Author Topic: ...no comment. (For the journos.)  (Read 33168 times)

Steele Magnolia

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #60 on: October 19, 2012, 07:12:03 PM »
Have you considered Wired magazine? http://www.wired.com/magazine/

Wired is a great technical magazine that provides a story focus on the cultural and social aspects of technology as well.

FourSpeed

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #61 on: October 19, 2012, 08:55:43 PM »
Good article rae (as JaguarX noted - particularly from a gamer's PoV).

Like Khepera, I also noted some typo/grammatical stuff (though I'm not a proof reader).

The ones that immediately caught my eye:

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...to sell the IP address...
Did you really mean IP address, or were you intending IP (Intellectual Property) instead?

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...that the company is forged his resignation...
"is" shouldn't be there. Also, and I personally don't know, but "forgery" is a serious accusation - is that proved?  Note, I am aware that Garriot's civil suit was successful for him, but that's a bit different (though, related).

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...casting more suspicions on the companies motives and way...
This should be "company's motive" - it's possessive, not plural  ;)

For Tony's quotes, I believe that each should be quotated, so I'd add a " after ...in fact, reasonable and also after ...disingenuous at best, but I'm not a grammarian either, so I'm not certain whether that is correct or not, but those look like hanging quotes to me...

In any case, hope those help - again, good article. I was interested to read it.


Regards,
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Rae

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #62 on: October 19, 2012, 09:41:02 PM »
*facepalm* IP address. *snrk* I'm a genius.  Yes, that is supposed to be Intellectual Property.
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Blackbird71

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #63 on: October 19, 2012, 10:26:16 PM »
*facepalm* IP address. *snrk* I'm a genius.  Yes, that is supposed to be Intellectual Property.

Also, for the purposes of the article, you may want to spell it out, rather than using the abbreviation; many readers may not be familiar with the term "IP".

I'll echo FourSpeed's corrections, and ad a few other minor points:

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Their reputation also took a battering in 2008 after a lenghty court battle with Richard Garriot after the closure of Tabla Rasa, another MMO.

I'm pretty sure that this is just a typo as it is correct in the "Notes" section, but the game was "Tabula Rasa," not "Tabla Rasa."

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We contacted NC Soft, asking for clarification on the statement they issued and giving them the opportunity to respond to claims by the Save COH campaign who took to forums, Facebook and Twitter wanting to know:

Asking if NC Soft considered combining servers, putting the game in maintenance mode and keeping it running without further developments or updates, or allowing people to create their own, private servers.

This seems a bit disjointed; as a sentence, the second part doesn't quite fit with the first.  All the other items in your list are quetsions while this one is a statement.  I'd change it to "Did NCSoft consider combining servers,...", but you're the author, use whatever wording you like.

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While NC Soft refused to engage with their customers, or shed transparency on the attempts they claim to have made to prevent the closure of City of Heroes,

Again, the phrasing feels off; one does not "shed transparency."  You can shed light on something, or be transparent about a subject, but both at once doesn't quite work.

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"City of Heroes" was the first MMORPG based not only on superheroes, but heavily on comics books,

Someone correct me on this, but shouldn't it be "comic books?" (singular on comic, plural on books)  At least that's how I'd always heard it, I could easily be wrong.

I hope this helps!

Turjan

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #64 on: October 19, 2012, 11:27:13 PM »
*facepalm* IP address. *snrk* I'm a genius.  Yes, that is supposed to be Intellectual Property.
No need for such an epic facepalm - I was watching a documentary on the solar system the other day and would you believe the narrator actually said "The planet can wobble on its axis as much as 15 degrees celcius" :roll:

Happens to everyone :)

JaguarX

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #65 on: October 20, 2012, 12:09:04 AM »

Victoria Victrix

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #66 on: October 20, 2012, 12:20:54 AM »
My main comment would be what Cory Doctorow always says about Boing Boing proposals.

"I don't care.  MAKE me care."

And how about submitting it to Boing Boing?  You definitely have a story there now.
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Rae

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #67 on: October 20, 2012, 10:01:06 AM »
Thank you all so much for the feedback. I'll have a pop at draft two tomorrow .
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Rae

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #68 on: October 20, 2012, 02:04:41 PM »
Here's another angle to consider for your story:

NCSoft is not only doing themselves a disservice by their continued silence. I suggest that in the long run they are poisoning the well of the ENTIRE MMO industry.

When gamers really, truly as a group begin to understand the fact that at ANY time for ANY reason - even a NONSENSICAL reason - a game can be taken away - 


You're an absolute genius. I'm reworking the original one based on all the suggestions, but this is worth something on it's own. I've asked ..er..sorry, I forget the name, the person who collected the 'no rights, no reasons' thread if they're cool with me using that as the basis for another article, and they've said yes, so that's my next project.

Thank you all SO much for the help and the feedback.
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Rotten Luck

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #69 on: October 20, 2012, 02:49:44 PM »
You might want to add the fact City of Heroes community had donated thousands to charities every year.  Also could mention that we have been called the friendliest and helpful MMO communities.  We take pride in helping new players instead of insulting them with "NOOB".

Second you mentioned that NCsoft got the nickname the MMOKiller twice, and that they are responsible for a third of the loss of mmos..  Repeating it might make people believe your trying to hammer this point.  From our view it's fine but from an outsider it would seem your bis. 
One way or another... Heroes will fly again!

Rae

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #70 on: October 20, 2012, 02:58:58 PM »
Thanks, Rotten. I'll factor that in :)
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Atlantea

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #71 on: October 20, 2012, 04:25:00 PM »
You're an absolute genius. I'm reworking the original one based on all the suggestions, but this is worth something on it's own. I've asked ..er..sorry, I forget the name, the person who collected the 'no rights, no reasons' thread if they're cool with me using that as the basis for another article, and they've said yes, so that's my next project.

Thank you all SO much for the help and the feedback.

*Bows, blushing* All part of the service, my friend.

JaguarX

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #72 on: October 20, 2012, 06:04:04 PM »
You might want to add the fact City of Heroes community had donated thousands to charities every year.  Also could mention that we have been called the friendliest and helpful MMO communities.  We take pride in helping new players instead of insulting them with "NOOB".
 

Maybe we should leave that last statement out as there are plenty of cases where we a few people  that do call people noob for asking for help and or refer them to paragonwiki.com before calling them a noob.

Wait, most of the time that happened in game so may not be any evidence to the contrary recorded. Not sure about the forum as I havent been there in a while much, but last time the forum was worse than ingame attitudes, but no where near as worse as it is now. It's not looking very friendly now at all there and hope with this article there is no link provided to that forum as it is not how this community is asa whole but to an outsider, COH official forum if they find it, will be used as a judgement of the community as a whole and the recent posts are not a very good image. We dont want them to take this then follow up the story with posting evidence of people going nuts, and acting like savages just because they are hidden behind a computer screen. The mainstrema love those stories as it fits into their view of gaming communities already.

Rae

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #73 on: October 21, 2012, 03:35:01 PM »
« Last Edit: October 21, 2012, 03:58:22 PM by rae »
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Rae

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #74 on: October 22, 2012, 02:27:12 PM »
Article two is underway, with Blizzard/Funcom/SOE/Perfect World and (a little cheekily) Nexon asked if they'd be willing to sign up to a voluntary code of contact/game of rights to protect their customer's investments of time and money.

Pending no-one screaming at me that I GOT SOMETHING WRONG, on Wednesday, I'll be looking to send off the corrected-original article to a number of press-release distributing websites, as well as nowpublic.com. I'll send the more gaming-angled one  to some gaming websites.

I'm hoping to add in the information about the (apparent) Steam approach to NC Soft, too, if I can get permission from the person who posted the info here.

Fansy also said he'd forward it to a couple of his contacts. He seems to have some ace media contacts so fingers crossed he can get it in someplace.

If anyone wants to put the spelling into American and send it off to anyone they think might like it, that would be super.
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Lily Barclay

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #75 on: October 22, 2012, 07:14:51 PM »
Only thing that jumps out at me is his name is Sean Astin, not Austin.

Rae

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #76 on: October 22, 2012, 07:43:39 PM »
Ooh, nice catch. Thanks Lily.
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Rae

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #77 on: October 24, 2012, 10:33:13 AM »
Alright.

Today, I have sent the 'firewall of silence' version as a press release to:

PCgamer.com, escapist magazine, rockpapershotgun, lorehound, MMOFallout, Starburst, eurogamer, egmnow, gamespy, blisteredthumbs, zam, insidemacgames, dealspwn, examiner.com, massively, wired, thesixthaxis, shacknews, mmorpg, mmobomb, segment next, incgames, videogamer, mcvuk, vg247, gamepolitics, kotaku, BBC click and The Guardian, gamingbus, chaoster and player attack. These are all the places I could find online that'd ever run stories about the closure of COH.

I sent a slightly (very slightly reworked) version: "South Korean games software giant NC Soft has made 80 people in Mountain View redundant, and is set to destroy a world with a population of Spain - but won't say why." to local papers that seemed to cover the Mountain View area of California, including the San Jose Mercury, and Mountain View Gazette.

I've also put it up on a couple of freebie press release distributions sites, as well as Reuters and UIP, who seem to sell news to just about everyone on the web.  It's also been submitted to www.nowpublic.com where it's waiting for approval for publication, because I've never tried to publish anything there before :-p

At this point, I think the job loss front might be the way forward for mainstream media, so if anyone can think of a suitable US news outlet or newspaper where I could forward it, please let me know who I should be sending it to. Ideally not something TOO big, where it'll probably be over looked, but big enough where exposure there is likely to get picked up by bigger papers.

I'm also going to send a copy to Fansy, since he seems to have some awesome media/webcomic contacts who could probably get this out to the wider 'net community.

If anyone has any contacts they could send it on to (*coughcoughdownixcough*), or a blog or..whatever..please, please, please plagerise the crap out of it and put it where ever the hell you want :)

I'm waiting on responses from other MMO publishers for article #2, on how MMO players basically have no rights at all :-p
« Last Edit: October 24, 2012, 12:55:23 PM by rae »
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Turjan

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #78 on: October 24, 2012, 12:45:04 PM »
rae, my hat's off to you - you're a star! :D

Atlantea

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Re: ...no comment. (For the journos.)
« Reply #79 on: October 24, 2012, 12:53:33 PM »
Awesome! Let us know where this stuff sees print/posting!