In surfing over lunch, this one struck me as inadvertently hilarious. (With all due apologies to Mr. Warner and Mr. Stropp, as this is both unfair and taken out of context.) Emphasis is mine.
Stropp, an MMOG blogger, remains optimistic in his post entitled “Why Age of Conan Will Succeed“ and points out all the advantages that Age of Conan and Funcom possess. While Stropp did cancel his Age of Conan account he believes the game will not die anytime soon and projects long-term success.
There aren’t many completely black-and-white issues in MMOs. This, however, is one them.
A pessimistic subscriber is worth infinitely more than an optimistic cancellation.
On the customer end, it’s called “voting with your wallet.” On the development end, it’s called “focusing on what people do, more than what they say.”
Krones (matt warner) said
July 10 2008 @ 3:26 pm
I had to twist the post around and direct it to our own audience because I felt that Stropp had a strong argument and a great post (which I felt was link-worthy) that was negated by his decision to cancel his account. I didn’t want people calling me out with, “WTF he canceled his account!” That little bit was to important and hilarious, too leave out.
Thank you, Mr. Hartsman.
Moorgard said
July 11 2008 @ 8:23 pm
“A pessimistic subscriber is worth infinitely more than an optimistic cancellation.”
That needs to go into a quote book somewhere!
Stropp said
July 16 2008 @ 3:55 am
That is a great quote!
But I’d like to stand up and say that I don’t agree that my argument is negated by my decision to cancel the account. The points in the post looked at Funcoms past record with AO and the post could have been written if I had never subscribed to AoC in the first place!