Dear Cerest, Nevrax, and the rest of the crew...

[tetra]

Tonight, a very active topic was locked with some comments about how it had turned into "gradeschool playground antics". All that I can say, is that the turn from relative civility into paranoia and anger fueled flames was caused by your own silence. I don't think that I've ever seen a community as polarized and terrified of a patch as the one we are around the corner from, yet we get nothing. There is no "we understand your concerns and are holding back on the patch/parts of the patch for a bit to make sure we do things right", no "we feel these changes are good and important because x y and z", no "we are doing this because X"... nothing.

It is very easy to sit in silence while watching things break down when anger, frustration, and fear start to set in. It's almost as easy to swoop in and play the hurt and betrayed adult. The hard part is keeping order, giving fears a reason to be set aside, keeping paranoia from setting in, and giving us a reason to stay calm and leave the angry weapons aside. Silence does not work.

[jadeon]

I'm not posting in this to downsize the important of your post however I do wish you would have posted this as a reply to the post "Refering to Impressions and GM's" If you dont mind voice your opinions there

Noxian
Armor Smith
Leader of Heaven's Flame

[tetra]

I'm not posting in this to downsize the important of your post however I do wish you would have posted this as a reply to the post "Refering to Impressions and GM's" If you dont mind voice your opinions there

Noxian
Armor Smith
Leader of Heaven's Flame

Didn't see it till after I posted

[elfmatic]

Agreed Tetra.

[jesder]

Copy and paste from the other thread ... But I figure I will say it here as well. Not really defending Nevrax, but keep this in mind before yelling to/about the support staff.


Let me start out by saying I understand that cerest and the other people paid to support this game have to be very carefull about what they say for two reasons. One is that the people writing their paychecks dont want them saying certain things. I know I would not risk being fired for saying something to a customer that has not been approved of by the higher ups. The other issue is much more complex and is actually the fault of the players. Anything said by any paid employee tends to be misinterpreted and treated as fact. If they give an ETA on something and the date slips they get backlash, even if they said it was not a solid date. One example is when cerest used the word exploit in a thread without actually saying something was an exploit. Suddenly you had people who did not actually read the entire post saying cerest called something an exploit.

For these reasons I can understand why we are not getting much information. I also know that some of the reasons for changes should not be told to the players. This is the case for design changes made to prevent/fix exploits. There is also the "the devs just didnt like it" reasons. I left UO after talking with the lead designer who basicly told me they wanted to make the game easier and that was why they were putting in some changes that I was involved with QA testing. Now if this reason was told to the players without any real spin on it, I am sure many others would have been upset as well.

I am not saying I support the silence on issues that the community feels are very important, however I do understand why it tends to happen with MMOGs.

[ctusk]

Copy and paste from the other thread ... But I figure I will say it here as well. Not really defending Nevrax, but keep this in mind before yelling to/about the support staff.

Don't blame the support staff, they are doing an excellent job so far. Unfortunately they are not related to Nevrax and have no real influence on the decision making. They are a hired 3rd party firm ( http://www.themis-group.com ).

[jesder]

Don't blame the support staff,

I think that is what I was saying