A MOMENT FOR CLARITY

Having discerned a clarity issue in my previous (and most “famous”, because of it) post, I figured I would add a moment of (attempted) clarity. As much as I am already tired of discussing the WAR EULA, and EULA’s in general perhaps I positioned myself into an unclear stance, I would like to correct that.

I didn’t even realize the EULA was annoying until it was reported at Broken Toys. (I am not going to link to it again, I am sure everyone reading this has read it. If not, it is in my previous post). At that point, I did do a “Hey, yeah, that IS kind of annoying. Wonder why that is”. I didn’t have a second thought about it until I was cruising my favorite Warhammer fan site and found a poll regarding it. It too, is linked in the previous entry. That poll shows that (currently) 42% of the particpants of the poll are so outraged at the inconvenience of the new EULA format that they would either a) Not buy the game, b)find it highly annoying and will play the game less, or c) will think twice before booting up the game. This was the part I was flabbergasted at. WAR will have a ton of balance issues (class/realm/server) and the game will turn itself upside down in year one with nerfs and buffs. That doesn’t worry anyone – what DOES worry them is having to spend the (now cliche) 5 seconds of their life to do it. They don’t care about the CONTENT of the EULA and what it may, or may not contain, but having to click it upon logging in each time is such an inconvenience the game is now a pile a junk and not as worth playing. That was the stem of my rant.

Now, some people read the rant and saw the links to blogsites reporting it and falsely (although understandably) assumed that was where my rant was aimed at. Here is the kicker – Of the 200+ page views that entry had, only 4 bothered to click the straw poll link which better illustrates where my rant was aimed at. I do admit now that was a  newbie blogger error and next time I will make that portion more clear – perhaps a direct quote or a better break down of the numbers – to make sure people understand that was where my source of frustration stemmed from. It wasn’t aimed at Scott or the people reporting that it was a minor inconvenience and trying to figure out the purpose of the change from existing MMO EULA’s. I assumed that when you put a link in as part of your argument people would click it. Lesson learned.

That misunderstanding lead to my now good friend Matt’s rant which lead to my retort rant and things, typically, spiralled out of control from a misunderstanding of communication. I suppose that is the challenge. When evaluating my blogging style I would consider it conversation blogging. I do not write as if I was submitting an essay or business report – I just ramble on with the thoughts currently in my head and put it out there. Other sites I visit are much more careful about the language and emphasis they use. I will try to mirror that in some regards; I like keeping it informal but at the same time can see what can happen without proper precaution. I am not an industry icon or professional analyst. I am just a guy who is in with the general gaming population who sees and hears what a lot of general gamers think and say. I take that and my own personal opinion and put it out there to check the pulse of what gamers are thinking (and feeling) and see what comes of it.

Hopefully that has cleared any confusion. *crosses fingers*.

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