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DDO's Turbine Partners With Notorious SuperRewards
Zarrot writes "In the next step for their Free 2 Play model, Turbine Entertainment, publisher of Dungeon and Dragons: Online, Lord of the Rings: Online, and Asheron's Call, has partnered with notorious 'lead generation company' SuperRewards. Initial testing by forum users shows that just accessing the page without clicking on any offers sends the user's email and game login in clear text to SuperRewards. Reports of new spam and fresh malware infections on test systems are already being reported on the company's forums. Is the Zynga business model the future of Internet gaming?"
I bet it will be great with their new Viking MMO
So what you're trying to say is, Turbine chose to get double the gold reward from the quest by gaining 3 evil alignment points? Who wouldn't do that in their shoes?
Signatures are the new names.
I'm one of the few people who liked Asheron's Call 2, apparently. I thought it was a lot better than AC1. If only they could have made the monthly events a little more exciting, I'd have played for years.
To think they've fallen so far as to jump into bed with a notorious company like that... I'm really saddened.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
The post says straight up that simply viewing the target Offer Wall sends your info out.
Did these idiot devs not even consider that Firefox does URL prefetching and they are, due to the prefetching of their sell-my-information-to-the-devil-wall page, selling information of people who didn't even view the wall but simply viewed a page that links to their offer wall?
This is shady at best and criminal at worst.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo!
... ALL players ... and it will teach them a lesson.
to code or not to code, that is the question.
AC1 players loved the game. It was my favorite MMORPG ever even though it had imbalances. Yet AC2 was a colossal rush job with the combat system being weak(Level 20 Archer+Tactician could kill level 50 mobs, and armor didn't work well).
AC1 success
AC2 failure
Will we see an AC3? I sure hope so.
God spoke to me.
I knew WOW was the future of gaming when I first heard of the Compuserve game for C64. Although I figured it'd be played like Pool of Radience, Final Fantasy 1, or Wasteland.
There's no real points in life for a guy who predicts the future like that. You almost have to do the whole thing solo. And boy did I try. If you want the years to fly by fruitlessly, try cramming yourself in a room and writing a MMOG solo.
My current game is going to be on the Zynga model, but people getting into the game accept it as the payment. I think mixing subscription play with micropayments is sort of double dipping that players won't appreciate.
God spoke to me.
I think you are wrong... The initial success of Wow was for a large part due to being at the right place at the right time, after that simple momentum took over. People play WoW because their friends play WoW. That is how it works for all sites or software with a strong social element; it's not quite winner-takes-all but a single dominating entity does tend to emerge.
Attempts to copy WoW or trying to copy WoW's success is almost certainly doomed. I remember the attempt to bring the by far most successful MMO of the time (Lineage) from Korea to the West and making it the most succesful one here has resulted in failure, for the same reasons. What worked then and there is not so likely to succeed in displacing the current market leaders here and now. That doesn't mean people should or will stop developing MMOs altogether, they can and will still be profitable to operate without beating WoW's subscription numbers. But if you are aiming to beat WoW, prepare for disappointment.
Developing and running an MMO is a very expensive and complex proposition, and the returns may not be all that good. Quick buck artists are not going to turn to MMOs even with the lure of WoW's $1 billion + revenue; they know they are not likely to make even a fraction of that with a lot of work. Emulating Zynga's model seems a much more fertile field, it is still new enough for early players to make a killing with far less effort, so I expect this business model to gain a foothold in the near future. I am sad to see a decent company like Turbine partnering with these scumbags, but I expect more of them may fall if the revenue is large enough.
The good news is that, at least here in the Netherlands and Europe, regulators are increasingly becoming wary of such scams. The most notorious and lucrative ones foisting expensive SMS subscriptions on unsuspecting kids are already being addressed effectively, and privacy watchdogs take a dim view of teasing information from unwary visitors. Consumers are becoming increasingly wary of these scams as well, and I expect this wariness to increase sharply as these scams become more prevalent, and more people get stung by them. The Zynga business model is one that will gain a foothold in the near future, but I expect it to be a short-lived success.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Not necessarily. It seems to me like diming and quartering the users is what's winning outside of the WoW world.
There are a _lot_ of games which live by selling in-game items for RL cash these days. It has the carrot of being theoretically free to play if you don't want to pay, and you even get a lot of leaway with the quality. People are quick to point out that it's free, even when they run into problems. And you don't need all that many people who go crazy with the purchases to more than make up for those who don't. There are people who spend thousands on having the top mounts, and the top extra enhancements on their PvP gear, and if you don't get them with the PvP, you get them when they get kicked out of endgame raids for not having enough +damage on their sword or +block on their shield.
And the model is sadly expanding even to paid subscription MMOs.
E.g., last time I tried EQ2, Sony was already selling a metric buttload of stuff for real currency for it, on top of needing a full subscription, and needing the Station Access expensive subscription if you want more than 4 character slots (total, not per server!), and having to buy the extra mini-expansion packs to get your extra class powers, and so on.
E.g., STO, much as I love the game otherwise, it's starting to bother me that by now half the playable races can only be bought for "cryptic points" (read: RL money.) And so are any character slots above 3 (4 if you bought lifetime subscription) which isn't enough even to play all 3 classes on both Fed and Klingon sides. And a few more things, not all of them cosmetic. And that bonuses for buying collectors' editions and whatnot include stuff like a purple quality bridge officer, or the only point defense system in the game.
Heck, even in single player games these days, it's getting to the point where half the content is available only by paying extra, even from day one. We're no longer even talking about expansion packs developped later, but stuff that was planned from the word "go" to be removed from the actual game and sold separately for real cash. E.g., The Sims 3 launched from day zero with more content for sale for extra money on their site, than got shipped with the game. E.g., racing games which ship with hardly any tracks _or_ cars, but you can buy the actual tracks or cars for extra cash.
Sorry, it seems to me like that's the real direction that the gaming industry is taking, not the direction of spending as much money and manpower as WoW did.
I guess I can't even blame them. You could spend years polishing a game, hiring people who can do at least the elementary maths to balance it, filling it with more content than the competition... and it still may or may not be a dud. Or you can just quarter and dime the players. Hmm. I can see why the latter is more popular.
But I can't say I like it one bit.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Damn that is kinda shady. Oh well, I've been needing to clear of some space on the old hard drive, & that's a really good reason for DDO to go.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Due to the outcry from their customers, Turbine has taken the Offer Wall down while they sort out the issues that arose due to the half-assed broken way they implemented this lame idea.
I am probably part of the target audience they hoped to attract when they went free to play - someone who hadn't played an MMO before, who had played a bit of pen and paper way back when, and who has disposable income that they are willing to spend if the game is fun enough. So far, it has worked well - I have spent $200 on the game in the past five months on my account and my son's account.
I don't want to deal with a company that I cannot trust, or leave my credit card information in their hands. I absolutely do NOT trust lowlife criminal scum like SuperRewards, and by extension, I do not trust any company that has any dealings with them whatsoever. That means you, Turbine.
I know better than to take any of those offers, but Turbine royally screwed up in their implementation. Even viewing the list of offers on the Turbine site meant that my email address and account name for login was likely transmitted to those parasitic bottom-feeders.
I'll still be playing the game as I bought a ton of content that I have yet to explore, but I will be getting Turbine to remove my credit card info from their billing system if this isn't fixed, and a formal apology issued to their customers by next week. I seriously love this game - it is a ton of fun, many of the players are older, and I don't have to worry about most forms of griefing or PvP emphasis that has kept me away from the entire MMO genre so far. I get to explore instanced dungeons in a small group, and have only explored less than a quarter of the content.
Time to turn the heat up to eleven - DDO players haven't killed it for good yet, or received a formal apology for this privacy breach. Group seppuku by the PHBs who thought up this scheme would be an entirely acceptable response at this time, and would go a long ways towards restoring confidence in the company.
Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious
You do know that the Zynga model is pushing scams on your customers right? It's abusing the naive and defenceless in society. Nothing wrong with micropayments, but Zynga is unadulterated evil ... is your sig just for show and are you a sociopath?
http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/06/zynga-scamville-mark-pinkus-faceboo/
I highly doubt you are right. You've got three problems with that logic:
1) Just because something can't reach WoW's level doesn't mean it isn't successful. You don't have to take over the world to have a business worth doing. You just have to make a non-trivial amount of profit. There are plenty of other MMOs out there that have enough players to continue to operate, and develop new expansions. Everquest 1 and 2 are still running and releasing expansions, Eve Online, City of Heros, Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer Online, etc etc. WoW is by far the biggest, that doesn't mean it is the only profitable one.
2) That Lineage didn't do all that well doesn't mean that WoW is unbeatable, it means that Lineage is a game that doesn't appeal to the US market all that much. You might notice that it's Metacritic rating is 65%, as opposed to WoW's 93%. Metacritic gives you a good aggregate of how US reviews feel about something. You have to remember that different cultures like different kinds of games. You can see this quite well in US vs Japanese RPGs. The style of games like Baldur's Gate or Ultima are extremely different from something like Final Fantasy or Fire Emblem. So just because the game is wildly successful in Korea doesn't mean it'll do that well in the US. Baldur's Gate was massive in the US and bombed in Japan, despite Japan being big on RPGs.
3) MMO players seem to be more than willing to try new games. Startrek Online had a million subscribers on day one. That is damn near 10% of WoW's player base and way more than WoW had out of the gate. Doesn't look like they managed to maintain that number, which isn't surprising because the game isn't great. However it seems clear that MMO players are more than willing to give a new game a shot, and would likely keep playing it if they were enjoying it.
Really what is needed to start beating WoW is a game that is as good as WoW. The game is extremely engaging, and very friendly to new players. It is an exceedingly well designed game. That is why it got so many players. It got people like me who like the idea of MMOs but found that they were way too hardcore (I tried EQ1 and wanted to like it but couldn't). It got people who'd never played MMOs before because they were too complicated. It got people who played other MMOs but were fed up because they felt like work. It gathered all types because it was well made.
As such another well made, mass appeal game could probably unseat it. However, that doesn't have to happen. You can settle for a smaller part of the market and still make plenty of money. Eve Online never tried to compete with WoW. Eve is hard, it is hostile, it has very different gameplay and so on. It appeals to a hardcore demographic. Not nearly so many of those, you aren't going to get the WoW numbers, but there are enough to pay the bills, keep the devs employed making new content, and generate a healthy profit.
Not everyone can be the mass market company, not everyone tries to be. The niche market can make you plenty of money. You won't find B&W speakers in Best Buy or Sears. They aren't a brand you find in many homes. None the less they've made a long, successful business out of selling to a niche market. As an even more niche example take SVS, that you find in no stores as they are Internet only. For years the only thing they sold was large subs that look like hot water heaters. However that too has been enough to make them money.
Does anyone else have an advertisement for DDO looming large in the upper right corner of Slashdot? Targeted advertising is creepy....
I think mixing subscription play with micropayments is sort of double dipping that players won't appreciate.
It's not so much that as that it slowly erodes the actual gameplay, let alone the immersion. I play this game, and ever since they've added an item shop, people are wandering around Ancient Korea with sunglasses, because they can charge for them (useless item, pure decoration) in the item shop. The idea was that this wouldn't affect gameplay, but of course, it creates games all its own -- there's now an official runway competition to decide whose avatar has the best style, which inevitably entails lots of item-shop items. They've also recently (and kind of inevitably) introduced things which directly affect gameplay, like extra storage for crafting items...
Now, the problem is, I don't know if this actually makes a difference in the business sense. I mean, as a player, I absolutely appreciate what you're doing, but I'm also going to keep playing Nexus because of all the stuff I have there, and the community I'm involved with -- basically, because of network effect and a strange sort of lock-in that all MMOs inherently have.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
CrazyJim1, YOU SO CRAZY!
Does your Zynga game have katanas with rockets in the hilt?
Comment of the year
Obvious to who? There have been regular updates to DDO on schedule since going free to play, and their revenue went up by 500% since going free to play. The number of subscribers has doubled, and I don't think that even includes the pay-to-play people such as me, who spend as much or more each month on buying content packs as a subscriber would. As long as they keep releasing content, they'll keep the revenue stream alive from people like me.
{princess bride}Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.{/princess bride}
Don't think so. But then, why look for real numbers when you can just spout FUD and pull stuff out of your ass.
You might not have heard, but brick and mortar games stores already have a few nails in the coffin, and could soon go the way of the arcade, the video store, and the buggy whip manufacturer. Ever heard of Steam?
Just by viewing a page on a Turbine site, DDO players have confirmed (by inspecting packets) that the account name and email address were transmitted from the "Offer Wall" page. Add the pre-fetching comment here, and you might be able to see the problem. Sure, my password and credit card were not transmitted, and I only browse with NoScript, but I am probably not representative of the most vulnerable portions of the player base.
Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious
...and now that I have your attention let me explain that.
Look, Turbine is a company. They exist to make profit and along the way they incur costs (taxes, hardware, bandwidth, employees). Finding new ways to monetize their product is the right and proper thing for them to do and, as a customer of their products, I wish them all the success in the world in that endeavor.
The Offer Wall wasn't actually all that bad of an idea on the face of it... they offered a way for F2P players to get something that many, in these hard economic times, may not have even been able to do on their own... get some quick item store points with out laying out RL coin and doing so in a way that they didn't have to toy with game mechanics. Having said that... they were pretty stupid in the implementation.
They clearly didn't understand the 'rewards marketing' industry they chose to rely on enough to find a competent partner (if they existed), they didn't put much time or effort into the solution... based on a complete read of the forums it looks very slapped together (an assumption on my part, not having seen it first hand), and they didn't give their customers much credit for thinking very deeply about these sorts of things (and given the complexity of the game, they clearly misunderstand their customers).
As for me and my wife... we came to DDO because we are short on funds now-a-days and they provide a cheap way to be entertained without resorting to something like TV. We really like their game and the implementation (I'm an old AD&D player... so had to get use to it). We've even bought adventure packs from them. We'll give them a pass on this... that doesn't mean they will get a pass forever if they keep doing stupid stuff or if it's dramatic enough (as I'm sure some takers of their offer might feel). If they continue to fail to respect their customer base repeatedly they will fail themselves.... as well they should.
In the meantime, I hope they've learned their lesson from this fiasco... and continue to provide a great game.
I wonder if Brad McQuaid wakes up some days and kicks himself repeatedly.
All EQ had to do to be WoW was to be a teensy bit easier. But they fell in love with the 1% of hardcore players and repeatedly screwed over the 99% of customers who couldn't afford to play 14 hour chunks.
Don't get me wrong- I thought WoW was too easy when it started but that difficulty level was where the money was.
Gawd EQ was hard with corpse runs, losing ALL your gear, losing a week's play worth of EXP in an hour if things went badly, the "ubers" owning the top end of the game with some zones you might never see (I got one trip into mischief before it was redone), 3 week respawn cycles, weekday afternoon spawn times, FEAR. It was hard- it was cool if you had a certain attitude but over time it became clear unless you were retired, wealthy, or a student, you would have a hard time keeping up with the 50 hour a week play schedule.
Still- I saw everything up to just shy of Crystallos at which point my right hand blew out and I was done.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It's in lotro. Check out www.thefatlute.com
Yay me!
This... does not make sense.
Yay me!
And I hope every day Brad McQuaid wakes up and someone IS kicking him repeatedly. Customer service, my ass. I've never played a Sony/Verant game since, and never will. Nor anything that dickhead is involved with.
That sounds like my story. I tried EQ, and some other online game (don't remember which). DDO gets a lot right - giving you private instances of dungeons, no gruntwork (mining, crafting, whatever) required to succeed, etc, etc. A fun game, and "free" play means that our family has spent more here than we did at EQ in monthly fees.With EQ, I really resented the weeks when I was paying but had no time to play. The attraction of the DDO model is being able to choose if and when you payg.
This sort of arrangement with a third party is disquieting, and frankly reeks of either desperation or some PHB boss or marketing type who has no understanding of their customers. As the parent said: I will stick around a short while, hoping to hear that they regret ever trying such a bone-headed idea.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
No matter what, most MMO games will always be niche markets. Problem, playing the same game over and over and over again, really doesn't do it for most people. Learning new games playing them for a while and moving onto the next one is the majority market. Possible MMO might be able to stretch their market by allowing users to log in multiple different games, at different times and possible transfer their character skill level between games.
Perhaps it was just me but I find a game starting to get boring after playing for more than say, 12 hours, after 24 hours really boring and beyond 48 mind numbing torture (obviously not in a single stretch). Not that I can't go back to the game in say 6 months and enjoy it again but solid addict play is totally out of the question. So subscription play for one game really is a no go (I have worked on factory production lines and, always earned productivity bonuses but I would never consider it fun).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Yes, there is a strong social element that is prevalent in MMOs. Yes, WoW was in the right place at the right time. Look at other MMOs that have been spawned that should have been wildly successful, but were in part possibly overshadowed by WoW or had facets of WoW that were attempted to be copied by developers and wound up ruining the game. This is just a list of the games I have played and my opinion, YMMV and all that...
Star Wars Galaxies - Came out before WoW, however, the "geniuses" there decided to dumb down the game. They went from having what should be the single biggest IP out there that would appeal to many people, to bleeding subscribers left and right in an attempt to attract more people.
EQ2
LoTRO
Fallen Earth
STO
Now consider the development of the new KOTOR MMO, if Bioware screws this up, it'll be like "as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced." A MMO with lots of potential to actually compete with WoW will probably be overshadowed by something like some Blizzard expansion pack strategically released just before KOTOR which will drive WoW levels up or something or Blizzard could release something like Diablo 3 to insure their domination in the online gaming community.
I have contemplated going back to LoTRO, however, I'm not all that sure about the possibility of dealiing with a Zynga model. I wonder how many of the "lifetime subscribers" that shelled out $300 will be a little put off by this.
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
You payed 200, for 5 months. At 15 per month P2P, it would have cost you 150 for TWO subscriptions. Since the game is old, you could pick it up for a tenner or less.
So, F2P, is more expensive.
Geez, who would have figured. Nickles and Dimes. They add up.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
WOW had crazy numbers even in beta stages. The reason WOW had such a big launch is because the existing games were all stale and played out. EQ 2 had no pvp to mention.
But it wasn't just the timing, you heard it again and again on guild discussion forums and the like. This was being produced by Blizzard. A company with a solid track record of killer games.
It kept them for the reasons you state. When something new and good comes along, WOW will lose its player base just as easily. The fact is that a game that is easy to play, and easy for new players is boring for experienced and skilled players. There is no real high level content and expansions are all the same thing. Every expansion screws over the most dedicated players.
GPotato's game Allod's Online does quite an excellent job of filling in for WoW in the Free 2 Play market. And with many successful games already under their belt you can be assured they understand their market they're not a subscription game like DDO who found out they were going broke and are trying anything to stay alive. I dare WoW players to log into Allod's Online and play through the tutorial area and not wonder why the hell they're paying $15 every month for WoW. And I had 3 70's in WoW and now a 40 in Allod's for reference.
I wonder if Brad McQuaid wakes up some days and kicks himself repeatedly.
I doubt it. He was the driving force behind Vanguard which flopped completely because it was too hard core. Players of that game repeatedly told him he was going in the wrong direction of design, but he wouldn't listen since he knew best.
WoW did a lot of things right long before other MMO's even considered it. Lack of a death penalty being just one of them.
I liked Asheron's Call quite a bit, and Turbine was the first of the mass-market MMOGs not to take its customers for granted - Origin's (then EA's) Ultima Online management was clueless, and Verant's Everquest management was actively at war with its users.
Recently with DDO, however, they installed a torrent client for updates. Lest you have visions of World of Warcraft's torrent client that actively fetches updates then stops when it's done, Turbine uses Pando's Media Booster, a torrent client that starts on OS boot, and gives the user no indication it is running unless one goes into its control panel.
I took Turbine and Pando to task for this, and Pando did actually reply, but not much to my satisfaction.
http://www.unhelpful.org/2010/02/15/underhanded-and-sneaky-pando-ddo-online-and-turbine/
They made the forum closed to non registered viewers not long ago. Guess they didn't want the rants to be public.
Mythic's billing fiasco, this games marriage with spam and malware, what is it with online games this week?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
I just posted a rather flamey rant over at Kongregate, blasting the recent flood of "pay to pwn" games that directly encourage players to drop tens to hundreds of dollars on in-game items and perks, as was once contained to the mental diarrhea that is Second Life. I find the whole concept very offensive, to bring real money into what is supposed to be a fantasy escape from the daily pressures of reality. Doubly offensive that it is happening on a site that thrives on indie game developers and experimental/emergent gameplay, where the micropayments are supposed to be for "tipping" the developers, not funneling huge sums of money to scammy asian game houses.
Buying a game: fine. Paying a fixed monthly fee for an MMO: fine. Allowing those with too much disposable income to shit on everyone else's game progression: dirty.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Turbine has announced that they are dropping the wall, and they also apologized to their players.
That only took a day or so from when the Offer Wall was introduced, which is reasonably fast by corporate standards.
Thanks Turbine, for listening to the players, and for the apology. You make a great game, and I hope to continue playing it well into the future.
Full text of the announcement:
Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious
directly encourage players to drop tens to hundreds of dollars on in-game items and perks, as was once contained to the mental diarrhea that is Second Life.
I actually don't have nearly as much of a problem with it in Second Life. After all, most of our real currency is imaginary, so it doesn't bother me that imaginary things can have value.
But then, Second Life isn't a game so much as a medium, and this kind of shit tends to ruin games.
where the micropayments are supposed to be for "tipping" the developers,
I don't know about that -- seems they could always set up a PayPal "donate" button. Otherwise, I do like that I actually get something out of the micropayments.
It just becomes an issue when that "something" is a decided gameplay advantage. It's similar to, oh, arcade games -- I "beat" Time Crisis 2 by putting quarters into the machine until I won, spent something like $20 on it. That seems to me a bit like expensive cheating -- I actually don't mind it so much in arcade games, any more than I mind cheats in single-player games, but multiplayer, let alone massively multiplayer, shouldn't tolerate that.
So, yes:
Buying a game: fine. Paying a fixed monthly fee for an MMO: fine. Allowing those with too much disposable income to shit on everyone else's game progression: dirty.
And again, I draw a hard line between this and something like Second Life. In Second Life, it's effectively the real world -- if I care about fashion, I can spend tons of money on virtual clothes, or make my own. If I don't care how I look, I can just wear whatever's cheap or free.
The difference would be if Second Life added working guns and kevlar vests.
I wonder if that makes sense...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
But in the end I bailed. And slowly but surely the others were trickling out as well.
The problem is that this "trickling" process has been going on for years, probably close to a decade, and it doesn't take many to make an enjoyable game. In particular, the people who leave first tend to be the people least interested in roleplaying and otherwise making the game more enjoyable.
And the game itself is fun, and I would likely play just for the game, or just for the player-run games on top of that.
The real concern, and the entire reason for the item shop in the first place, is that they either need more users (not likely to happen) or more money per user, just to keep the shop afloat. I don't know what their actual finances are, but I ran the numbers, based on the population, and I'd be amazed if they could afford to hire a single person full-time at minimum wage, which is why they leave so much to the players.
And of course, the danger is that whenever they add something new to the game, they can either add it to the game itself (accessible to anyone) or to the item shop. Guess what usually happens? Crafting bags, which expand how much ore, metal, etc can be carried per trip, were added exclusively to the item shop. Pets (purely decorative) have a few crappy-but-expensive in-game options, and the rest can only be found in the item shop. Mounts are either found as horses wandering around, spells in a few player-run subpaths (they summon horses), or much cooler mounts (panthers, armored horses) in the item shop.
It is possible that I'd quit, at least for awhile, especially if I found something "better". It seems unlikely that I'd be gone forever. There's another effect at play here -- no one ever quits Nexus. They think they do, but they always come back.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Part of the reason it flopped was it was released 4-6 months too early, because of Sony. When it went live, even on high end machines, it was like the beta bug catcher was still on.. lag was atrocious, and the game was suffering horribly for it.
Yes, he also didn't listen to his beta testers. Worse, his devs were the rudest shits this side of Verants cs crap. The customer may not always be right, but they're never "wrong" (to their face). In 988/Verant, then Sigils view, the customer was not only always wrong, but they were also total fucking idiots... and they needed to know it.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's