A Slow Evolution in Gaming

People change over time, I think a lot of folks will agree with that statement. Be it the way you act, dress, or in my case the games I find myself playing. Change of course has some good and bad, worse thing one can do is go full tilt into something new, that almost always end up terrible.

When I started this blog, I was heavily into 'true' wargaming. Warhammer, WarmaHordes, ect all took center stage for me as I enjoyed those games above all else. I enjoyed the terrain, the tactics and strategy required for those types of games above all else. The last couple years though has seen this hobby explode onto the scene with some very entertaining, and casual games. There are more and more board games coming out like Super Dungeon Explore and Dwarf Kings Hold to scratch the dungeon romp itch. Deadzone is stupidly fun for taking up less than a table worth of space (Although the building and dissembling of the terrain is rather tedious).

I took a look back at the games I have funded on Kickstarter and saw an interesting trend. Kings of War was really my only wargame I have funding in the last couple years. After that I supported mostly board game style games that pit players against each other in some fashion. Sedition Wars, Dungeon Heroes Advanced, Dungeon Roll, Deadzone, and most recently Grand Tactics. Each had something that interested me, and almost every one of them can be played in under an hour from set-up to tear down. I have even gotten in a ton more Magic the Gathering games in the last three weeks than I have wargames in the last few YEARS. Sedition Wars being the exception, can't explain why but I just haven't brought myself to putting that set together and playing it.

I still have my Kings of War Minis, Heavy Gear Blitz minis (Although the new edition is going to be a complete overhaul for me), even my WarmaHordes minis. I still have them all, but the last time I played a wargame of that type has been nearly a year now. I think as I have aged, I have gotten... for a lack of a better word, impatient with the set-up times required to play tabletop wargames. A game of Drakon can be set-up and put away in thirty seconds for example. I will give that Deadzone does take longer to set-up if you make use of the build up and break down terrain, but I am very quickly coming to that point of just gluing together my building designs I like best in order to set it down and be ready to go, although traveling with the set becomes nearly impossible then.

Grand Tactics drew my interest for one reason. I saw Final Fantasy Tactics all over the core design, and FFT is one of the few video games I loved every aspect of. It still looks to be a fast set-up and break down, still has a miniature aspect to it, but again... does not take up a whole table to play. It may or may not make its funding requirement, but the idea of the game is still sound to me. Same reason I backed the other games. Dungeon Roll is a very addictive quick play game, as is Cthulhu Roll.

At the end of the day I find the games that get the most attention from others are games that have a low buy in cost, can be learned and played quickly, and not a huge loss if you stop playing. Nearly every game I have listed thus far fits those limitations. Everyone can agree that Warhammer is stupidly expensive to get into, more so if you pick a swarm force. Even Heavy Gear Blitz has a fairly hefty price tag to a first time buyer. If you told someone they could play Warhammer and only need to spend $400-500+ dollars to get into the game, versus getting into Deadzone and only having to spend $35, which game do you think will attract more overall attention in the end?

We are certainly living in an interesting time in regards to tabletop games. There are a ton of options out there for every player, and a variety of levels of games in order to draw new players into those games. It is perfectly fine to shift gears away from the more intimidating tabletop games to the more casual variants if that helps bring in new blood to your gaming circle.

Customization - How Much is Too Much?

One of the things that irk me while gaming, and has turned me off of various games is the amount of character customization available to me during the creation of the army. I am not saying I expect every miniature to have it's own rules for creation, as that would be simply too much for the table. I do however go into a force creation wanting to make a force or fleet *mine*, and some games do this better than others.

One of the worse offenders of character creations is Anima Tactics where almost every miniature has a name, stats, and about the only power you have over it is if you give it an accessory or not. They have some absolutely lovely miniatures, but the fact everyone is a special character is a major killer there. They are not alone in this regard either, as WarmaHordes also has this to a degree with the Warlock/Warcasters being 'special' characters right out of the gate. You will find that I don't even really enjoy playing Warhammer or 40K with special characters either. To me, as soon as you add a special character, the force is no longer really mine at that point.

On the flip side, if you have too wide an option for character customization, then you run into the issue of redundant, overpowered, and just worthless pieces of equipment. you see this heavily in WFB and 40K for instance. Look at the WFB Slann and how many people take the Cupped Hands of the Old Ones magic item as just one example. HGB sort of falls into this same category as well to a degree, as there are many gears that simply are outclassed by other available gears. Cheetah versus Jaguar for a quick example.

Wargaming is a strange beast in that even in this topic you will find peoples thoughts vary greatly about what they feel about the use of special characters and character customization. You are going to have people that play games like Mordheim that put HEAVY focus on individual characters because that is the game it is built around, then you have the other extreme of games like Firestorm Armada that has zero special 'characters' as all ships come just as listed.

For me, I find Firestorm Armada's lack of customization fine for some reason because it is in fact a ship and not an actual individual  It could be from all the various Gundam, Firefly, and Babylon 5 episodes I have watched over time (I am sorry but I simply have not watched Star Trek or Star Wars outside of the passing glance if it was on TV so can't talk about their space battles), but for me the tone of a ship should be based on the exploits of the crew aboard that ship. You take that combat to a gear or other man shaped mecha, and suddenly I start wanting more option loadouts available to me as I could easily see a pilot customizing his mecha to fight in his preferred methodology.

Getting back into standard foot soldier themed games though, there are so many good games available to people, and yet I have found so few good character customization options available. Strangely enough, for me one of the best I have seen is the Kings of War ruleset. All the characters have a set stat line, they could be equipped with a great sword, sword and shield, halberd, or a harp if you so wanted, and it wouldn't change their stat line. In fact, even the magic items have a section that state that the magic items warp and twist to the form most preferred to the user. What this allows is for you the player to make ANY character to lead your forces and not worry about massive impacts and gear discrepancy since the weapons you put on the miniature don't actually affect that miniatures playstyle.

As I said, for me character customization seems a weird beast to tame. So obviously the question is, where do the players think the companies should aim for? Make a system like WFB, Mordheim and HGB with multiple loadouts per character, or a simpler game where the characters are preset like Warmachine and Anima Tactics? Should more companies walk that line Mantic does with trying to allow as many various companies as possible?

Reaction Tuesday - GW Price Increase Reactions

Something that is still making waves after a couple weeks has been GW's latest price increases. I made a blog about it last year when it happened, and didn't really expect to write about it again, and yet people are still making the same 'deer in the headlight' type posts/sayings again this year.

GW has this thing called an annual price increase, which people really shouldn't be shocked by, prices go up on nearly everything every year. The difference is though that the consumer of GW products actually does hold all the cards in this area, and yet they refuse to actually play with those cards they are dealt. you see the exact same posts as you did last year about how people were going to stop playing GW games because of the prices, and yet six months down the line you find those same people happily handing their credit cards over to GW at some new release.

If you dare ask them why they play WFB or 40K, they almost always have some terrible excuse that apparently helps them sleep at night. 'Oh the background is what keeps me', 'No one else at my club at play anything else',  'I don't like the rules of Warmahordes'. All these excuses are complete rubbish in the best of cases and on multiple levels.

First and foremost, while WarmaHordes might certainly be one of the more popular competitive products, that doesn't mean you have to play it. Mantic's Kings of War and Warpath rulesets are much closer to WFB and 40K respectively then WarmaHordes is. To top it off, the Kings of War and Warpath rulesets are FREE, no excuse why you and your club aren't willing to give it a shot. That is also assuming you aren't willing to start up a new game in a new scale. Heavy Gear Blitz, Drop Zone Commander, Dust Tactics, and many other games are simply amazing foot based armies in varying scales.

The background excuse was one I always did hate to hear as well. Where in the background does it say Teclis is going to be in 500 different battles throughout the day? Where in the background does it  talk about dice rolls not going well? Simply put, nowhere. The background is something that is completely separate from the tabletop game. if you play a game of Warpath, the background for 40K just doesn't change. You can easily keep up on the background of the game without having to buy multiple $33 dollar codexs/army books.

The last point was slightly hit on already about no one else using the system at the club. With free rules for Infinity, Kings of War, Warpath, Full Thrust, and multiple other games out there, there is no reason not to give something else a try. Most of those other system even allow easy conversion to use of your current miniatures to work with their systems. Even if you don't want to use one of those systems, most other game systems rulebooks are a half to a third the price of the GW rulebooks (and most tend to actually give you the full force rules as well).

In the end, if you don't want to give up GW games, simply say it. We live in a great time for tabletop wargames, with almost every type of game having multiple rulesets to use within our grasp. If you choose not to take advantage of that, then simply sit back and suck up the annual price increases and stop acting like their blindsided you again.

Another busy weekend ahead of me

This weekend should be fairly entertaining. In addition to all the normal house work I have to get done, I also have some gaming planned with strangers.

Found out only recently one of my neighbors played Heroes Quest, which is just a basic form of Warhammer Quest, and they made a bunch of house rules that more or less made heroes Quest into Warhammer Quest (Character advance, travel, blah blah blah). This of course will be the first time the husband will play Warhammer Quest at all, and the first time the wife has played the genre of board games period. Will certainly be interesting, and I am not sure if I want to bring in my Elven Ranger instead of the classic Elf or not. I guess it will depend entirely on what the rest of the group chooses.

I also want to start knocking out some of my Firestorm Armada miniatures, as I believe it should be fairly quick turn around on getting those painted. Found a basic color scheme on the web I liked, with some modifications to make it 'mine' of course. This site has more or less what I wanted to do, mine scheme of course will use silver instead of grey, darker blue, red instead of orange, green for the command decks, ect. Will be interesting to see if it turns out the way my minds eye thinks it should, or if the painting just gets on my nerves and I quit half way through again.

On top of all that I am still fighting with myself if I should start up Warhammer 40K or Fantasy again. I really do want a Tau force, as I have gotten much better at playing a range heavy force, but at the same time rumor mill says the Crisis suits are getting a complete overhaul, and I will hate to have to get completely new, and most likely more expensive, minis. Of course the fact I won't ever finish painting the force myself is another heavy factor. Heck, my Lizardmen force is still largely unpainted and incomplete.

Next on my busy weekend agenda is working on at least one of my RC helis. I know I posted about my 250 yesterday, but I think it'll come down to which I find requires less time from me over all. I do want something flyable by next spring though for sure, and one or another, one of these helis will be air born.

After all this is said and done, I still need to get leveling my Marauder and Lancer in FFXIV, fight Ifrit, work on my crafting. Almost finished with the basic Orcs must Die! game, so have to finish the up and try to clear all with 5 skulls. Maybe this weekend I'll also get some time to do a hot seat game of Might and Magic Heroes VI with the wife and maybe the kids. So much video gaming to top of the other hobbies.

This is all on top of doing yard work, changing the faucets in the house, visiting the wife's nephew (still not sure I care to), basic house cleaning, and many other 'fun' tasks all lined up. honestly these next four days off are just going to be loaded to the brim.

Lots of wargaming on the horizon

Lots of stuff happening soon for my wargaming.

Seems my wife has suddenly gotten the urge to not only play, but paint up our Firestorm Armada fleets, so looking forward to that. I am also going to buy a bag or two of lava rocks. use a few for asteroids in game, and the rest for the yard. I got the Warhammer Fantasy Storm of magic spell vortexs to represent gas giants on the tabletop. Firestorm Armada is really coming into it's own cheap and quick.

I am going to try to paint at least one mini this week, and keep that up. It will be slow, but maybe I can deal with one a week. Before I set myself up for failure, trying to do a mini a day on my off days when I can't stand painting and I simply don't have the drive to finish 3-4 minis a week. One a week however I should be able to do, and I need to get back into the painting thing and get my skills back up to par. Might break this up with other hobby things though, like finishing up the Realm of Battle board I bought like three years ago that still only has two panels painted/flocked. I really do need to finish up my Menoth force since I have a few minis painted up already compared to my other games.

GW recently released a new Saurus Old Blood miniature I am going to get to lead my Kings of War Lizardmen force. I like the way it fits in decently with my Temple Guard, and it look like I could swap it into Warhammer Quest easier then Chakax lets me do at the moment. have not played Kings of War for a while, but right now just playing the field, see other genres of games other then Warhammer Fantasy and 40K at the moment. I'll come back to Warhammer/Kings of War in due time, and most likely even 40K/Warpath eventually.

I kinda hinted at it, but I am still wrestling with the thoughts of starting a new Tau force up. Lots of ideas are swarming around my head for conversions I  could and should be able to do. I don't want to go all in though. I have simply too many other games going on right now. With Firestorm Armada taking off, Kings of War and Warmachine sitting on the shelves ready to go at a moments notice, Warhammer Quest easy enough to unbox at a given time.... Just to much. Maybe once we start locking down which games we will eventually stick with for a long term, I'll make a better choice if I'll really start collecting Tau, or simply get a mini here or there for the building aspects. What I might do is simply get the Tau ships from Forgeworld and use those with the Firestorm Armada ruleset. Either way is fine with me.

Like I said, lots of tabletop stuff rolling out soon. I am hoping I remember to actually start taking pics of my games for battle reports. Simply lazy and just want to play.

How I hate painting

I have been pretty vocal in the past about my dislike for painting minis. I really can not stand it, and it seems that it is a self fulfilling prophesy that every mini I do try and even primer gets boned up in some fashion, making me hate the process even more.

The latest in the long long of why I can't stand wasting time painting is my Firestorm Armada Relthoza fleet. I washed them, since they are resin and went to primer them. Apparently they weren't completely dry so water got stuck under the primer in some key locations. Ok, simple enough, throw them in some Simple Green and things should be good.

Fast forward five days and here I am trying to strip the paint. I have no clue what this primer is, but its resistant to scrubbing on textured surfaces, and came off smoothly on the large flat area. This of course means that to get all the primer knocked off and okay to respray, I will need to take a pick and clean out each area separately. Such a huge waste of time, when I could just glue things together and just play.

If this was just the first time I wouldn't be nearly as irritated with painting, but it seems literally every time I try and paint things blow up in my face. My Lizardmen are still down stairs in a state of half paint and half stripped because the primer just wouldn't let go. Seems like some kind of latex skin rather then primer. Even my menoth force is largely unpainted  because I simple can't sit long enough to paint without my back hurting anymore..

As I said before, I love wargaming, but painting I can't stand. It doesn't change how I or my enemy will play. Honestly, if more companies came out with prepainted minis like AT-43 and whatnot, I would probably play them more often. In a way I miss AT-43 since I could literally just put the minis on the table and start playing, it is a really pity AT-43 is gone for good.

The saddest part of my hate for painting is the fact I do want my armies painted, but no way in the depths of the seven hells will I pay some of the outlandish commission prices some people want. The painting thing is one of the biggest parts of the hobby that is actually driving me AWAY from the hobby the older I get.

Firestorm Armada - A First Game Review

So I decided to try another system this pass weekend, something I had no previous experience with either the company or the IP previously. The game is Firestorm Armada, and the company is Spartan Games.

I was in my local store, just looking at some various minis. At the time I wasn't even really intent on purchasing anything, but I just wanted to play something different then the standard 'foot-race' type wargame. being that the choices were limited between Hell Dorado, Dystopian Wars, and Firestorm Armada. I will say this, Hell Dorado was tempting with it's beautiful miniatures, but my wife and I already have a similar style skirmish game in Anima Tactics. So it came down to a naval battle, either in the sea or in space. Of course I picked the space setting, as I thought it might have more overall variety.

We left the store originally with only a Directorate starter fleet for my wife, I wanted to know what exactly the contents was, and if we could even play. Got home and opened the box to see what exactly was included in the starter box. It had the starter fleet itself, the 'army' sheet that gives the stats for the most common ships for that particular force, and tokens that are used during combat. There were no starter rules of any type to be found. At this point I did a Google search and found out that with Firestorm Armada, you are expected to purchase the rulebook outright and proxy the minis until you feel you want to purchase the minis. Kind of backwards from what I am familiar with.

So to cut the even longer story a bit shorter... Eventually I got the Relthoza starter fleet for myself, the starter book, the template package, and the card set.

So the review now:

Miniature Quality:
The ships are molded huge (For ship minis anyhow), and made of a resin material, much like Forgeworld, and white metal. Pretty common stuff here for the most part. The quality of the minis could be higher, as my wife's fleet had numerous miniatures with air bubbles in fairly key features. I had my main battleship warped slightly, cruisers that the mold wasn't properly set together, and parts that were in consistent in fitting into places (many requiring me to trim them down). A huge drawback is the fact there is no US customer support, so no locally to call if ships come severely disfigured or missing bits.

In summary: The minis are nice, but quality control really needs to be tightened.

Rules Quality:
The rulebook was cheap, only costing $30 to get from the local store, and of course cheaper if you purchase online somewhere. It is a bit overwhelming reading through the book for the first time, as there are a lot of acronyms used for things that really didn't need it in my opinion, and the system does play so differently from a normal land based wargame. The book could be better streamlined, and a glossary would be a god-send as finding things on the fly were rather hard. I still don't know where in the book it describes what happens with a ship that is 'A Drift', as I simply could not find it in the rules quickly enough not to impact the game.

The rules themselves are relatively simple, but some key areas are lacking in being descriptive enough. The early section about the card deck for Firestorm Armada doesn't explicitly tell you if you need only one deck per game or per player as an example. Better example is the fact you are expected to get the ruleset before anything else, but nothing is listed on either the starter fleet boxes or the book itself that it should be the first purchase.

In Summary: Simple rules overall, but can be a bit overwhelming bad design of the book and lack of some critical descriptions.

Accessory Quality:
As I stated earlier, I got the card deck for the game, as most people say it adds so much to the gameplay, that it is almost required. It was a fairly standard deck, but the local store only had a single copy. Now as I said earlier, nothing really says you need a deck per player in the rulebook, but at the same time it also doesn't say you split the decks apart. The cards themselves are pretty much standard cardstock paper in terms of quality,  slightly better quality then normal CCGs but not as high quality as a Vegas style card deck.

While the book and online had the templates to print out as needed, found the quality of not to be good enough to warrant me spending the time to reprint them. As such used the token packages Spartan Games also sells. For the price you get a lot of tokens to use (but strangely enough no stealth tokens which my Relthoza actually needed), and the movement templates. These still have the same cheap feel as the cards overall.

There is a company online called LITKO Game Accessories, which apparently makes much more expensive, but higher quality accessories for Firestorm Armada (among other things). Would be nice to find a middle ground though.

In summary: The default accessories come across as almost being required to have, but feel rather cheap.

Gameplay:
Be forewarned, I have only played one game thus far so that could skew this section. The game itself is set-up for an alternating playstyle like Anima Tactics or Hell Dorado, and not a IgoUgo type play of Warhammer/kings of War/ Warmachine. One of the biggest changes for me from other games is the fact you unload on any targets you can with your weapon systems. I forgot about that until about turn 3 in last night's game which of course slowed the game down much more then it should have.

Turning, while simple in theory, for some reason really proved tedious for my wife and I, as we constantly had to figure out how to work out the 45 degree turns for each ship. More then once we failed to measure properly simply because we measured from the wrong edge of the ship's base. This part truly takes the most time to get used to. Terrain also seems overly important since without it, your ships will zoom through your enemies, both unload shots, circle back and repeat (plus the various affects the terrain can have on the game itself).

The rules are simple enough, you can tell they were originally a sea game made for space. It is quick to set-up and play, but there are a lot of tokens on the battlefield that starts to make things a bit cramped as you have hull points, crew points, mines, wings, and other tokens all on the field. A 4'x4' battlefield isn't huge after all. Expect a lot of action quickly, but also find a way to keep your tokens well organized or you may well lose a lot of time simply looking for the right token.

In Summary: The game is overall easy to play, but the heavy use of token and specialized movements makes the game slow down if not properly set-up beforehand.

I would say the game is fun and good to get into, but don't expect the same quality standards or customer service of companies like Games-Workshop or Privateer Press. Give the game a shot, but before diving into any of the starter fleets, grab yourself the proxy fleets and rulebook and find out for yourself if this is your cup of tea.

Legend of the five rings

I found a couple starter packs from a few years back that I bought for myself and my wife to introduce her to the game. We never did get the chance to play, and the game more or less got forgotten about. Well, looking at the cards everything seemed like pristine condition so figured I would see what I could do. I have played L5R in the past and really enjoyed it, so wanted to see if it was just me or if the game actually held my interest.

First problem I ran into with the decks is that apparently the newest rules assumes you have a few cards in in the decks that these older decks did not have. No problem though, a bit slower on the gold contribution at the start of the game, but still playable.

Second problem... I am picky about card games. I dislike using game games without card protectors, because I don't want the cards to get damaged in anyway. Same reason I treat my normal wargaming army books, codexs, and Forces of X books all with tender care when handling them. I just hate stuff that costs so much to get damaged from use. Anyhow I didn't have any spare card holders I could think of on hand, but thankfully I tend to jump games so often that I managed to find a couple games that were just sitting away unplayed for a few months and with no need for the extra protection. L5R cards now good to go in that regard.

I tried to play a solo game, set out the four provinces and everything per the rules and played through. I have to admit, the game is still fairly intricate. Granted it isn't as deep in gameplay as Warhammer, Warmachine, or Anima Tactics, but it also takes up much less space.

My wife's deck was a Scorpion clan deck, while I had a Dragon clan. back when I first started playing the game many years ago I started with a Lion clan, and my best friend at the time used the Shadowlands as his deck. Almost as soon as i started getting the solo game cards rolling out, flash backs of back in the day came back. Building up armies of monks and samurai, defending my territories against the enemy, wishing I had just a little bit more gold to buy this one more person. All great fun.

I really do need to get more updated cards though, as it seems the design (from the pics in the official online rules) of the cards seem to have changed. I'm not sure how high I rank this game in my priorities, as while I do enjoy it, I do have other wargame materials I need to get before anything else. it will certainly be one of those games I try and get the wife to play when it is just a little to late to play a game of Warmachine though.

Games-Workshop selling tournament rerolls

Warseer and Bell of Lost Souls are both currently ablaze with news that GW has a new 'reward' for big spenders at their events. You can find the original article on the BoLS's website. I won't go into details of the deal here, as you can read the website for yourself. The quick summary though is that if you spend X on GW products you get rerolls to use during particular games, free shipping, and direct access to Forgeworld stuff.

Anyways... What's my take on this whole thing. First I will tell you what I think tournaments are for. If you are going to go to a tournament, then you are most likely going to try and show you are the best. It should be, for wargames, decided on who the actual best general on the field is, and not by who spent the most. Of course Games-Workshop games are fairly bad in terms of overall balance, so this automatically makes the tournament scene a bit... dodgy.

So then, GW is more or less coming off as rewarding players for purchasing from them. That is great, everyone loves rewards. What I don't agree with is making the reward capable of affecting other players. The free shipping, access to Forgeworld, even free minis are all excellent options for rewarding people who purchase directly, but the moment you let the players get the potential for having an advantage over another player simply because that player bought his army over time, bought from a local or online retailer, or bought the force long ago... the tournament scene is ruined outright.

Re-rolls, to me,  are something that has to have a point value. Something you sacrifice a piece of your army to get a hold of. That is what makes them special, and not just because I did or did not spend X at a GW event. I am no tournament player thankfully, so this hardly affects me, but I can see the potential for damage. if I was going to play someone in a serious game, and they pulled out a free re-roll on me that they got for making a purchase, I would just start packing up my force laughing to myself the whole time. This hobby is supposed to be a game, and if winning means that much to you, then you have lost sight of what the hobby is for.

Mythic - A company built on failures

Let me start off by saying that I didn't play DAoC, I didn't care for the idea of it and I didn't care to leave UO to try it.I was one of the first closed beta invites for WAR, and was hoping for the best... Was at this point i started getting the idea of how Mythic actually ran.

There was many times during closed beta in which myself and others mentioned the severe lack of shine for WAR, especially considering the game was to be going up against AoC, WoW Xpack, and a few other big names at the time. We tried offering suggestions, saying WoW, FFXI, AC2, and other games did things differently and better in some respects. Did we get listened to? No, the very opposite in fact. The beta testers got threatened with bans if we even compared WAR to another MMO. Obviously Mythic knew better then the testers as shown by the massive server closures and horribly slow patch cycles though. The Mythic fanboys of DAoC sure didn't help the cause though by flaming anyone who dare mention Mythic might not know what they were doing.

Anyways, I even put up with playing WAR for a good number of months, because I actually do enjoy the Warhammer world, and for a while mythic kept true to their promise that RvR encircled both PvE and PvP. As soon as the population dropped though you saw mythic start back pedaling, paying less and less attention to PvE. pvE was never that great in WAR, but over time it went from okay to awful as bugs weren't fixed, AIs got screwed with, ect. Once again people keep asking for better PvE fitting of the Warhammer world, and once again mythic more or less tells those people to blow off since WAR is suddenly a primarily a PvP game. Also, the WAR/Mythic PvP fanboys yet again join the ranks to scare away anyone who dared mention Mythic should put some focus on making the PvE aspect better.

So eventually we get to bigger news about EA, a while after I quit thankfully, that somehow they borked up and was charging some folks 40 or more times for their monthly charge. Mythic of course said this was because of whoever takes their fees, but strangely enough this wasn't the first time things like this happened apparently. Back in DAoC era Mythic over charged people before as well, and yet history still managed to repeat itself only a few years later.

So enough about Mythic's complete failures from that stand point and move back to their way of dealing with forums. It was well know Mythic (Everyone from Andy to Mark Jacobs) had thin skin and would constantly take their ball and go home if you so much as mention their game's short comings. The would stop posting on things like the IGN boards for months at a time because people their somehow hurt some devs feelings. Strangely enough, it didn't get any better once the 'official' forums went live. Mythic still hardly spoke out in regards to actual issues, more often then not, if there was any responses to be had, it was some troll response to another far less important thread about nothing.

Of course you can't forget the ever present textbook statement of mythic's to try and get people to quiet down for a bit. 'We have lots of important changes we are really excited about on the horizon, we just can't tell you about it'... That is completely unacceptable on so many levels. Sad thing is that even after the mass population drop they kept that line. Gameday they repeated it yet again. it seems to be the only thing they are sure of how to type when they have nothing else left to say. I do often wonder exactly how much of the patches are the exciting parts almost each time I read new patch notes.

Mythic's biggest failing though, something that you would think they would have learned a long time ago, is the fact they never try and stop rumors. the forums burst to life with a new rumor, and people get hyped up and actually excited. This can be literally days to months in advance, plenty enough time for Mythic to step in and squash them. However Apparently mythic doesn't care about how they look, and the hype keeps building. Finally the news comes, and everyone finds out it is nothing even close to what they were hyped for. Great examples were the Skaven addition which turned out terrible, and the most recent about the game announcing it was going F2P the day they invited all the bloggers over this week. of course the second issue they told the bloggers they were under NDA (Why even invite them then?), and used their standard response of 'Exciting stuff on the horizon, just can't tell you'.

Mythic as a company is completely terrible, and I don't say that lightly. I put up with a lot from companies, and Mythic's way of handling any problem is usually the worse possible way you can imagine, like they are intentionally trying to hurt their own reputation.

Mythic's problems are just a few steps away from being fixed though, if only they would listen to others.

• Get rid of all the yes-men core testers they currently have. You want something tested, get the people who already are looking for a reason to keep playing.
• Listen to the community, when they are telling you the campaign won't work out because of XYZ, don't blow they off or threaten them because you're insulted. Strangely enough players do know that other players like to zerg, if we warn you about that, LISTEN!
• Be active in the community. If you see a false rumor, squish it ASAP, but without using the stupid 'On the horizon' line. Just say you haven't heard about those plans and move on. When you give a forums for classes to report issues, then it doesn't hurt to actually respond to those threads, otherwise it's just a waste of bandwidth.
• Don't try and turtle when things go bad. Acknowledge things happen and explain what you are doing to make sure it doesn't happen again.
• It is okay to throw your customers a bone once in a while. Stop hiding behind the 'Can't tell you yet' line, and let them know what's coming. It will save yourself humiliation when you release the patch and find out people never wanted it to begin with, or make people actually excited for good reason when something is coming. Better then trying to leave them in the dark.

Those few steps would go a long way towards actually making the Mythic group seem like people and not just peons and grunts for EA. Other companies manage it, no reason Mythic should think they are exempt.