Reloading... Be My Guest

What happens when hundreds of thousands of fans receive erroneous emails referring to beta? SWTOR knows!

Welcome back to our 86th attempt at Reloading...

Welcome back!

This is the 86th attempt at this column.

86 is the atomic number of radon.

I’m John Hoskin yes, I have studied the periodic table.

“Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Everyone can use a feel good moment to start the day. Let’s go with this…

Thanks for taking some time out of your day to read this column. I truly appreciate it.    If you happen to use Twitter, you can follow me @BoomjackTTH.   I rarely use Facebook, but I do occasionally post gaming related tidbits on Google+ where you can find me under my real moniker John Hoskin.

Like many of you, I received an email from the SWTOR marketing team yesterday. In fact, I received the same letter and then a counterpart to that letter three times. The SWEATER PR team is nothing if not persistent. I like that in a PR firm. TenTonHammer.com could use a firm that is that persistent.   Imagine, mailing everyone on your entire mailing list, not once, but twice and in some cases, like mine up to six times.   You would either annoy the reader or you would get your point across.   It’s a fine line, but apparently Jedi are very astute when it comes to PR.

Unfortunately, these Jedi made a mistake. They sent out email to thousands of potential customers thanking them for helping to beta test SWTOR.   Most of those people are not in the beta program.

“We hope you are enjoying participating in the Game Testing Program and want to thank you for helping shape the most anticipated MMO to date.”

This little snippet caused a flood of gamers to hit the SWTOR servers looking for the elusive beta invite that they simply must have missed. Ouch.

No hard feelings Jedi types.   I’m sure Reloading… readers will soon be flooded with real invites.

In other news, apparently someone far smarter than I has decided that guest hosts would be a good idea for this column. I tend to agree! They even tweeted the message out, complete with URL to apply. That URL doesn’t have any mechanism for you to use to apply, (more Jedi mind-tricks no doubt) so for now, send in a 200-400 word piece or send the URL to your blog to me and I’ll pass it on to the powers that make uppity-up decisions like that.

Or… I’ll steal it and call it my own. Risk / Reward. ;)

I leave you to what I hope is a fantastic weekend with this:

Rift 24 Hour Gaming Charity Session.   Our own Jason Bolton is taking part.

That’s it for today. Thanks again for reading and as always, may your dreams be big and your worries be small.

As always, you can contact me a number of ways: