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Posted January 13th, 2009 by Ethec

#993 - MMOGULS is a scam, but the badness persists.

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Loading... and I'm pissed.

Back when I was young and the Internet was just for fun, I posted an article on EQ2 etiquette. In it I made a host of what I thought of as pretty docile suggestions. LFG tools wasn't yet a reality and spawn camping was, so some of the suggestions seem a little dated by today's standards, but I still think it's a fairly good list to follow if you want to be a sensible and courteous player.

That said, I posted it on the EQ2 official boards and asked for feedback. Imagine my dismay when the next day there were 10 pages of angry rants that someone had the audacity to tell them how to play their game. I tried searching for this thread just for old times' sake, but it's been long buried. If someone can find it on the official EQ2 boards, email me the link and I'll send you something from the secret mystery prize stash if you're the first.

One of my first lessons in Internet writing was this horror, the horror of being attacked by a zombified horde of official forum posters, followed by the sheer joy of realizing that if you've stayed within the facts as you know them and your genuinely held opinions yet touched off a powder keg, you've done your job.

Yesterday, I brought to light the MLM pyramid schemery of MMOGULS; what CME now claims is a complete and total scam. Here's their official statement on the matter from CEO Tim Jensen:

Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment (CME) and its subsidiaries (including Firesky) are not affiliated with MMOGULS and there is no contractual relationship between these entities. MMOGULS does not have any license or contractual rights with Stargate Worlds or any of the other products currently in development by CME.

For those of you on the SGW boards who thought I was taking a cheap shot, I'll just point out that we still wouldn't have an official statement on MMOGULS from CME if Loading... didn't run as it stood yesterday. The marketing of this scam is wide and pervasive (just google "MMOGULS Stargate Worlds" to see for yourself, and the deluge of seriously inquisitive emails I received in the last day shows that this isn't simply a matter anyone can laugh off) and the matter simply demanded more official attention than it was getting.

Let's also talk about Loading... a moment. This is not an attempt at serious journalism, this is commentary. I pick the most interesting topic or topics that strikes me each day, present what facts I can find (notably few from either side in this case, if you want to impugn a site's integrity - pick on one of the sites that reported MMOGULS as legit), and we talk about it. The truth always comes out eventually and we go from there. It's no mystery that PR spin doctors control the official face and bearing of this industry, so I'm simply going to call it like I see it, unabashedly and without regrets. An independent take on current events is probably part of the reason you come to Ten Ton Hammer and we're not going to change how we do things.

So if tkksnow wants to snipe us from afar for not asking for a quote before Loading... is released, that's fine. I can be petty too. I'll note that our last two calls for comment (on different matters) were returned only after we went to print and mostly in email, our last scheduled interview appointment was broken by CME on short notice with no clear make-up date, and I have a list of people promised beta access almost two months ago that still haven't been taken care of. None of this inspires confidence that I can get anything more than stall tactics out of CME without a firebrand approach.

Those who care about the game are deeply concerned about the future of Stargate Worlds, and its time that CME did more than turtle up in the official forum community and react belatedly to swirling rumors, some of which have indeed turned out to be fact. We've mistaken fanboyishness for quality journalism in the past, and we're very, very anxious not to do it again.

Your comments are welcome in the Loading... forum, or email me directly if you like.

Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the Day

From our Articles, News and Events Discussion Forum

MMO Crash of 2008?

Agamemnon's blog at Hellforge has stirred up a bit of controversy. He's pretty much declared 2008 a total loss for the MMOG industry due to the demise of Tabula Rasa and Hellgate: London (neither of which actually launched in 2008, but let's not get technical) and the "hanging by a thread" status of Pirates of the Burning Sea and Age of Conan.

Our thread, related to a news post about the blog, hasn't quite taken off yet, but I see it as an Epic Thread in the making. All it'll take to reach epic status is your input. Do you feel 2008 was a total loss as far as MMOGs are concerned? Do you see more dark days ahead for 2009? Or is this all a bunch of fatalistic crap?

=================================
Awesome Quote from the Epic Thread:

"[WoW] caused a lot of developers to stop innovating and start trying to churn out something that was basically WoW-with-a-twist. We're not going to see The Next Big Thing until developers break out of the WoW mold. Certain mechanics work so well they don't need to be improved upon, but until some developer shakes off WoW's influence and goes in a completely rogue direction I think we're bound for more of the same old same."

- JustaGuy
=================================

Do you have a favorite Epic Thread? Let us know!

7 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 46 in January! 46 in 2009!

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