. Example Spore. People didn't like DRM with limited installs, but they still have it on their upcoming games. They will do what they want regardless. Then again they now are facing a global class action suit about it so ...maybe that's why Mythic took the EA out of the name. Mark is no idiot and probably saw trouble coming. May as well TRY to distance themselves. Who knows.
Time will tell how Mythic's approach works. The big test for them will be when a majority of people are on Tier 4 trying to top out their char doing the same scenarios and RvR...every day. Over and over....and over.
WARNING: RANT AHEAD
"Let credit cards do the talking"? Have gaming companies sunk THAT low? A game is not a magazine, for fuck's sake. In order to improve they need to interact with their players, not their credit cards. Craploads of money doesn't make a good, successful game. Sure, if you understand 'success' in a quantifiable way, then yeah, let the credit cards do the talking. When people still get to bad-mouth your game elsewhere, not only in forums but in real life as well, then your game is certainly not a success. A game like a MMORPG is a constant dialogue between developer and gamer, in a space where THEY ARE NOT EQUALS. Developers need to understand that they're in control of their product, while they need to answer to the needs and grievances of their, and I emphasize, THEIR players. We're playing their game, we're going by their rules already, all we're doing is voicing what we think is wrong with those rules.
A bad analogy: people bad-mouth the political system, the president, and whatever all the time. Does the president, getting all emotionally hurt, cancels freedom of speech and orders that every line, every caricature abusing his persona gets erased from the planet? No. Why? Beyond the obvious reasons of it, it's because he has the higher duty of looking through those personal attacks and realize what the message behind them is. It's his/their game we're playing, we're subjected to their set of rules, and just like we have the right to voice them over, they have the obligation to hear them and make sense out of them, be them abusive or not, simply because we can't become presidents ourselves and do things our way. Look at AoC - with Gaute's resignation, we can assume (and only assume) that Funcom are listening to their customers. They had to look through all the crap, all the "AoC sucks lol" one liners and realize that something was wrong with their game, and something was wrong with the direction it was taking. They acted upon it, and gave most AoC players a glimmer of hope. Where did all of this happen? In the official forums. Thanks to a centralized hub of not only information, but expression about something that people care about enough as to drop 15 bucks worth of their income every month. People who say 15 bucks is nothing, they're right, but what counts here is the committment, the intention behind those 15 bucks, not the 15 bucks themselves. That's what Jacobs is missing: for him we're not persons, we're statistics, numbers on their Excel spreadsheet. Credit cards don't talk, it's the people behind them who do, and they have the right to voice their opinion, however abusive it may be, and it's the developer's obligation to listen to each and every one of them.
Devs: do some meditation, read some self-esteem-raising books, learn how to prioritize your life in terms of what people (worst of all, completely strange, unrelated people whose opinions shouldn't affect you in ANY way) say to you, I don't know. Just don't ignore them under the premise that you'll get hurt, because you have a duty to respond to, and that duty is to make a game that is good, fun, and appealing to each and every customer. Again, we're not numbers in a spreadsheet. And again, we're not equals to you... ever since we log in we agree to play within your set of rules and mechanics; we're subjects, but we're subjects of the twenty-first century, individualized and full of opinions and voices that will judge you harshly and cut your head off if the violence grows intensely enough - but on the other hand that judgement, if you do your job right, will be full of praise and faith and loyalty to whatever you do... in other words, we'll be fans. And I bet that just as abusive comments hurt your feelings, praising comments full of warmth (as false as it may be) fill you with accomplishment, with "feel-good". You don't need to fear us (not even in mob form) and our voices... you just need to work hard and win ALL OF US over.
That's it. I'm done preaching. I hope they add official forums at least only for Tech Support. Just a little forum, no need for huge amounts of moderation. Sorry for the rant.
I can see your hope in official forums. You also have to realize that listening to your customer base does not mean success. For example EQ became very raid friendly after time and it drove away many of the original players. Raid friendly as a result of what a selected few wanted. They enjoyed a short amount of success, but after a bit may have realized it was nothing more than the beginning of the next best thing crowd. EQ has low population now and what is left of the raid crew.Most who played from the start have long left the game.
Don't expect EA to change for you. I don't expect them to change for me. The game is too simplistic in design to change. Even the map beyond current zone is a flowchart. I think they realized that making a world map may be tricky. I don't think they NEED a forum. AS I had said earlier they are going to do what they want anyway so a forum would only annoy them in their tower.
To Stradden. I enjoy your interviews....almost forgot this is a commentary on your interview. This was not a bad one. My only advice would be to be stronger in your approach. By that I mean don't get tough towards the weak when they are down, but get tough when the strong are up.
Best wishes to you.
Eh, he "feels passionate" about everything he does.
Damn right a customer has the right to be upset; we also have the right to complain if the product doesn't work right. You accepted out money, now you have to take the heat when it doesn't work right. It's called being help accountable!
It's a complete cop out not to have a forum and give the excuse he did. Oh, people said some mean things... GTF over it! We wouldn't say "mean" things if you got your act together.
So sure, you block out the complaints but you also block out the suggestions. In your arrogance, you miss what the player base is looking for ... what is wrong with your game. After the frustration, people move on and you are left twiddling your thumbs wondering what happened.
Congratulations, you get the genius of the year award!
Edit: Btw, its exponentially harder to gain a customer back from cancellation than it is to retain a custom prior to that. Telling customers to cancel, sure we are going to do that ... most wont look back. Then you get to pass the buck to someone else...
Personally, I have NEVER! returned to a game that I have canceled due to bugs/content. Once the time I have paid for runs out, I am gone for good.
ROFL!! I love your Avatar. Very nice :)
I think I find more amazement in the fact that people are surprised by this action by EA Mythic. They had no forums before it went live. They had no forums for DAoC. It is nothing new. Despite the initial rose colored love of the game it may face some nasty results because of it's simplicity.
What amazes me is the small-mindedness and general mulishness of Mark's attitude. Maybe that's why DAoC server population right this moment looks like this:
Currently defending the realms:
1,391North America
2,015 GOA Europe
3,406
That's from the Camelot Herald. Those are not numbers to be proud of and, frankly, I'm surprise EA gave this guy as much free reign as they have. Unless there's a shift in management, this is the future of Warhammer and it won't take 7 years to get there. People have a lot more choices now and, as a poster above so aptly put it, once some people leave, they never look back.
You talking about the Camelot Herald ie: Dark Age of Camelot, or the WAR Herald for... Warhamer? Some scientists are now saying that they're two different games.
You talking about the Camelot Herald ie: Dark Age of Camelot, or the WAR Herald for... Warhamer? Some scientists are now saying that they're two different games.
Those are the combined populations of all the DAoC server just a few minutes ago. To me, this speaks volumes because Mark likes to point to DAoC as evidence of Mythic's ability to run an MMORPG and justification for why they made some of the choices they did with WAR. I know DAoC has been around for a while, but best case server populations of less than 5000 players for a game focused on RvR is nothing to crow about.
As I've said before, I love the Warhammer IP and I'd really like to see the game take off and do well. Initially, I was even hoping that, yes, they'd take a big bite out of WoW's customer base but this attitude of "If you have a problem, just cancel" and the fact that Mythic doesn't care why really has my nose out of joint. I've got an $80 Collector's Edition sitting here from a company who was eager to sell it, but once they have my money, couldn't care less about me as a customer. Yes, I've cancelled and Mythic didn't even care enough to wonder why.
I didn't want to be as obvious as your comments, but I tend to agree. They walked a very thin line and chose the path of we will do what we want. Very dangerous especially considering the volatile nature of players today. they will leave and never look back.
P.S. I think the numbers are off
Those are the combined populations of all the DAoC server just a few minutes ago. To me, this speaks volumes because Mark likes to point to DAoC as evidence of Mythic's ability to run an MMORPG and justification for why they made some of the choices they did with WAR. I know DAoC has been around for a while, but best case server populations of less than 5000 players for a game focused on RvR is nothing to crow about.
As I've said before, I love the Warhammer IP and I'd really like to see the game take off and do well. Initially, I was even hoping that, yes, they'd take a big bite out of WoW's customer base but this attitude of "If you have a problem, just cancel" and the fact that Mythic doesn't care why really has my nose out of joint. I've got an $80 Collector's Edition sitting here from a company who was eager to sell it, but once they have my money, couldn't care less about me as a customer. Yes, I've cancelled and Mythic didn't even care enough to wonder why.
I have as well. I would have liked to think they will do well, but not much has changed. I myself look with admiration at DAoC way back when, but when looking at it objectively the company and game weren't all that great. Was hoping for an improvement.
I didn't want to be as obvious as your comments, but I tend to agree. They walked a very thin line and chose the path of we will do what we want. Very dangerous especially considering the volatile nature of players today. they will leave and never look back.
P.S. I think the numbers are off
Those are Mythic's posted numbers. In fact, they shed a couple hundred players just since I copied and pasted it from their site. If anyone's remotely curious (or bored) you can see for yourself:
www.camelotherald.com/news/index.php
My apologies Lord...my mistake.
No apologies necessary, my friend. I had a hard time believing what I was reading myself. DAoC was my first MMO and full of potential. It's sad to see such a decline, especially when it's due to simple neglect.
Well... after a review of most of the posts attached to this subject I'm amused that Mark's reasoning seems validated.
Enjoyed the interview Jon, looking forward to the continuation.
DAOC is kinda old you know ... I wouldn't play it just because of that most likely. Not because the graphics itself, but because of certain systems that we got accustomed in newer games that were just not present back in the day. Playing one today I feel like my hands are tied.
AO was my favortie MMO back in the day, however I went back to check it out a couple of months ago and I just couldn't play it anymore ... that is when I decided not to spoil all my good memories and just leave it there.
To get back to the point, DAOC imo is too old to be a good comparison to how WAR will work and DAOC numbers of active players mean exactly nothing. We will see ho WAR will manage in a month or two, it is definitely too early to start whining about how things will be or not be handled.
just a thought, having no forums yet may be a smaller problem, but good luck for new players in the future.
tabula rasa recently reopened accounts again to motivate players to come back. cool, I thought, but after an almost endless search in 4 different forums where I wanted to check what changed in the last year (and how players reacted) I found almost nil or mostly outdated stuff. for me, as a customer, I have to think: "is this only a fracture of the playerbase? or am I really on THE biggest community site and the game is already that dead?".
forums were and will always be the central point for the community, splitting that up ("get of my lawn damn you!!!111") won't do the game & the community any good. but hey, at least the companys saved some pennys, yay.
(and talking about dirty forum, I once again would like to point towards the lotro forums. it's as simple as that: keep your house clean and the roaches won't show up).
Official forums are needed imho and not just used to vent. It's also used for players to share their adventures, crafters to help each other hone their skills and talk about their craft and so forth. Even in older games like SWG where you would think, everyone do is complain. You actually will find the majority of the post are to discuss about the game.
For me MMO's not having official forums is like Macys without shopping bags.
What did the official forums in WoW ever do useful? It was just a hangout for all the cry-babies and highly opinionated, arrogant, loud mouths. You need forums? There are a ton of forums for War already. You seek official technical info? There's an official Herald on the main site to let you know what's happening. Reading the replies in here reminds me why I try to avoid forums as much as possible. Both my intelligence and faith in humanity come under assault everytime.
The only reason that Mythic does not have forums is because they don't want to spend money to monitor them. Forums are a necessary evil, without them you don't get the feedback on issues. Sure you can use other site forums, but how do you pick which ones you monitor?
It is because the lack of their own forums they did not get around to correcting huge issues with DAoC until it was far too late. One of the reasons I don't play Mythic games anymore. They don't listen to the playerbase.
Very well said, Mark. You should know that most of us who have played DAoC understand that we do not need official forums to form a community. Communities are formed within the game, and while at this time, everyone's off doing their own thing, eventually things will settle down like they did in DAoC. Known players will be known within the game on their own server, and they don't need to go off posting "I KILLED X PLAYER 10 TIMES IN RVR LOLOLOL I'M SO GOOD" threads on any official forum.
Those who don't understand what a community is really like, or haven't played DAoC, as you said will vote with their credit card. Maybe they'll go back to reading awesome threads on the WoW forums such as:
1. "LOLOL THORI'DAL WENT TO A ROGUE"
2. @LEGOLESS I PWNT U!!111!
And so on, and so forth.
I couldn't agree with you more ...
Oh wait, I don't agree. Why? Because War's in game chat system is clunky, buggy and just overall doesn't provide a communicative experience.
Personally, at this point I would just prefer a better in game chat system although I still would like an official forum. Problem is, how do I relay my distaste for their in game chat system? I guess I could submit feedback in game that will get lost in the millions or if there were a forum I could create a post for such an issue and hope to get many other users to support the same idea. An idea that is supported goes farther than just one person alone.
Sure, you are going to get people being rude on an official forum ... just as you will an unofficial. The only difference is that Mythic isn't the one having to moderate at that point. Also, if they actually read the unofficial forums as they claim to, they are going to read the same nasty posts as they would have on an official forum. One difference being, depending on the moderation rules of the site, the nasty posts may just stay there to continuously slap Mythic in the face.
What this is really about is accountability, money and laziness. They don't want to spend money on a forum when they can have unofficial sites do their work for them. Then, when people start posting reasonable requests/feedback, Mythic can simply claim not to have seen the posts and not been aware of the issues. In one swing they have given up accountability and shown how lazy they really are.
It's like a car manufacturer trying to sell a car without a warranty. They don't want to be accountable for the problems that may occur and have to spend revenue to fix the problems.
With an MMO, we get no warranty. Matter of fact, we have to sign an EULA telling us exactly what we CANNOT DO with the software we just spent our money on. So if anything, communication would have to substitute as our warranty. What is the best/easiest form of communication for an MMO??? A FORUM! Mythic is denying us of that form of communication, one that is available for every other MMO out there.
Lastly, Mark is just making things worse for himself if he is really so scared of "mean" posts because now everyone has even more of a reason to hate him.
Sorry, that's completely incorrect. Not only is your car analogy a terrible comparison to what is actually going on here, you have a twisted perception of how in-game feedback works. First, the feedback system ensures that player feedback is ALWAYS received and NEVER overlooked. In a forum, you will have to fight with the tens of thousands of other people experiencing problems and constantly bumping your thread to make sure you're heard.
Not to mention, most people end up making ten thousand threads on the same issue because they can't use the "search" function.
A quick look around some fansite forums will show you quite the opposite about how the playerbase feels about official forums. Warhammer Alliance, for example, generally backs what Mark Jacobs is doing. Your generalization that every player is discontent with Mark's decision is not only a bold one to make without proof, but also completely wrong. If you took only 15 seconds to read around fansites or other community forums, you would see just how wrong you are.
Sorry, that's completely incorrect. Not only is your car analogy a terrible comparison to what is actually going on here, you have a twisted perception of how in-game feedback works. First, the feedback system ensures that player feedback is ALWAYS received and NEVER overlooked. In a forum, you will have to fight with the tens of thousands of other people experiencing problems and constantly bumping your thread to make sure you're heard.
Not to mention, most people end up making ten thousand threads on the same issue because they can't use the "search" function.
A quick look around some fansite forums will show you quite the opposite about how the playerbase feels about official forums. Warhammer Alliance, for example, generally backs what Mark Jacobs is doing. Your generalization that every player is discontent with Mark's decision is not only a bold one to make without proof, but also completely wrong. If you took only 15 seconds to read around fansites or other community forums, you would see just how wrong you are.
Sorry to say man but you are either blind or full of crap. You must not actually be reading the threads at warhammer alliance. Go to their forums and do a search for MARK. Most of the people there do NOT care for his views.
My car anaology was spot on. This article is mostly about accountability and again you wouldn't expect a car manufacturer to skip on their warranty. Just like you wouldn't expect an MMO to skip on their forum. The two just go hand in hand.
Additionally, there isn't competition on a forum unless your idea is just off the wall. Generally, when you get a following of people with the same impressions, the post is looked at in depth. If a post has a large enough following, it might even be stickied.
Lastly, having worked as a CSR for two major companies (which I will never do again) I have a little experience in how feedback is handled. True, I have not worked for Mythic so I don't know their practices first hand however if Mark is any indication of how things are handled ... it is the same as every other two places I worked. That is to say, we were told to flat out ignore most of the feedback unless it could be categorized under their current goals. Basically, if it didn't agree with the developers already laid out plans, ignore it.
Both Mythic and even even Funcom have expressed that their word is law and they already have a vision of how they want their game to be. We see how well that is going for Funcom....
i'm still wondering what mark jacobs has been doing that he's receiving death threats via official online forums?
we get it -- all of you hate wow forums. everyone that can ONLY bring up wow forums... i am so incredibly sorry for you and i totally pity you that you have only ever played wow and therefore your only experience with a game's official forums are with the blizznet kiddies on wow AND that those children have made you suffer so much.
truly, i pity you.
believe it or not, EVEN ON wow's forums... you have a forum for technical support. which, i'm willing to bet, has a number of helpful stickies which go into far more detail than you'll get on some static-faq, AND you'll have a number of intelligent people able to help you with technical issues... instead of having to wait days/weeks for someone to maybe get back to you via email.
even on wow's forums, there are a TON of class guides.
i'd repeat all the other benefits readily available on many forums
and i have to tell you, i have yet to see any of these death threats to which mark jacobs refers on ANY game's official forums.
so, sorry, but i will do as someone smart-assedly suggested and i'll speak with my credit card AND (bad) word of mouth.
oh and to those of you that talk about not having forums because of complaining and frustration posts made by customers -- WRONG... mark jacobs says those are to be expected and perfectly acceptable. it's the, and i quote, "death threats" that worries him.
i'm just curious... has anyone ever seen death threats on forums about mmo games?
let's just think about that for a moment. if i were to levy a death threat against a game developer... would i do it on a forum with thousands of daily posts, in the hopes the dev might read it?
or... would i find his/her email? if i were going about finding their email... how much more work would it be to get their work address/phone number? if i'm going about doing all of that.... wouldn't it just be a few minutes more to get their home address/phone number? heck, how many of those devs have online resumes and i could get all that information there?
if i WERE making a death threat... why in the world would i do it on a forum?
to sum it up... war is a decent game. i don't play daoc (after a couple of months back in the day) because i got tired of hunting information and trying to find a site that really was a centralized location for everything i wanted (yes, i expected what i find with pretty much all other mmo games). so yes, this is a deal breaker for that reason plus the blatant disrespect paid to me, the customer.
no, this is not a bloated feeling of self-worth. this is a basic customer service issue, with a lack of respect for me, the customer, tied into it.
it's an alright game, which is what daoc was. i'll give it a good 30 day run; but, honestly, i've no intention of scouring the internet for information all other MMOs have the common sense to host themselves and to provide a centralized location for all their customers to meet and discuss and whatever.
common sense and common courtesy are not too much to expect; lots of bugs can be overlooked in lieu of having these two items.
orly? and those other forums are such great places eh?
luckily, i understand how to hit the "search" button and i seem to not be seeing what you're talking about. so um, let's take a look, shall we?
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99123&highlight=mark+jacobs
Still no confirmation from Mythic concerning the "stuttering/hitching" issue!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Since the moderators decided that petition's shouldn't be allowed I'm throwing this topic back up without the petition part in it. So I guess we aren't allowed to /sign anymore. Please don't question the moderator's decision about closing the original thread. Stay on topic.This is a continuation of the older thread: http://www.warhammeralliance.com/for...ad.php?t=96890"
How many of you are a little disappointed Mythic hasn't even said a word about this frustrating issue so many of us have been forced to deal with?
Note for those of you who don't know about this: This stuttering/hitching issue is client side. It's most likely bad optimization for various hardware setups in peoples PC's. There have been countless temporary user fixes, but with most of them after playing the game for a few hours hitching/stuttering returns again.
Let your voice be heard! Feel free to discuss this widespread problem in order to bring it to Mythic's attention.
Also please stay on topic. No flaming! I want this thread to be the voice of all of us who want this fixed. Since there are so many other threads like this one, it would be best to keep all discussion here in this thread to make it easier for Mythic to keep track of the issue. Thanks.
good idea to not have official forums... it really sounds like everyone is backing mark jacobs 100% here! spot on call there m8! (that's ironic statements, just in case anyone didn't catch on.)
good thing there's no official forums, so that ea-mythic can ignore other game-breaking problems as well! ctd isn't that big a problem is it?
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=84053&highlight=mark+jacobs
good thing people are having to google issues to see who else might be having CTD problems and/or fixes to them. yup, sounds like people are LOVING not having official forums where all this information would be readily available.
should i really continue to go down the list of just this ONE area -- technical support. which a company that just put out 1.5 million boxes at $50 each, can not be bothered with... something this blooming basic and where a centralized forum WOULD be the ideal place to cutdown on the constant barrage of ingame petitions and people going to that official faq/tech support thingie and sending emails via that because their (incredibly limited) helps DON'T help?
i know a technical forum where answers to your questions CAN be readily found must sound like an incredibly INTELLIGENT idea... that's because it IS an incredibly intelligent idea that pretty much all mmo-players take for granted because it is that filled with common sense AND intelligence that to NOT engage in this activity is easily mistaken for moronic stupidity of the worst kind.
here's a place where they're discussing what mark jacobs did/did not say about the cut classes and content (pre retail). it sounds like they're having issues finding exactly where mark had stated it (at least initially in the thread). too bad there's not just one place they could search and be confident that everything said by people like mark jacobs, could be located. again, common sense isn't all that common... and i'm still not seeing any of the death threats that mark gave as reason for not having official forums. where ARE all those death threats hiding?
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=118176&highlight=mark+jacobs
ya know.. if i go to the COx forums, i can actually find stickies about what video cards work and tweaks for various video cards/settings, heck, even for different versions of windows... too bad mark jacobs doesn't feel that this sort of BASIC customer support should be easily and readily available to paying customers. but, please do support that you agree mark jacobs would be receiving death threats on those official forums. kudos for that!
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60716&highlight=mark+jacobs
tired of having to watch the opening video and scroll down/acknowledge the eula EVERY time you load up, and would just like to disable them? well... the devs are SUPPOSED to be going to forums like warhammeralliance, right? where's the dev/tech support for something else that should be basic customer support? dunno, let's check out THAT thread.
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=109047&highlight=mark+jacobs
oh wait, i see what you're talking about, where everyone is agreeing with mark jacobs... mark made a comment someplace (not sure if they found it, or just paraphrased, damn if only everything was centrally located...) about how war will have to compete with the current wow, not the wow of 4 years ago; because current wow and current war are the choices that gamers are presented. so this must be to what you're referring when you say everyone on places like warhammeralliance.com are agreeing with mark jacobs, eh?
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=119379&highlight=mark+jacobs
"user fixes are not curing lag"... the op starts with "this is ridiculously frustrating"... man, that TOTALLY sounds like someone incredibly happy with mark jacobs' decision to hide ea-mythic from the massive onslaught of death threats which having official forums OBVIOUSLY breeds. (that is ironic sarcasm.)
oops, before you say it... looks like they already went thru the available official channels and their experience (much like mine and other customers' experiences) was quite underwhelming and lacking.
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=96158&highlight=mark+jacobs
i like the mark jacobs' quote in the below... if they're planning on giving players what they want... does that mean we WILL have a centralized location to find all we want to know about everything warhammer? oops, i guess i forgot that plethora of death threats that official forums would bring about.
has it sunk in how incredibly stupid his remarks along those lines is...as the reason for not having official forums... or should i ask everyone to google "deat threats made on gaming forums" and everyone can see what an incredibly threat/harrassment/abuse this problem is and how it's running rampant across all games on the intarw3bZ?
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=115019&highlight=mark+jacobs
maybe jacobs saw this:
http://palgn.com.au/article.php?id=11748
oh wait... he said (or maybe just implied, in case someone decides to do a semantics-nerd-rage-of-stupidity-and-ignorance on me) that was a reason daoc didn't do forums either... so it couldn't be that aussie thing, daoc's been around a lot longer than a few months.
oh well, i'm not seeing where warhammeralliance folks are all banding around mark jacobs; but i am seeing frustration there, as well as here, and other UNofficial forums, and ingame, a LOT ingame...
big ups for one of the defining moments of ignoring basic customer support goes to MARK JACOBS~!!!
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY~!!
my bad, those death threats WEREN'T on forums... like anyone who wants to make sure they ARE heard, this person went directly to the dev... so nope... still no death threats on forums, just made directly to people.
"They were all emails, and I think at least two of them were possibly serious! They actually left their email addresses on them, so we know who they came from... We had a PSP bug and someone said, 'We're going to send you a bomb and blow the studio up!' But, er, we can track that email."
in all seriousness, WHERE did this happen, these forum-made death threats, that mark jacobs actually sites that as a reason for not having official forums? or is he just full of poopie and making up "oooo da terrorists will git us wif da WMDs if we gotza official forums".
tell me again why people that make such uninformed and idiotic decisions hold positions where they are ALLOWED to make such decisions?
What did the official forums in WoW ever do useful?
oh i don't know maybe get them 10 million+ subscribers
You have it backwards. Dev controlled forums are easier to man handle than a network of fan sites. What's the first thing that happens when people start getting agnry on dev owned forums? Posts get locked, deleted, users get banned..
I suppose you think the devs are handing out money to the fan sites to spend their time playing forum nazi on their own boards? Talk to Wrenn at warhammerconflict, or any of the owners of fan sites and I think they'll laugh in your face.
Devs don't have that control over player owned forums, therefore by not having official forums they force the traffic to fan sites (which they don't control)
There is MORE flow of information via a fan site network than there would EVER be on an official forum. Think about it.
On the forums issue I am dissapointed about the not mentioning logical numbers in the interview before tackeling the abstract. He could've started with the standard, "only 10% ever use a forum board". The minority. He should've opened with that and then addressed the abstract.
To the guy with the really long post with irrelevant links:
I don't know really know where you got the idea that I was talking about classes being cut, or technical issues, but on the actual subject I was talking about, it took me all of 3 seconds to find this:
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=113345&highlight=Official+forums
While the entire playerbase may not agree with everything Mark Jacobs does(as I think your post tries to prove?), as far as the subject at hand here goes, they do.
Either way, I like you a little more than most since you can use the search function, even if it's to search for threads not relevant to the conversation.
As for tech support, most people will always get tech support from the players. Mythic does offer official support systems, but they'll never be as useful as talking to other players about the issues you're experiencing.
Searching around any official game forum for a few seconds will also show you just how much hand developers, or forum staff have in actually solving problems.
Frankly, what do they need an official forum for?
One more place for the usual suspects to go to bitch, piss and moan because the game doesn't cater specifically to them?
One more place for the legion of arm-chair design experts to rant on about how Mythic did "X Y and Z" all wrong and how they, the poster, would have done it better?
One more place for people to go, demand answers, demand changes, demand explanations and then proceed to bitch about how "Mythic doesn't listen to its players" when they aren't given personal attention?
One more place for any would-be decent thread to be reduced to flame-wars and mud-slinging because people can't seem to keep a thread on topic?
If the Devs, Mark and others are actively reading and posting on places like the Alliance site and so forth, then what's any more "official" about them posting that info on their own site. Is it because it makes it feel like you're "confronting them on their own turf"? An ego thing perhaps?
Look.. the guy's put it out there... Express dissatisfaction, express anger and disappointment.. just don't do it by using vulgarity, threats or blatant insults. For those expressing phony outrage at such a suggestion, ask yourself this one question.. If you're dissatisfied with a product you've bought at a store, do you go to the store and call them every word in the book, threaten them and degrade them over it? I sure as hell hope not, or I'd say you have some serious social or communication issues.
Wanna really send a message? Cancel your sub. How many people say that right on these and other forums? Vote with your wallet. Yet when Mark Jacobs says it, there are people who will find some way to twist it around and make it sound "suspect".
The world isn't going to end if Mythic doesn't have an official forum. There are others out there that do the job just as well and, over time, one will likely rise to become the "unofficial official forums" anyway. I've seen it happen with every other MMO I've played... including those that do have official forums.
I'd love to have the problems some folks must have on these forums if something like Mythic not having official forums for WAR is enough to get you so outraged.
Mark I suppose their is a small chance you may actually read this, so here goes. This may have been said already above I dont know I dont have the time to plow through all these forums. This concerns Mythics position on having official forums.
You have to realize here that you are punishing the 95%-99% of us that are reasonable and don't abuse the fourms, but would still like a place to go to discuss the game in a reasonable manner - both in general and server specific. I am sure one such place evolves somewhere out their in the web but do I have scour the web to find it? Can't you pick one and send people their - or better yet find a way to have forums that respect your views (which I agree with) but don't punish the overwhelmingly majority of your customers because of a few idiots?
If you applied the same mentality you have here to your game itself, you wouldn't let anyone play, because a few of us players turn out to gold farmers. Obviously, this is throwing out the baby with the bathwater and you are doing the same thing with your forum policy.
A simple approach to try - you get one account on the forums automatically created when you create your account, and there is no other way to get a write priv forum account. When you go to use the forum the first time, you get a big pop-up that doesn't have endless pages of legalese that no one ever reads but has a bulleted list of 4 or 5 simple sentence that basically say - be respectful and courteous when you use this forum or you will lose your forum write privs - period.
Warhammer is going mass market. You need to appeal to people who would like an EASY place to go for information who aren't going to spend the time tracking down anything about this on the web, but if you put a good resource in front of them they will use it, be happy, and keep using their credit card to vote that you are doing a good job.
It will help you make more money.