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May 17, 2012

Tag: mmo

January 2, 2011

The Silly Cataclysmic Schadenfreude

by Frank — Categories: Gaming, Internet — Tags: , , — 3 Comments

One thing that I totally missed during my time away from blogging was the latest expansion of Blizzard’s online drug of choice, World of Warcraft. This little number is titled Cataclysm, and for the two of you who have been living under a rock or trapped in inconvenient cryo-stasis the last couple years, the expansion re-works the original WoW content, creating new challenges and opportunities for players old and new looking to capture the nostalgia of early WoW.

As those who read me know, I too am a former WoW-er. But I left the game shortly before Burning Crusade after realizing that it might be better for me to spend my 20 hours a week raiding doing something else and perhaps getting paid for it, preferably not in the currency of headaches and drama. Since then, I’ve heard the game has gotten much more casual-friendly and easily able to be enjoyed among those who don’t have much time. It hasn’t been enough to entice me back, but I still have to give the proverbial “what’s up” head nod for Blizzard having such a successful and long-lived game.

But my sordid history of WoW-play isn’t the subject of today’s post. Today I’m talking about how there’s a tendency in the online gaming community to trash WoW and Cataclysm (or whatever latest expansion is out there) as short-lived, guaranteed failures that will bore people to death after a month. Comprised of the disgruntled or shafted from a mailbox dance in epics, this group of folks can’t wait for WoW to take its inevitable dive. Seeking to point out every flaw in the system, they take great pleasure in the inevitable mistakes that have been made with Cataclysm and cling to every bug and bad balancing decision as if it were the beginning of the end.

This kind of schadenfreude, the taking pleasure in the suffering of others (or in this case, other games) is present in many places where current and former WoW players congregate. To be honest, I don’t really know why people get happiness out of this stuff. You all know that I’m an optimist, and I like it when people are happy – but being happy about things that go wrong for others sort of has a limit. I’ve talked before about how the hate on WoW seems to be a bit pointless, but it gets worse with every expansion, and Cataclysm is no different.

The reason I do find it silly is mostly because it’s ultimately tiring. There’s a reason why they tell you it takes more muscles to frown than to smile. To translate it into online terms, it probably takes more finger-stress from typing to post a hateful rant than it does a nice, positive post (I blame it on the all-caps words and the need to reach over to bold and underline and re-size key points like “WoW sucks!!!111″). To maintain that level of hate or dislike for something over time is something only Darth Vader could do, and we all know what eventually happened to him, yes?

The fact is, the energy spent worrying about something you dislike enough to post about how you want it fail could be better spent talking about what you really like out of a game. There are people out there who shun the WoW game but are exceptionally happy to play things like, say, old school Ultima Online, Minecraft, and Left 4 Dead. Some play WAR or Aion, or Guild Wars, and are perfectly content with that experience without having to Halo-style teabag on others’ with WoW. They’re much happier than the haters, trust me.

For my part, I know that WoW isn’t really my kind of game, despite the temptations of a more casual pace and grind. But you won’t catch me saying a bad thing about it here, or anywhere else. It has its place in the MMO world, just like every other current and upcoming release, and like I said – the more that people play and accept it, the better it will be for us overall. Like the old saying goes, “haters gonna hate”, but you don’t have to be among them, right?

October 4, 2010

Be Kind, Don’t Panic Grind

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: — 1 Comment

Today I poked around the interwebz and came upon what Syp of Bio Break calls a bit of a Panic button moment, as his post on Guild Wars 2′s latest revelation on making cash seemed to refer to. Apparently the craziness revolves around a model that intends on having players pay to customize a set of armor with whatever skin they want no matter what it looks like. Reading the responses and the widespread reaction around the Net, you’d think that we’d have gotten a meteorite heading towards Earth and Bruce Willis and a team of oil drillers was our only hope.

Pre-release communities for MMOs are precocious. Not just for the fact that there is anticipation, excitement, or a community blender that dissects every developer post, but because of the insanity that being passionate about something brings to folks. All it takes is one word, one picture, or in this case, one sentence involving purchasing and customization, and the community is sent into a frothing at the mouth that would put most Starbucks espresso machines to shame. It’s a bit interesting seeing some of the leaps that people are coming to with this stuff.

You know me, dear readers – I’ve always just been rather calm about announcements and developer quotes. I don’t do what I call the “panic grind”, where people seem to grind their teeth in apprehension over the possibility that expectations won’t be met, or that a detail that is exciting to them won’t be cool, or that something that’s confirmed will spell the doom of their own enjoyment. You can identify these people pretty easily – they’re the “worried about failure” folks, the ones that have been hurt in the past for being idealistic and faithful about a title, the ones that envisioned epic battles with swords and sorcery but got laggy slideshows with toothpicks and OP spells. It’s hard to get such panic grinders excited about something, because they’ve always got something else to be worried about, something else to grind to get to that next frantic panic level.

I think part of getting over the panic grind and take things as they come with MMOs is to realize that nothing someone will say is going to ultimately sway your ability to enjoy or have fun with a game. That is honestly up to you, the players, to make a call on. If you’re waiting for a developer or a friend or some random forum poster to reassure you that the game is not going to be a mess for you, then you’re taking a reactive, rather than proactive, approach to your own fun factor. Whether or not the game will be fun for you is not really the result of marketing hype, the opinions of your favorite bloggers (even the positive ones like me), or developer interviews. It’s the result of you having your hands on the product, playing it for what it is, and making your own choice and determination about how cool it is.

In some respects, that’s another reason to hold off and get off the panic grind – typically, panic grinders haven’t and won’t get their hands on a finished game for months, sometimes even years. To waste time panicking and going nuts over small details is just going to stress you out – and I think you all have more important things to stress out about than the fact that a developer said a purple hoo-hah stick won’t be able to be exchanged for an orange swizzle-sword. So sit back, relax, and know that grinding your panic level gets you nothing positive – unless freaking out is one of those unlockable achievements you seek to acquire in your MMO life.

October 3, 2010

AAA In The Eye of the MMO Beholder

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: , , — Leave a comment

Just the other day I caught a post from roller coaster-like blogger Keen regarding AAA titles. It wasn’t really the point of his post, but what did catch my eye was the “inferred meaning” of AAA meaning Everquest or World of Warcraft caliber. It struck me as odd. Afte rall, here at Overly Positive there is no such thing as something that isn’t “AAA”, though I think my small but faithful readership understands that from what I’ve been putting up for two years. No, everything is the best, the brightest, the…well, AAA-iest, even.

Let’s put aside the fact that I just made a bad attempt at making a new adjective, and just focus on the fact that to me, it just sounds awkward, this whole “AAA” thing. Last I heard, AAA referred to those guys whose logo I shanghaied for today’s post – you know, the ones who help you when you totally meant to lock your keys in your car. Or maybe it refers to those guys who can’t quite hack it in the majors in baseball and have to play elsewhere first, in which case they are certainly not the best. Either way, I don’t understand where the idea of AAA in terms of a definition of “good” as attached to the idea of it being “massively built” came from.

I don’t know about you guys, but something that is AAA to me is something that’s just fun and enjoyable to me to play. For many of us, the differences regarding that are pretty staggering. One person might enjoy dungeon crawling, while another might like killing other players. Yet another person might want to enjoy crafting, and a fourth might just like dancing in public for an online audience. It’s all different when it comes down to it, and when you boil it down to what is fun or enjoyable, it doesn’t matter if the MMO you’re playing was made with a budget of shoestrings and french fries or one that could have its own Swiss bank account. The important thing is the game you play stays AAA for you.

How does this explain how the most popular titles are considered to be the “AAA” titles? well, we all like different things, but some games simply offer an opportunity to appeal to more people at once. That doesn’t make them necessarily better, just more widespread. And it’s silly to hate on these titles too. Hating World of Warcraft, for example, is like hating precocious pop artist Justin Bieber – sure, you can not like them, but you can’t help but have a bit of secret denial for the fact that for many people, they are appealing. No matter how many sex for epic mount stories or polls voting for North Korean exile are created, there’s still apparently something about heavily populated titles that helps more people have fun than others.

My point, as always, is that that shouldn’t stop you from likening AAA to your own set of standards, and being fine with it. My AAA right now is running around slotting limited skills and using team synergy to win, something that Guild Wars fits for me quite nicely. I hope that everyone else decides not to worry about what others say AAA should be, and focus on what it should be for themselves.

August 14, 2010

The Oft-Neglected Cheerleading Of Games and Geekery

by Frank — Categories: Gaming, Social Geekery — Tags: , , — 3 Comments

Some of you who know me might think of this as a veiled attempt to link some new-ish Korean pop that my friend Amber sent to me. You may be right, but I do have a point behind doing it besides making your eyes bleed with cute. Really!

Note: Not responsible for any catchiness that gets in your head. Like I’d think that was a negative thing!

At any rate, my point in this was to expand a bit about what reader Bede talked to me about in yesterday’s comments in response to my MMO cynicism post. Bede talks a little bit about how looking at MMOs in a default “good” light is a different way of looking at things rather than in a default “bad” or “fail” one. It really got me to thinking that on the flipside of the whole idea of how geek culture perceives MMOs, games, and other new-fangled shiny, that you don’t see many people excited enough to keep up a good, encouraging attitude about things that they like.  More often than not, the kind of cheerleading that has the saccharine sweetness of the young women in the video above is absent. It’s present only in the kind of one-liner or one-paragraph initial “omg excitement” you see in response to something that looks cool, or worse yet, is outlawed among the “cool kids” of geek society as being straight up foolish idealism, otherwise known as “being a fanboy/girl”.

I honestly don’t understand what’s wrong with cheerleading something that you are excited about, especially in geek nation, where sweet new stuff always presents itself all the time. There are a lot of reasons why something that someone likes may later turn out to be something that isn’t expected, but why dampen spirits? A trailer, a sneak peek, a bunch of images, a neato website…all of these things are, in some respects, meant to generate buzz, excitement, and the kind of “rah-rah” for the creators of such things that motivates them. Let people have misguided expectations if they want to have them, I say.

Besides, cheerleading for things isn’t necessarily limited to being constantly talkative about how good something is, how the latest MMO is going to be a blast to play or the latest device is going to change the way you do things. People cheerlead things in geekery all the time without even really realizing they are doing it. Any focused-interest blog dedicated to a particular game, or item, or interest is in a way cheerleading it by merit of the fact that it’s by nature a homage to the things about it. Any fan-created media like a video, or art, or even a real-life picture having to do with it, is also an implicit cry of support. Geeks create things every day that are a nod to something they like or think is relevant to their interests, and with that kind of flattery,  how can it not be wrong ti stifle such creativity with a little too much of the “down-to-earth”?

More than anything, geeks show passion about the things they are interested in. Reducing or discouraging that just kind of makes our entire culture just a little bit more boring. Frankly, I’d rather have a little bit of excitement over the same old attitude any day.

August 13, 2010

Easymode MMO Grouchiness

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: , , — 7 Comments

In my last post I talked a little bit about MMO cynics and how they do tend to feel about the latest and greatest to come through the online RPG-verse. This wasn’t entirely an accident, you see – during my time not writing, I still managed to read quite a few blogs and feeds from my handy-dandy Google Reader. Aside from figuring out that if I have over 1000 posts unread I should probably delete the feed, I learned one thing:

Is there a lot of grouchiness on the internet regarding MMOs or what?

Maybe it’s just me, but perhaps it’s just easier to be grumpy or frumpy or otherwise grouchy about the state of MMOs today. If you think about it, cynicism is easier to argue from if your goal is to actually be correct or viable. Hedge your bets or even fall into the negative on a response to the best MMO trailers, gameplay demos, or reveals, and you’re vindicated when things inevitably aren’t exactly as explained. Refuse to let yourself get excited over the goals that developers want to accomplish, and not get disappointed later. Maybe it’s easier to type “this sucks” rather than “this is awesome”. Regardless of the reasons, it doesn’t seem to be that difficult to be underwhelmed.

Speaking of which, I think I have a new nemesis and opposite, since I suspect  Hardcore Casual’s Syncaine has had the rough edges softened slightly by marriage (don’t worry, it happened to me too). Not to be picking on him, but Keen from Keen and Graev’s blog appears to be my new mirror opposite, and a writer I like to keep reading, partially just to see what not being optimistic looks like. Keen has a few posts where he is genuinely excited about something, but many of the posts fall back on a bit of a negative slant on MMO development in general, how the latest companies to try their hand at something are doing it wrong, and how they might fail or fall short of expectations. Even though he’s very well-written and I respect him, it seems that the posts with which he writes come from an ease of a position wrought with broken hearts, expectations, and promises, making every post in response to MMO news almost automatic in their negativity.

Optimism and idealism, which it seems gets me less readership, is a bit more difficult to deal with and have. If I’m excited about something, see the good in it, want to prod it into a decent light, in today’s MMO community I have to work hard to put it on a pedestal. The empirical evidence for an optimist in the MMO industry is certainly in the “against” column, as the titles since WoW have struggled to maintain some kind of viable market and subscriber base despite lofty missions and ideas (though there are exceptions). And a positive person puts themselves out more for being the target of ridicule and being wrong – because things rarely turn out exactly how they think.

But I’d rather take positive over negative any day. Why? Well, I think that even though it’s more difficult and disappointment can abound, I’d rather be happy about something some of the time than not be happy about anything any of the time. As adults, I think we tend more towards the jaded portion of the scale mostly because our experiences, good and bad, teach us to properly manage our expectations, or even shield ourselves from them to avoid being hurt. This is especially true in the geek world, where the new shiny sometimes has issues that tend to crush hopes and dreams. But the stuff of geekery, especially when it comes to the MMO world, has the potential to be a really fun and exciting experience. Being pleased at having your negative expectations exceeded is nice and all, but the reward for having faith, love, and happiness regarding an MMO title be validated is just that much sweeter.

Maybe it’s easier to walk around with lemons all the time, but I’d rather be doing that with a glass of lemonade and a healthy dose of sugar. Wouldn’t you?

August 11, 2010

Cojones-Powered Manifestos From Guild Wars 2

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: , , — 6 Comments

So if you haven’t seen the very verbal, yet visually stunning “Manifesto” trailer for Guild Wars 2, go check this little bit out, and come back when you’re done feasting your eyes on it:

Not surprisingly, I like stuff like this. Trailers are always fun to watch, but they are even more fun when little nuances are done that make them unique. In this case, the trick is to include developer philosophy and humanism into the mix. Developers appear in all their excited, slightly haggard-with-little-sleep glory, putting out notions like a card shark deals to his marks. The other interesting thing is that they plainly speak about their notions.  Guild Wars 2 is not a grind. People hate grind. People want to be heroes; MMOs have failed to make people heroic. Bosses aren’t epic because they respawn, and everyone is the same.

And Guild Wars 2 aims to change all of that, for the better.

Really, the reason why I’m so happy and excited for this trailer is not because of all that, but for the simple idea that it takes cojones, nuts, guts, testicular fortitude, whatever you want to call it, to make such bold, straight statements. This is different than the “bold” statements MMO devs make about subscriber numbers, or how they plan on torching the competition, or all that. It doesn’t take a sack to say those things, because that’s just bravado. No, laying out the design philosophy and saying not just “we hope to” but that “we will” makes all the more difference.

There are people out there who continue to be cynical about the idea of trailers, visual aids, and even the most plain of ideas communicated through media. It’s too bad that they are, because it’s rare to see developers with a willingness to put themselves out there, this early, and try to declare their own identity. In an online world where MMOs have higher failure rates than first-year restaurants, to be so bitter about them to the point of picking apart even a bold trailer like this one is a little sad, yes? No matter what the message is, the modern MMO trailer is meant to be taken in, enjoyed, and watched over and over again. GW2′s developers simply made sure that you heard their message loud and clear – and out there for all to see. Happy cojones to you.

August 2, 2010

Where I’ve Been, And Why That’s a Good Thing ™

by Frank — Categories: Site Related — Tags: , — 12 Comments

Finally, the time to come up for a little fresh blog air!

Some of you (and by some, I mean both of you) may have noticed the distinct lack of positive geek sunshine in your rss feeds lately. Yes, It’s been quite some time, but for those of you who don’t know or don’t follow me on Twitter, you’ll see there are reasons for that. Thankfully, they are good reasons. In the interest of full disclosure, as bloggers like me are wont to do, my small reading audience deserves to know about them.

Optimists like me are inevitably a little bit gluttonous for punishment. We get into things, try to make people happy, and generally take up positions that require a bit of sacrifice “for the greater good” of something. The greater good can be any number of things – happy patients, satisfied customers, chocolate, and so on and so forth. The point is, idealists pick their poison to work with, more often than not.

My work has been in community. Whether it’s been online, offline, in small groups or in large ones, I’ve always worked to help with and build community things. These communities have also invariably involved geeks. Why? Probably because of some sense of group acceptance for one. I think it’s safe to say that even though geek has become synonymous with “cool” or even “le chic” in the last few years, that many geek-folk struggle to find some acceptance in social groups for their quirks and passions. Said passions range from hours upon hours creating costumes of anime characters, debating and discussing the latest tech, and liking sorcerers and sci-fi better than bar tabs and dancing.

How intriguing, then, that through a bunch of fortunate circumstances, work, and some wonderful people, that I’d be getting a chance to combine the two, right? And that chance, folks, was the offer  to join the Bioware community team for Star Wars: The Old Republic. That’s basically where I’ve been, working in a good community with good people, doing (what else) good things. It’s been quite the experience so far.

Some of you may be wondering how that changes what gets posted here. While there are the usual common-sense ideas of being a professional, especially for a company and a project such as the one I’m helping with, not much will change. Regular posting, actually, will start again, as of this post, and you’ll be seeing much the same positive hilarity from before. Heck, I might even be happier to show you bright and shiny, just because I’ve been so hard at work I’ve been lax in updating here.

In short, it’s been a while, I’ve been busy, but I’m back. I hope you like your blog posts sunny-side up.

June 7, 2010

Wot’s In An (MMO) Name

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: , — 1 Comment

Recently as I’ve gotten back into MMOs that support the systems to do so, I’ve noticed that character names have gotten a lot more….shall we say creative…than when I was last logged in. If there’s anything that will define your little virtual career, it’s your handle, your name, your calling card…you get the idea. Whether or not someone will be cursing you out on the forums or laughing at you for noob moves, it’ll be your moniker.

Naming policies for MMOs aside (a necessary evil due to the people who like to name characters after various terms for anal probing), I’ve always enjoyed seeing what people come up with when it comes to telling people who they are in the virtual sense, in online games.  They inevitably fall into one of two categories – Serious Business and ROFLOL.

Serious Business names are easy to find. They’re the ones from people who’ve either had their particular unique handle for years at a time or those who name them after famous characters in geekdom. They inevitably sound flowery and fancy, so if you see an enemy player bearing down on you with a name like Lorien Foxerith or some such assemblage of random fantasy syllables, then you know you have a Serious Business named toon. And yes, even though it sounds terribly cliche to name your archer characters Legolas and your melee characters Sephiroth, you have to hand it to the people who try to do it. Sure, some of them turn out to be terribly disjointed aberrations of the original (Legolaz, Leggolas, and Legolastwo come to mind) but it just goes to show the persistence of some characters in geek lore. I hope to one day make a character name so memorable such that people rush to pick it up.

ROFLOL’s are also easy to find, but if a Serious Business name enters the stage with a flowing gown or a snappy-looking suit, a ROFLOL stumbles forward in a bright violet sports jacket with orange and pink plaid pants. A ROFLOL name can be an utter perversion of a Serious Business imitation (Leggomyeggolas is hilarious), or it can be random, weird, or simply just head-scratching. Corniepoop Toiletplopp, Herpderp Deedlyderp, Imahealzyou, and Twinkiepinkie are just some of the names I’ve come across just recently in my travels. Yeah, maybe some of them don’t cut the mustard and get edited, but it sure is entertaining to see them listed in combat logs, NPC dialog, and forum posts.

Either way, MMO naming, whether serious or not, is just going to get more imaginative in the future. I look forward to future talk about the exploits of people like Yashara Farsighter being killed by someone named Poopypower. How else am I going to make the grind entertaining,?

June 4, 2010

LOTRO’s New Free Reign

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: , , , — 1 Comment

Today comes the news from Turbine that like its other product, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings Online will be going free to play in the autumn. LOTRO’s enjoyed a particular brand of success in a rather hostile MMO-verse, avoiding server merges, decreasing population, and lessening appeal to carve out its own niche in the market. Part of this might be atttributed to the fact that Tolkien’s universe, where hairy feet are the norm and wizards are, well….everything wizards should be (old, powerful, and occasionally hilarious) is appealing to its subscribers, but I’d like to think that a strong system of classes and encounters on par with those read about in the books kind of help.

I can’t say this is a bad thing. There’s a lot of apprehension over the microtransaction model, mostly surrounding the fact that it is somewhat viewed to be a system in which the financially richest will create a gap insurmountable by those less inclined or able to pay. The way I look at it, the creation of alternative subscription models should be a welcome change. I think we all know that lack of competitive models means, ultimately, complacency, something I can’t blame. After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The relative success of DDO’s model of microtransactions means that there is a way for the model to exist in today’s market, so why not try it with another title? The conversion to the F2P-with-optional-purchases model creates player volume and the option for people to enhance characters at their own whim rather than at the whim of the subscription fee.

Not that traditional subscription fees are going anywhere. There are plenty of games out there for which they make a bit more sense for, World of Warcraft and its store notwithstanding. But LOTRO’s move to the F2P model means that subscription-based models will have to think a bit harder about the benefits they offer for a flat fee versus one that offers fees as an optional idea. Could the players benefit from such response to competition? I’d like to think so.

Anyway, you really can’t beat free, and lots of players on the fence about trying the game will flock to LOTRO to give it a whirl. Sadly, my skills as a Minstrel probably reflect how good I’d be at playing the lute in real life (that is to say, playing it much like the sound a dying whale might make), so I won’t be one of them – but I look forward to the faithful who’ve subbed, who’ll receive a bit of benefit from the new model (like a monthly credit of points to buy shinies with), and who will make some new friends. Good work, Turbine, I say.

April 21, 2010

Mythic’s Marvelous Mea Culpa

by Frank — Categories: Gaming, Warhammer Online — Tags: , , , — 4 Comments

If there’s anything that sucks to say sometimes, no matter if you’re an individual or a company, it’s “my bad”. Whether it’s in everyday interaction as simple as bumping into someone and causing them to scald themselves with hot coffee, or as complex as a fender bender car accident, we’re all going to be put in the place to say “I’m sorry” at some point. Sometimes it helps (“oh, that’s ok, I was freezing and the coffee warmed me up”) and sometimes it doesn’t (“I’m gonna sue your ass for rear-ending my Mercedes, bitch”), but the key in any apology is how you go about doing it.

This is especially true for MMO developers, who have to handle being wrong while at the same time explaining what happened. In the waters of online forums, fansites, and blogs, posters and writers of a particular MMO are at times sharks, smelling blood in the water and attacking with ruthless ferocity. Such as it was with Mythic Entertainment, which experienced a billing snafu two weeks ago that had people charged a ton, some at least over 20 times, for their monthly subscription fee.

Mythic’s been raked over the coals (understandably so) by a number of folks for the messup.  I’ve got friends at Mythic, and it pained me to see the hardship they had to go through trying to fix the nonsense that had occurred because of payment processing craziness. It’s because of this personal interaction I’ve had with them that made me had faith. Faith that when the inevitable apology came, it would be a good one.

Today’s letter from Mythic’s Jeff Hickman about the payment issue comes through by explaining first, in detail, what exactly happened, second, what they are doing to fix it, and third, what the current status is. Normal stuff, right? But then comes the in-game compensation, which is as follows:

Over the past 15 years we have always strived to do what’s best for our players. We are truly sorry, and want to work to make things right and restore our relationship.  We hope you will accept this small token of our appreciation for your continued commitment to our games:

For starters all players will earn 100% bonus experience and renown when killing enemies and monsters for two weeks. As well, during this time we’ll be hard at work designing and implementing a special vendor. This vendor will only accept special tokens that will be sent to your mailbox, using these two tokens each of your characters will be able to receive two of the following items:

  • Bottomless Chaos Black Dye
  • Bottomless Skull White Dye
  • Imperial Griffon Mount (Order)
  • Enslaved Manticore Mount (Destruction)
  • WAR Tract – earn a free level
  • Choose from any of these pets – Order: Imperial Hunting Hound or Dwarf Keg Handler; Destruction: Warlord’s Fell Hound or the Goblin Bar-Back.
  • Change your appearance with any of these illusion items: Skaven Skin Cloak (skaven), Kossar’s Helm (bear), or the Signet of the Cursed Company (skeleton)

Please accept this gesture as a step towards rebuilding our relationship. From all of us at Mythic, we thank you for your time, your commitment, and your trust that helps us to make great games year after year.

Bonus experience, and the choice of what appears to be an amazing set of items normally only preserved for contests and special events. The in-game benefits of said compensation will be huge for some players of WAR, that’s for sure.

Say what you will about WAR‘s struggles, and the fact that this doesn’t completely wipe out the inconvenience some people went through – the latter is especially true. This is pretty much what sets Mythic apart from other MMO companies. They have a deep connection to their community, and an understanding of their customers that makes their service top notch. Ever since DAoC, when I first started interacting with them on forums and fansites, Mythic has always gone above and beyond when it comes to talking to their players. This is basically their stock in trade, making the fact that their design has struggled to take hold in the MMO playerbase all the more unfortunate.

When you do something wrong, you’re never going to totally eliminate the fact that it happened, or make people forget. It’d be unrealistic to think as such. But the effort to apologize and make amends is always huge when you’re at fault – and Mythic understands that. WAR‘s been in the public eye a lot lately – both for good and bad reasons – and one can hope that with so many eyes on it currently, that this will go a long way towards making people believe they empathize with their players.

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