POSTING TO CRUSH [Author: Lum the Mad]
Specifically, this open letter sent out by Mark Jacobs, President of Mythic, to Sean “Ashen Temper” Dahlberg of Wolfpack.
Sean,
Late last night I saw the various posts on Lums on the most recent PVP topic. In reviewing them I of course saw Dave’s comments regarding Shadowbane and Wolfpack as well as your exchanges with him. On behalf of Mythic Entertainment I want to apologize to all the members of Wolfpack for the things that Dave said regarding Wolfpack as well as Shadowbane. It is a long-standing policy of mine not to insult other developers or their products publicly. While I am all for intellectual discourse and the subject of SB’s PVP vs. DAoC PVP is certainly an interesting one, one should never stoop to the level of some of the comments that were made by Dave on Lums. In contrast to some of what was said, I found your posts to be restrained, accurate and highly professional.
My opinion of Shadowbane remains the same; we are looking forward to seeing it online as we hope that it will further increase the MMORPG market. Given the devotion of your fans and the differences between the approaches of our games, we should both be very successful while at the same time growing the number of players of these types of games. As a avid RPGer, I look forward to seeing both of our games join the ranks of the “Trinity” in the upcoming months.
Once again, my apologies on behalf of Mythic Entertainment. This is an open letter so please feel free to share it with not only the other members of Wolfpack but also your community as well.
Best,
Mark Jacobs
President
Mythic Entertainment
You know what? Mark Jacobs isn’t the one who should be apologizing here. Rickey said some admittedly inflammatory things about Shadowbane, namely the statement “the simple fact is, the only thing most outside its current hardcore fanboy community expects from SB is for it to skim off the most extreme of the hardcore PK’s into voluntary exile, away from everyone else.” I assume that was what Jacobs was apologizing for. It certainly wasn’t for the really mature Shadowbane websites who gleefully pointed links to my discussion thread and noted “A dissenter! A developer who said BAD THINGS about Shadowbane! A heretic! GO GET HIM!”. It DEFINITELY wasn’t the really, awfully mature Shadowbane fans who immediately began flooding the thread with raw, immature and obscene drivel thus PROVING RICKEY’S POINT TO THE LETTER. Surely he wasn’t apologizing for those guys.
Pity.
But no more so a pity then that we have probably heard the last of Dave Rickey on this or other message boards, since he, you know, actually dared to be honest about his opinion and whatnot. That would be bad. Better that the message boards remain the domain of the “hardcore fanboy community” that can gleefully tell each other exactly how hard Shadowbane will rock and throw monkey feces at anyone who dares to even discuss another game.
If anyone needs to apologize, it’s probably me, for assuming that you people could have a calm, rational discussion about PvP issues. Boy, was I ever wrong.