That may be, but again, we still come back to the point (that you just reinforced for me): it really is accurate that no MMO developer should be considered 'qualified' enough to criticize Blizzard about MMO community management-- none of them have had to deal with anything even approaching the numbers that Blizzard has, and you have to acknowledge that the complexity of the situation is greatly increased because of the sheer volume of subscribers.AcacianLeaves said:
Mythic should've replied with a 'no comment', particularly since we don't really know what sort of chilling effect (if any- which I highly doubt) the RealID fiasco will have on the subscriber base. It's simple PR to figure that, if you can only suffer in comparision to something, you shouldn't speak ill of it publicly regardless of how circumspect you try to be; if you do, it's not only possible but likely that you'll look like you are either trying to undermine it or you are engaging in sour grapes, and either way, it's probably gonna come off as petty jealousy.
Now, if they had interviewed a developer that didn't do MMOs, but was known to be incredibly interactive and supportive with the community or communitities around their highly successful game(s), that would be reasonable source for a comment about this mess: that way, you duck some of the direct comparisions. But Mythic? The quotes just really, really, REALLY came across like "Oh yeah, we're wayyyyy too smart to do something like that..." As Funk said above: 'Hindsight is 20/20' and all...