This post actually comes after the one above, but I used the time warp to shift the priority.

To begin with a quote from a funny piece written by Jeff Freeman that was linked pretty much everywhere and that I now use for my own purposes:

This was a rather perverse aspect of the system. People complained about it constantly on internet forums, accused the developers of a having fairly peculiar if not downright twisted outlook on life to have implemented the system this way. If the devs had any sort of official website beyond ‘Billing & Tech issues’, Jack might have posted complaints about it there himself. But the devs never talked to anyone, and only a 3rd party company handled that bare minimum level of support.

Then a recent quote from WoW community managers:

Occasionally, you might see a developer relay information, but typically if they have something they wish to share, it’s done through us. I’m sorry that this method of communication is unsatisfactory, however, I can assure you that it is done this way for several reasons. In addition to many of those reasons please be aware that having members of the development team post on the boards regularly would only result in a loss of time that they could be working on more important projects necessary for World of Warcraft’s continued growth.

I don’t know why but posts like this one put me on rage. What a fucking idiot. I can accept the fact that these points are always brought up by random fucktards on the boards along the even more popular “it’s just beta”, but here it’s about the community managers themselves and I really wonder how they can expect to feed us that SHIT.

I have already explained my stance on the relationship between devs and the community, so lets just take the evidence of what is happening recently, because it’s all strictly tied together.

Mythic just trashed two *years* of development by cancelling (postponing or whatever) Imperator and months of work by removing a complete expansion from DAoC. To an extent because they decided to isolate themselves from critiques and a positive confrontation.

Now. Who is wasting time? (aside me, of course)