GreyMouser wrote on Jan 31
st, 2013 at 5:04pm:
It is because the common theory is don't engage. It can actually kill your product. This may sound snarky, but I don't mean it that way at all. We are the experts...be it Turbine on our game, the producer of some movie or TV show or what not. We are the gatekeepers.We are paid to live and breathe this stuff. It is up to us to make those decisions. If it is left to the masses...it just doesn't ever work out. Imagine for example if Bill Belichick picked players based on on-line forums? Would that build a championship level team? Or worse, listening to some fan to call the plays of a game?
Can you have a nice healthy relationship with your fanbase? Yes. I've witnessed it in both the early Quake and Unreal days, and with City of Heroes. But even there you heard people years later complain about the great Enhancement Diversification of 2006. Even though on all levels it was the correct thing to do for the game. Vilified, yelled at, wraor.
The biggest issue with the internet is well, opinions are like assholes, everyone has them.Sadly most of the time it starts with ' Developer n is an assmunch...this is a better way.' Yeah, lost that dev at assmunch...that is human nature. Why would the dev read beyond it...and if he did, his defenses are already up and will discount any good ideas that may be there.That is just human nature. Try this. Walk into some restaurant and have the first thing out of your mouth be and insult. See what happens.
The insults may be clever and stuff, but they have the exact opposite effect I think some people are looking for...then there are the ones that look at forums as some fucked up extreme sport and trolling a game of it's own of course.
See even writing that I'm asking myself, why bother, I know there is now 20 posts of dick jokes in my future.
Some of what you say is true I generally avoided insults when addressing devs sometimes emotions got the better of me and by the end I just didn't give a fuck. As someone who has been involved in this game 6 plus years I have seen a lot and been through a lot. There was a core of dedicated players who hung on through the lean times and help keep the game afloat when there was nothing but silence and emptiness. We invested a lot and cared a lot. In return, we have gotten fucked...most of the time and effort we invested was pissed on by MOTU.
I don't know whose jackass idea it was to load all the system changes in as part of the expansion but it was fucking stupid. The results speak for themselves. You obviously did not have the resources to do both. Over 6 months later and some ED's still don't function correctly. The game itself stability wise is at it's worst point ever. It's also obvious that you are focusing on casual players at the exclusion of those of us who would have been considered hardcore or meta gamers. You are obviously focused on driving store sales rather than building mechanics that make sense and supporting subscribers. You're the Chicago Cubs of development. You know the fanbois will show up to drink beer and watch the game so who cares about winning. You think you guys get a raw deal on the forums. You guys have a cake walk. If this wasn't the only D&D MMO no one would put up with the piss poor quality you have delivered over the last year.
I spoke personally with

and Glin at PAX East. I had a private 15 minute demo of MOTU while they were between press interviews they are both very nice and personable and obviously cared. The both also guaranteed an enhancement revamp with all pre's by August. When the Executive Producer cannot even hit a date that he planned for you know the system is fucked. This is Turbine. Promises and half finished systems... Poorly planned and thought out game changes... I could list them but why bother you know them. ...maybe one... guild ranks and housing... players begged for a years for guild housing. We get ships two years ago and not a single enhancement or upgrade to the system since...on top of that it takes two years for you all to realize the decay mechanic was too punitive and destroying the sense of community. Dozens of posts but yeah, we are all ignorant whinny bitches...not the experts.
As for listening to players, I think you guys do listen but mostly to the wrong ones. Also, you tend to arrogantly ignore negative feedback. We said multiple times that the new raid was a mess but Flimsy was too hurt by people not liking his raid to really listen and understand. Yet, it was released and shut down what 3 times... I've played dozens of MMO and never seen raids and quest closed as often as in this game. Other games patch exploits in hours or days to your weeks. It should be embarrassing to you guys when you compare yourselves to your peers.
I was so excited for MOTU and Epic levels and in the end you turned me and a lot of people I played with off the game. I had hope that it would inject the game with newness and challenge and bring back some of the hardcore players who had left. Instead we got a buggy mess that nerfed all over the place and changed the grind from a gear grind on Epic to an XP slog on Easy.
You may be the gatekeepers but someone is asleep on guard duty. Maybe this is the best one can expect out of a 6 plus year old engine. Maybe I have inflated expectations... all I have seen in the last two years are recycled mechanics, nerfs, and utter lack of creative content. Just add more HP and crank up saves... This was a great game. It's too bad that selling raid bypasses, XP, and whatever else is now the goal of the game rather than providing entertainment.
P.S. I think you do the best you can in a bad situation and don't assign blame to you. There are quite obviously fundamental flaws in the process there and a historical lack of focus on quality.