So, let me get this straight. I've got the COO of the major competitor saying things that make it *look* like 1/2 of our players have left (which is ridiculously untrue), talks about our European launch being bad (oh yeah, WoW's launch in NA and Europe was flawless right?) while his game director spins BS about how the way Blizzard runs its beta shows its confidence in the game (forgetting of course the large internal alpha with paid employees that the games goes through and only then has a short public beta) while our beta, which has the general public in it for years, shows our lack of confidence. He then goes on to say that "he's thinking of quitting our game" (and by inference, saying that other players might want to as well) and that our interface looks like his (forgetting how many interfaces were done before WoW) and generally pissing on our game and when I respond, I'm the jackass? I had the following choices:

1) Say nothing - Of course, by saying nothing I validate Paul Sams' (COO) comments about our numbers and the Internet would have been full of "Blizzard must be right, no response from Mythic" and then I would have to explain to EA why I didn't respond (which I have in a followup interview with GamesIndustry) and if its true (which its not). In terms of Kaplan's comments, sure, I could have said nothing about them but again, people would have wondered why I said nothing.

2) Come out with guns blazing - By doing so I expected to get slammed in certain places (no surprise) but at least I get to respond. Of course, the only comments I made were on the Vault and to the reporter when she called me up and asked if I wanted to comment. I did not post anything on my blog, didn't go all over the Internet posting the same stuff but simply responded to a thread on the *one* place where I'm spending my time right now.

3) Come out but a bit more gently - Possibly but I'm sorry, I care about my game and since I do admit when we screw up or something isn't working, I also feel I have the right to defend it myself. If I let a CM or PR person do that, places like this would, of course be saying, that's just the PR flack/CM doing his/her job and, probably, the same line about it being true because after all, if it wasn't true why would they send the poor CM/PR guy out to take the heat.

In terms of whether I should be doing this or not, or how EA feels, well, since I talked to them before I responded, I know that they are fine with it. This gets back to the whole "Shouldn't a CM do this stuff" stuff and no, I don't think so. Our CMs are already doing more on WAR than they did at launch but when it comes to stuff like this, I expect to take the lead and the heat for it if I screw up. I'm not going to throw Bob or Missy out there to respond to this type of stuff because I don't want them to have to take the heat if something goes wrong or have abuse heaped on them because they couldn't say much without risk. I could frankly care less about the publicity since I'm neither a conference-whore (I barely go to one a year anymore and at most ever went to 3 a year) or press-whore and as the development of WAR has shown, guys like Paul, Jeff and Josh have spent like 10x the time I have in the spotlight. And if you go back to DAoC, well, this is the exact opposite of how things were then in terms of publicity as Matt and I and Sanya really did almost all of the press stuff. And certainly if you go back to my older posts early in the DAoC days, I was more outspoken, vocal and absolutely was willing to get into a tussle with people but how often have I done that in the last say, 5 years?

And for those that say I should always just keep my mouth shut, even when competitors (or people) say things that are wrong about us. Ask yourself how you would feel if you or something you cared about was getting attacked unfairly? Would you sit back and never say anything about it? Would you simply ignore it and move on? Maybe some of you would but that's not how I am. I usually go out of my way to praise most other games and developers (with a few well known exceptions) as I did today in 2 separate interviews.

In terms of me having a thin skin, LOL. In the 20+ years I've been making games, I've been called more obscene things, accused of being responsible for every thing that went wrong in DAoC (even when I wasn't involved in the game at all after a few years because of Imperator or WAR), blamed for the state UO is in (except thatEA wanted to shut down UO when they gave it to us but I convinced them to spend more money on the game), gotten death threats (and had to call in the FBI), told that I should "shut up and die" more times than I can remember, criticized because I want to start a blog, had someone wish that my son and I should die in a car accident because we changed how one of the classes in DAOC worked, get hate mail on said blog (I know, I expected it) and my personal email constantly and generally blamed whenever possible for everything that is wrong in Mythic, Imperator, WAR, DAoC, UO, etc. and I almost always (especially nowadays) ignore them. I'm not saying this to be whiny or complain but simply to point out that when some people say I have a thin skin that I ignore 99% of the things that are said about me and Mythic especially when they are said by anonymous posters on the Internet so my skin can't be that thin. And BTW, when things did go wrong with those games, I took full responsibility for it because as CEO/GM both externally and internally at EA as well, because I consider it part of my job (even if I had nothing to do with the decision at any level like changes to classes past a certain point or statements made by Mythic guys) unlike many both in our industry and in our world who never take responsibility. And somehow, some say I should say nothing ever in response and that I have a thin skin when I respond once in a blue moon. I'm not expecting one iota of pity or sympathy for that stuff because I know as the frontman for Mythic, I'm going to take the heat but not being able to say anything, ever? That's not fair and it is a double-standard.

So, I'm sure I'm going to get flamed here by some of you as well. But I'll say the same thing I said years ago and that is why is it okay when everyone else can say whatever they want here and in other places (no matter how untrue, vulgar or rude) about me, Mythic, WAR, DAoC, life, etc. without consequence but when I express an opinion or respond in any way, I get flamed for it. And before anyone says "Because you're GM of EA" the same thing held true when I was head of a company that had a few employees and I was probably making less than the a assistant manager at a fast food restaurant.

Mark

P.S. And in terms of the added classes to a couple of other games, I honestly didn't know that and nobody pointed that out to me either unfortunately. I'll correct the SoG because if it's more than one, which it certainly appears to be, then I really should change my statement even though I had a bit of a disclaimer on purpose in regards to that statement itself. As to whether they were cut and should have been added, well, my point was that when we cut them, there were a lot of posts on the WHA and Vault that we were going to save them for an expansion and then charge for them "because that's what Mythic does!!!" and "Mythic is greedy!" were the standard lines. I think I was well within my rights to be proud that we didn't do that.