A couple of days ago, there were a few people raging about how Mark Jacobs apparantly “threw” GOA under the bus because of the situation in Warhammer Online for the European Open Beta and some comments made by Iain Compton.  Okay- first of all, the comments made by Mr. Compton, while hilarious to myself on a personal level, are just not things you post in direct contact with your playerbase.  Ever.  Are people batshit crazy?  Absolutely they are.  Are there a ton of morons out there?  You betcha.  But these are things PR, Community and Customer Service folks keep inside their head.

So this prompted a slew of comments, mainly this … and this … and of course this (amongst others).

Now, it strikes me as absolute hillarity that the first gut reaction is “ZOMG HE CANT DO THIS!”  Oh my God, call the internet police, someone is blogging!  If Mark Jacobs wants to make a blog of nothing but pictures of him and Paul plastered at some hole in the wall pub and called it a “personal album” I’m sure there would be people saying he can’t do this.  What makes this blog any different than the communication he has kept up with people on sites like WarhammerAlliance.com?

Two words:  Jack and shit.

The guy posted some comments out there.  He’s also the General Manager of Mythic Entertainment (an EA Studio).  I’m sure the only guy he has to report to is probably EA’s CEO.  Mark’s a shrewd guy, he’s not going to post something so outlandish that he is going to get his Community people pissed off like Cuppycake and Moorgard sort of/kind of hint.

What all of these commentators need to realize is that Mark was responding to a huge issue.  How huge?  Well here’s a link to the thread on Warhammer Alliance.  The thread is 71 pages long with over a thousand replies.  This, in all manners of speaking, was a shitstorm.  This was not the only post about this subject either.  There were a shit ton of threads on WHA about this subject.  THIS IS WHY MARK JACOBS WAS STEPPING IN.

This is clearly foot-in-mouth syndrome by Cuppycake at the very minimum, not to mention any other person who decided to comment on this situation with harshly critical comments towards Mark (I give Moorgard slack as he was basically telling stories about his experiences, and was looking at this situation from that perspective– or so that’s my take on his post).

I also enjoy comments such as this:

Like I said earlier, an official forum is a CM’s playground.  It’s also a CM’s nursery and kindergarten..where they grow with the community as a strong leader and someone to appreciate and respect and trust.  When you go through them and address the players on an external media – you are setting your CM up for feeling less able to react to the needs of the community, less approachable to the mass audience and less prepared for the backlash when it happens.

Why do I enjoy this?  Because it’s like, not true whatsoever.  Official Forums, while very good tools for communication are not a CM’s “playground”.  I highly doubt that the CMs on the WoW forums consider it a plaything to wade through endless drivel.  Granted, I’m sure it’s a great job because you can find a lot of stuff to laugh at, but seriously… who looks at CMs as strong leaders?  Who?  Most of the time, the CMs are the whipping boys of the fanbase who is pissed off over some sort of perceived slight towards their faction or class.

My mind reels from the entirety of this situation.  I think Mark’s in the right on this one because the GOA stuff is pretty crazy, especially when THEIR CEO had to step in and comment on the situation.  Mark stepping in on this situation really showed a lot of potential players of Warhammer Online that the buck stops with him and in some cases he will step in and handle things.  As a player that really speaks volume to me.  As an employee of a company, if the top guy came up and took charge because he felt personal responsibility to help people with something, that would make me even more excited to work at a place such as that.

Actually, it’s also really good Customer Service.  You are showing the Customers that you want to step in and help them.

If you don’t care if you are banned or not, why even bother taking up a slot?  A “free trial”?  Anyone who uses Open Beta as a free trial has some confusions as to what Open Betas are designed for.  These are more for testing server functionality and also having many people test many things at once to hammer out any bugs that might have gone undiscovered.  Yes, you get to “preview” the game, but things are going to change so much, so quickly once the game goes launch that it’s not even fair to judge the game based on the period of Open Beta.

Just my 2 brass coins.

WAR is good for the MMO market because it puts another solid game out there.  Are there bugs?  Yes, every game is going to have bugs.  Beta testers won’t find every single bug and each patch is bound to make something else get a bit twitchy.  It’s the nature of the beast.  Any company that thinks they can make a completely bug free product is deluding themselves, IMO.

Hell, even WoW still has bugs that haven’t gotten fixed.  Really depends on how game-breaking the bug is.  Some are much more important to fix than others.

Overall, I give the game a solid A.  Every time I log in I have fun.  Last game I felt that way about was Lord of the Rings Online, even though I know there are a lot of detractors on that game as well.  (*shrug* You win some and you lose some, eh?).

I think a nice pat on the back is good for the developers behind Warhammer Online.  They pretty much did a top-notch job.

I also find it funny when the Magus’ or Sorcerers start jumping around trying to escape my wrath instead of trying to DPS me down a little.  Easy kills!

#1 – WAR must be MODLess
#2 – Mods already going to far

Both topics are pretty interesting.  In the second topic, the poster talks about a mod that tells people when a Shaman has put an ability called “Gork Sez Stop!” on them (this ability does a small dot that lasts 2 seconds but keeps refreshing itself if you move around).

I tend to agree with him.

Abilities like this are meant to hamper foes in the PvP/RvR areas of the game.  Why you would want a mod to tell you when you have it… I can understand that.  But to Shaman players, it’s not exactly something I would consider fair game.

You have this ability and now someone has a MOD tell them when to stop.

So you had the presence of mind to toss the ability on someone and this slacker who has the game play things for him basically negates the practical nature of the ability.

Gawd, prices for housing are obscene in N. Virginia!

I’m for the idea of tithing moreso taxing.  Giving something to the guild should be a voluntary action that each member of the guild should partake in.  This also lets officers see who is more of a team player by who is contributing to the guild coffers to help with guild purchases and such.

Taxes are just intrusive, although I could agree with it if it was something reasonable (10%).  Anything more than that would seem a bit high to me.

We’ve decided to remove the titles for the Realm First Feats of Strength that are associated with reaching level 80. We’ve also removed the titles associated with the Realm First Feats of Strength associated with gaining 450 skill in the professions and secondary skill.

This is fantastic.  Whoever thought that it’d be a great idea to put in a title that only a handful of people could ever get should be kicked in the head.  This is one of the strengths for Warhammer’s Tome of Knowledge system.

People have a chance of unlocking the titles, even if it does take a really long time.  Nothing is really limited to certain amounts of players, but rather everything is there for the taking.  Lord of the Rings Online is also like this.

Having the ability for anyone to achieve something is great.  “Epeens” aside, from a developer standpoint, the more you can give people the feeling that they can do anything and get anything… given enough time… the more subscription numbers you are likely to get.  Some people like to point out that the hardcore of the hardcore are the ones who provide the numbers.  I’ll have to respectfully disagree.

You’ll be able to score The Validated as a title for your characters.  It’s easy, and it’s sure better than starting off with no titles!