Mark Jacobs tanks forum trolls for WAR team

by Chris Chester on Mar 31st 2008 9:15PM

Fantasy, Business models, Culture, Forums, New titles, Warhammer Online

Those of you who have followed our WAR coverage for any significant period of time might wonder why we always seem to have something to say about Mythic maven and designer Mark Jacobs. Truthfully, much of it has to do with the fact that, with the possible exception of Paul Barnett, Jacobs is the most visible person currently working on the project. Warhammer Alliance's dev post tracker might as well be Jacobs' personal version of Twitter, he's always in there amongst the fans, posting about something. The other reason we fancy Jacobs is that he's just a stand-up guy.

Case in point: the WAR fan community has been doing some serious grumbling ever since it was announced that the game's release was being pushed back to the Fall. When that grumbling started to turn nasty, and some posters turned their disgust towards the developers themselves, Mark threw down the gauntlet, and called out the trolls as both misguided and misinformed. It was touching the way he puts himself out there for the sake of his team; it's not something you're liable to see suits at a lot of other companies do for their employees. So kudos to you, Mark Jacobs, for taking the troll aggro and shield slamming them back into their place.

Source

Tags: ea-mythic, forum-trolls, forums, john-gabriel's-greater-internet-dickwad-theory, mark-jacobs, mythic, penny-arcade, WAR, warhammer-alliance, warhammer-online

Reader Comments (2)

I respect the amount of effort the man puts into his attempts to inform and assuage players and trolls alike, but I just don't understand it. I mean, he sounds like he talks like he knows all about trolls but then he engages them like he can:

A. Change their minds
B. Finish a thread better off than how he started after having made himself more of a target

To borrow from a popular phrase on the internet, "This is madness!" All this is doing is associating Mythic with anger, combativeness, and detracting from the light that should be shining squarely on their project. Tseric didn't win. Mark won't win. Nobody...and I mean NOBODY beats forum trolls unless it's done with a quick and permanent ban. He's talking to people who don't want to be talked to like adults and trying to convince people who don't want to be convinced.

Right? Wrong? Logic? None of that shit matters.

Mr. Jacobs, go the path of least resistance. Unless you really do just want to jump down into the pit with trolls and throw elbows then there is simply no defense for your strategy. This is the internet and these are trolls...they(an unending legion) have more time, and more energy than you do.

Just let it go and deal with the things that matter.