It's all about making sure they get you into the sales channel.

Sure back in the day Blizzard's main goal was to make a great game, THAT was the top priority (the thought was great game = success = more gamers = gamer loyalty = better games etc..) but when WOW hit there was no way they could maintain that.
There are way too many people in the mix who simply don't care about games, and the people that were there from the start are so far removed, and are too busy dealing with their wads of cash to care if this kind of thing happens.

The teams of people making the great games report up through 300 layers of bureaucracy now, they have funding cutbacks, forced "programming to the LCD", and TPS reports to worry about.

Now the goal is to make quarterly earnings go up as the first priority (and the thought is that eyeballs + adverts + upselling = $$) I'm sure delivering a great game gets mentioned in there somewhere but for now, it's no longer essential to the mix. It's like the owner of clearchannel "I don't care what we do as long as we make money" same ungrateful "No one got us here but us!" attitude.

We all KNOW that at some point someone will either hack it, or Blizzard will be forced to make it available, Blizzard knows this too..the thing that gets me is why bother being a douche, getting customer ire and having to deal with the hassles of bnet not being able to manage the load for the first 3 months in the first place?

Is it so they can swoop in later and say "Here we give you LAN support,..SEE we listen to the people, we take what they say to heart?" or ??

Don't shit where you eat is a survival 101 tactic that even animals are born with, it doesn't matter if you're a mouse or a elephant, so when did Blizzard forget that?

I love Starcraft, I liked Warcraft, and I enjoyed WOW, but I personally hope Stardock continues with their RTS trend of providing better and better games. THAT is an organization who actually cares about their customers (and oddly enough they manage to show it despite corporate growth.)

All they need to do is go to all the warehouses that have the battery/capacitor prototypes from the companies and individuals that they boughtout and shut down in an effort to keep all the $$'s rolling in from big oil. They can dust off all that research and already be ahead by 5 or 10 years.

There are too many "companies" involved in the infrastructure associated with all the potential fuel issues.
There won't be mass produced inexpensive fast/easy/cheap to charge cars for 20 years or more.

You idiot,...our GOAL in the US is to get the middle east involved in a war that will cause some sort of nuclear event in the area, this way we can thin the global population of it's overcrowding uncivilized poor and re-distribute the resources between the powerfull and civilized. *sheesh* Learn to read between the lines for crying out loud. That's why we spread AIDS in Africa,..(Granted it WAS supposed to mutate into a fast acting form, but hey the human immune system is a wacky thing.)

Also in the US we developed ways to make oil out of just about anything at this point (see changingworldtechnologies) so really it's all about power, population and power now.

Also the lizard people are behind it all. (just google them and you'll see!)

I asked the same question about Broadband in Iraq for a friend who is stationed there who is all but 100% cutoff from the world (you have to be at a NICE base to get decent acess) if your in the a lot of the support units you get next to nothing.

You'd have thought I was asking who wanted free herpes.

Maybe I should have said it was me who was going to get greenlit.

Not to threadjack, but this is related...

A friend of mine is stationed in Iraq with a similar problem. I went looking to see if there was something here I could buy and ship there so that he would have something more than just enough time and resources to send a couple of mails a day.

The only thing I could find was a compay called TS2 Satellite, they want 4K for their equipment and then about $900/mo for service. I mean I love the guy but I can't shell out that kind of dough (especially as he's there till Dec)

Anyone know of any other solutions?

I play Tabula Rasa and when this announcement came out many of us thought the same thing,..
If they're ditching this project (and as it's the best game that no-one knows about) what would it take for the user community to take over the game?

Obviously we *JUST* found out about this and are just brainstorming the concept, but there are some people on board with the idea that are 100% serious, and several have internal connetions to NCSoft.
Last night we set up a discussion board (quick and dirty) to kick things off for brainstorming, updates etc...
Yeah I know you can shoot a million bullets into this idea right now, but any "Constructive" help would be appreciated on the boards.

http://www.changingwind.org/savetr/signup.php

The concept is that it would be run by a group of gamers, so the things that were the ultimate failures of TR in the first place (user community tools, social aspects, gamer support, advertising) might see a vast improvement.

If you have any ties to "gamer media" I ask that you take a chance to follow a story that could be a huge Cinderella story, or a possible nightmare, but should be interesing either way.