Games Day Baltimore - Interview with Robert Mull

[PhoenixRed]

The onslaught of our coverage at Games Day Baltimore continues with an interview with community relations director Robert Mull! We talk a little bit about community feedback and interaction, but for this interview I focused in on something that I think has been on the minds of EU players - the relationship between Mythic and GOA and how things can be improved for the EU playerbase. The interview is full of info for anyone, but if you're an EU player, you'll definitely want to tune in.

Part 1:



Part 2:

[Drazar]

Disappointing video for me, he doesn't talk about the special offers (re-assigment, recruit a friend) bonuses not in Europe yet, and us europeans having a worse forums too. I mean GOA used the excuse "its on beta stage" on their forums but so is the US one and its far superiour. -.-

[PhoenixRed]

Originally Posted by Drazar

Disappointing video for me, he doesn't talk about the special offers (re-assigment, recruit a friend) bonuses not in Europe yet, and us europeans having a worse forums too. I mean GOA used the excuse "its on beta stage" on their forums but so is the US one and its far superiour. -.-

You didn't hear both parts. Please do so before coming to a conclusion.

[Drazar]

Ah well i didn't think there would be more, is it 2 or 3 in total then? Gonna watch the 2nd one now.

[PhoenixRed]

Originally Posted by Drazar

Ah well i didn't think there would be more, is it 2 or 3 in total then? Gonna watch the 2nd one now.

It's two.And I don't mean to discourage the criticism. I just forgot to put in it's multi-part.

I think to a certain extent, having talked with Bob about this on and off-camera, that they know there are a certain segment of the EU playerbase who will simply say "that's nice, but I'll believe it when I see it". And that's totally fine to Mythic - as you'll see in the last part of the video.

[akalukz]

Thanks for bringing us all of this info Red. I like how you didn't let them off with an easy answer but kept pushing with the tough questions!

Good Work.

[Drazar]

I'm sorry but i didn't like this at all. In the 2nd video he talks about how people didn't like GOA's flash site and so on, and then he says how he talked about it with others. So he admits they talked about it but they chose to do nothing? :/ It was really hard to hear with all the nouse in the background but the last 5 minutes just seemed to be about the playerbase and not really GOA/Mythic relationship. ;(

[akalukz]

I think what he was trying to say is... GOA and Mythic are more partners rather than boss/employee. So although Mythic may not agree with some of GOA decisions there really isn't anything they can do about it since the "issues" probably are contract breaking issues. But I think he is also saying that "mythic" is putting pressure on GOA to step up and get things done/fixed IE Promotional items etc.

[Nugz]

Im not trying to be mean but I was wondering where the questions about CC, AoE and zerging, 1.3 class changes, and melee changes to make them more viable in 100+ fights with mass AoE? It seems like all the info that was given so far is just spoilers for LoTD.

[Achire]

Originally Posted by Nugz

It seems like all the info that was given so far is just spoilers for LoTD.

I think they also interviewed the RVR team lead. Any idea when that interview will be up?

I liked the sidestepping around the whole GOA website thing, heh. Different corporate culture indeed.

[PhoenixRed]

I'm working as quickly as I can, folks. This interview was the first of those not directly dealing with Land of the Dead.

[Alv4ro]

well i really dont think he could have said anything else other than the things he said really, without it sounding like he's flaming GOA... Doing so could have pretty serious reprocusions...

I dont think Muller (?) saying "yeah GOA f'd up, and we did some wrist slapping" would be very good for the reputation of either company and it would subsequently have a negative effect on the game as a whole.

So I think we should be content with what we have now, and see if he keeps to his word regarding 1.3 seeing as its 'just around the corner' and all.

Lets see if GOA can prove us all wrong. Though I personally think they arent that terrible... having to cater to a multilingual & multicultural playerbase and all, I can assure you that England winning the world cup wouldnt sit well with the Spanish and Germans... and French... and Portugese.... but the Dutch might be ok with it. Remember 'equal is not identical' (i loved how he pretty much said the same thing but rephrased it)
On that note "we wanna hold keeps forever"... Russians are pretty hardcore

[KatzenKratzen]

Originally Posted by Alv4ro

Lets see if GOA can prove us all wrong. Though I personally think they arent that terrible...

Yeah, they can still prove you wrong on that one

On that note "we wanna hold keeps forever"... Russians are pretty hardcore

We sure are

[Khannage]

PhoenixRed - Thank you for raising the issue with the EU website!

I really think that if Mythic want to improve the service in the EU they need to work with GOA on an updated website. The place new customers first go is the WEBSITE and in the EU it's a Flash Based (and doesn't work on my iPhone hehe). Simple things like the very design of the site is far superior in the US, if you visit the EU site i'm not sure it's the greatest advert for a game that we need more people using.

A lot of the community have been asking for this since beta and nothing has happened, we still have areas of the site with place holder links, caching issues with Flash content, beta versions of the realm pages. The game moved from beta to retail in September 08, I'm still waiting for the retail site to go live.

Khannage

[Blaq]

Thanks for this, really puts things into perspective. Learned a lot from this interview.

There seems to be a large disparity between the official details of GOA/Mythic relations, what Mr. Mull said about those relations and what I see in practice. While the official detail is that Mythic/EA contracted GOA to market and provide the game in EU (I believe) Mr. Mull describes the relations as a partnership, almost in the sense of GOA buying the game license and being their own boss while only loosely working with Mythic. And on the other side I see GOA being directly depenedant on Mythic for almost anything, to the point that if a marketing move is not suggested/ordered by Mythic GOA doesn't do one at all. This again reinforcing the boss/subordinate relationship.
I don't believe that tip-toing around the PTS and Website was just a move to not make GOA look bad. It seems to me that Mr. Mull tried to shift responsibility more than anything else, and thus we get the "we are only partners" statment, while we all know that is not true and should not be true if an MMO is to succeed in a foreign area with a different company as a provider.

Also on the point of making EU players feel like second grade customers, I think that many players rather than feeling it was intentional feel that Mythic is simply careless and sloppy in this matter and this cannot be dismissed by accusing us of being paranoid. This reinforces my view of Mythic not taking this issue seriously at all.

Sorry for this rant, I do see things are changing but not nearly fast enough. And sorry for any grammatical mistakes.

PS: A much better question than the one with the flash website would be to ask him what kind of an impact on the community will separate forums have, or any question regarding official forums as I see them as a means to segregate the community above anything else.