Lady Aphra
Ladies of Negotiable Affection
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Posted - 2011.06.25 14:31:00 -
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It strikes me that CCP Zulu has been pushed into a corner, not by the players, but by his management line - somehow that blog just doesn't read right to me. Remember, the bad PR from all of this puts CCP jobs at risk - I don't believe such a high-handed, dismissive way of putting things would have been written in response to player concerns without pressure from above to keep it tightly "on message". I strongly suspect that, given how long it took to come out following CCP Pann's intervention, it was written, re-written, amended, debated, etc, until we ended up with the painful pastiche of a communique that we finally saw. So I would say, give Zulu a break, for now at least.
Having read Hilmar's purported mail, it's the sort of note I would expect to see from a senior manager when trying to allay internal concerns raised by external events. However, I also see in it some efforts to quell the concerns, or represent the interests, of external investors. I have seen notes like this before in previous RL jobs, and this has the same sort of "steadying the boat" and "re-assure the big money" feel to it.
Having read what appear to be CCP employee comments on www.glassdoor.com, I strongly feel that CCP has an internal business culture issue. I think that the devs, coders, call them what you will, are more in touch with what Eve used to be and what the community wants than the senior management - there is a communications disconnect internally within CCP. This sort of thing I have also seen in RL, and takes a major event to shake the company out of. I suspect that this MT issue (for that is the major issue here, IMO) will not be that major event, huge as it is for those of us in the player base who frequent the forums.
I have already suspended payment on this account, and have another 8 weeks or so left on it. My main pays monthly, and continued paying on that account is being kept under review. I have been playing since 2006, and the thought of no longer playing Eve is a huge wrench. However, my stumbling block is the thought of people being able to buy success in the game, and Zulu's blog steers well clear of that point - the only point of any major contention. Performance issues, overpricing, these are not game-breaking problems, they can be overcome or worked around, or finally lived with, no matter how annoying or awkward, but MT could be a game-breaker. Again, the fact that so long was spent on getting that blog out only for it not to cover the main issue for the community tells the major story for me. Zulu's later comment of keeping things separate and clear again points to downward managerial pressure on him, to my mind.
The leaks of internal memos and so on point to some within CCP having issues with the direction CCP is taking. No doubt, the investors are looking for a marked return on their investment - I do not believe that this MT methodology as being apparently implemented is the way to deliver that return. I am not an investor, I am fully prepared to find out that I am wrong on that point - I will be sad to find it out, though.
If people want vanity items, more power to them, as long as they are only for vanity. But, until Hilmar puts in writing, on this forum, and on other sites such as Massively, etc, exactly what types of items will be available to buy using Aurum, and whether these will only be vanity items or whether they will be items that will break the sandbox, I reserve judgement on what the future holds for the game that I am surprised to find I actually love. To me, at the time of typing, the future looks poor.
tl;dr My friends who got me into Eve told me there was no endgame - now I think it is in sight, just not the way they meant.
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