CAMELOT BETA TEST CONTINUES

After reading the VN boards for Dark Age of Camelot, and in particular this thread, it occurred to me that Mark Jacobs and Mythic are probably laughing their collective rears off at the online gaming public. Consider what they've accomplished:

(1) Millions of dollars in sales to an uninformed casual gaming public that ignorantly expect the product they buy off the shelf to be a finished, tested, ready to play game;

(2) Collection of subscription fees for months before the casual gaming public figures out the game isn't finished (and might never find out, depending on how fast the devs repair and finish the game);

(3) The fanatical online community, even as they fight each other, rant, and rave about the hypocrisy and lack of ethics of Mythic for letting DAoC go gold before it was ready, actually continue to pay to beta test DAoC for Mythic. Every complaint, every bug described, every long post detailing specifics about what is wrong, what they destroyed in the latest patch, how they screwed up any class with stealth changes ... those same people are simply being either the witting or unwitting tools of Mythic. They are actually paying Mythic to test the game and changes to the game and report their findings back to Mythic.

This is exactly .... EXACTLY ... the single issue, the single overriding abuse of customers that Tweety (aka Sanya) and Lum (aka SJennings), who now work at Mythic, ranted and railed against endlessly. Now, these two go to public forums to chastize the CUSTOMERS for being antagonistic - something they both have gone ballistic about in the past. How can you possibly chastize any customer for any angry behavior when you have essentially hoodwinked them into paying YOU to test a product that is entirely unfinished as you attempt to finish it before most of your customers figure out what you've done?

How can Tweety and Lum POSSIBLY have the huevos, the gall, to say anything whatsoever about however this anger is expressed? Of course people are outraged; Mythic promised people something better. Mythic publicly hired well-known community ranters and promoted those hirings as proof that Mythic was "different", because these ranters would never stand for the same "crap" that other companies pulled on their customers.

Of course the community is outraged. You've bilked them out of money. You've violated their trust. They can see that you're utterly hypocritical and dishonest. You've been caught repeatedly doing exactly the same thing as those you ranted against before. You capitalized on your reputation, your words, and now your actions betray you.

DAoC may be a good game, as far as it goes, and it may become a great game. Everquest has become a great game regardless of the fact that many of those involved in it were dishonest and lied to the community repeatedly, and used paying customers to test additions and changes to the game.

However, without the willing participation of the fan-site and message-board customers, no one would be beta-testing their product and reporting back with the information they need to finish the game. The message-site fans only have themselves to blame; they are aiding Mythic as that company uses them. As for the rest of the public that buys the game off the shelf without any real knowledge of what Mythic is doing, it goes to an old adage: let the buyer beware.

I actually hope DAoC becomes a great game; I hope it provides great entertainment and pleasure to as many people as possible. I hope it provides a great way to earn a living for as many people as possible employed by Mythic. It's too bad that the way this is going to happen is that customers get abused.

So I'm conflicted. I wish Mark Jacobs, Tweety, and Scott were ethical people of high character, and I wish they wouldn't be so hypocritical. I wish they wouldn't use and abuse their customers. I wish they had produced a sound, finished game that the community could be proud of in itself, and then worked to add more finished, tested expansions later. But that's not reality. Reality is that often people are hypocritical jerks more interested in making money than in producing a satisfying, finished product. Sometimes they fool themselves into thinking there's nothing wrong with what they're doing in order to face themselves every day. Sometimes their actions and words fall into gray middle ground that nobody can figure out.

And sometimes out of that big crappy mess of greed and hypocrisy and lies, something really great is produced. How? I don't know. Maybe most of the quiet people you never hear about or show their face working at a company actually care about their product and their customers and work to make it great despite the stupid decisions of the boss and the inept behavior of public figures. This is how I see Everquest; despite the public BS, someone there must actually be ethical and care deeply about the customers and the product, or else I wouldn't see such care and consideration and love lurking around every corner in the game.

Does the end justify the means?

You know, I don't really know. In the end you have lots of people enjoying a potentially great product that provides a living for many, many families. In the meantime, no one is forcing anyone to pay to beta test DAoC, and most everyone else that bought the box off the shelves will probably never know they were sold a unfinished, untested product. It doesn't make it right, but it doesn't qualify as tragic, or even illegal. Just disappointing and unethical.

So while I consider Mark, Sanya and Scott representatives of everything wrong with this industry, I really do hope that DAoC succeeds. Because there is likely a bunch of decent people that will get to raise their families and send their kids to college because of it, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of people will find their day brightened and more fun because of it. And in the end I consider that more important than any personal outrage I feel at a handful of specific people in the industry.

 

Might as well discuss this HERE, because nobody ever uses my forums.