He returns and me going off on one, again, but nicely..

Mythic's Community Manager Andy Belford is back at work after a having some time off for personal stuff, something that for some strange reason many gamers seem to find unacceptable. I presume they're not standing amongst the glass shards of their shattered homes and they don't ever have any time away from work. Unlikely one suspects. Me, I get 30 days leave a year and I'll take that whenever I like thank you very much. That said, I'm more than a little puzzled that nobody else at Mythic picked up the torch and covered things.

Tenuous link putting this tune on, but it makes me laugh, so nyah!

Anyway, Andy has posted about communication and Mythic's current ethos of not releasing news on anything until it's about to be launched. They’re trying to avoid disappointment and all the too common over-hyping of things that may not see the light of day, which is understandable, but personally I think they've tightened up too much. There is a desperate desire for solid long term positive news amongst the community, a community that is splitting apart as so many players declare they’re moving on to RIFT, WoW, etc. People are looking for reassurance that they’re not wasting their time, yet all the time the WAR haters and jaded snipe away with ever increasing calibre of ammunition and in some cases considerably more accuracy than in the past. Yet for those of us wanting to present a balanced (let alone a positive...) opinion we’re left with not much to go on. I don’t mean that to be interpreted as me saying it’s all doom and gloom, it’s just we’ve genuinely no idea what is really going on with WAR. Other than some fairly minor and very short term news anyway. This leaves those that still like the game floundering in a sea infested with hate filled pirates.

You just have to look at all the WAR bloggers that are just treading water (if they’re posting about WAR at all) because there is quite simply nothing to write about other than concerns or total flights of fancy. Those flights of fancy these days are just asking to be laughed at and it gets boring writing negative stuff; we want to have exciting things to ponder on, clues and gossip to debate. Unfortunately at the moment it’s a bit flat and the only people that can change that are Mythic.

Sure, I don’t want Mythic promising things that are unrealistic, but we do need a bit more info squeezed out than what we’re getting now. Particularly as whilst I like the proposed healing changes, unfortunately they do nothing to address the major problems it’s perceived (fairly IMHO) that 1.4 introduced regarding gear, renown, zergs and more. We need some positivity back, a sense of direction and control from Mythic, because regardless of how much they really have, the sensations of them existing are just not present in the WAR community right now.

I want to write positive stuff (it’s more interesting for a bloody start), but I can’t do that without being thrown a bone or two.