Cryptic used NCsoft forums for beta recruiting, not really sorry though [Updated]

And my interest in this game and company just hit zero.

Sad to see such a half-assed reply to behaviour they KNEW WAS WRONG! No, shilly-shallying, they'd be beating people over the head with their EULA if positions were reversed.
So I'm expecting to see an NCSoft folder in the CO forums, where NCNC devs and CC's can rubbish the game and "hear from the wider comic game community", by way of an apology.

'We make good games and we hope people will play them."

Like Hellgate for example. Cryptic ditch this jerkass asap. With such good games come from all direcitons, its getting to be customer perception of respect they get from developers that separates games in the market. You don't need this trash.

Oh dear, he does sound like a bit of a dick. But he does work in software development, so social skills aren't on the top of his list of talents I'm sure. Maybe he has tourettes too?

Well, I'm sad to be proven wrong here. I suppose Cryptic can't help that feel CoH players are already playing 'their' game, since they did develop CoH in the first place, and any long term players were playing when it was still owned by Cryptic.

Nevertheless, this sort of poaching is pretty underhanded. It would be as if Blizzard sold WoW to EA, then invited all the top raiding guilds to participate in the beta of their new game by browsing the WoW armory and looking for well equipped players/guilds.

It's not really . . . wrong . . . and certainly not illegal, but it still has a certain odor about it.

DC Universe Online should do their beta recruiting from the Champions Online forums :p

I don't know... I read the post on the Cryptic forums, and though it was well-worded and sincere. There were some "jokey" words used, but in a lighthearted way. I clearly can see there is an apology there, and a promise that it won't happen again. IMO, of course.

Why didn't you post the WHOLE post?? What was said at the beginning explained the situation better and made him sound less 'dickish'. Are you getting paid by NC SOFT to make this seem so onesided or what??

Sad this guy is speaking for all of Champions. I am really avoiding the game now. People like this in the back end tells me what kind of support to look forward to.

I don't really see what is wrong from recruiting people that you know already enjoying a specific genre.

Alot of people that apply to betas in todays times are people that are just looking for a free game to play for a temp amount of time and generally hop from testing to not testing so much that its hardly worth the effort of randomly picking people from that list.

Say I was building a Space based MMO. Would I rather take a random chance that joe blo that applied with a listing of 60+ mmo's on his play list will actualy test the game. Or should I look to other space based games for players that enjoy/like/actively play space games.

I would say I would rather look for the specific people that play the same type of game as I am developing. Atleast then I know theres a higher then 50/50 chance they will test the game in question.

Todays Beta tests have turned into nothing but a huge joke. I mean look at the AoC beta test. Some 500k+ people signed up for it but half of the people that made it into the beta test didn't do any type of testing at all.

Beta testing back in the 90's was more focused because people back then didn't apply for a test just because they could. No they applied because they wanted to improve and test the game.

At some point the entire beta process is going to have to be revamped and changed as more players are getting into the mmo market and are just jumping from test to test to get a fix on.

There needs to be some type of system to weed out the non testers from the testers that you want to get into it. Shoot just requireing people to fax in a NDA with a copy of the driver licenses attached would go 70% of the way to fixing that problem.

I read the WHOLE official statement on this and sorry but it did sound fine for an apology that should represent the entire company. I guess you're not allowed to make things light to a concerned audience? People do it all the time and in sales it usually works like a charm.

You have to read between the lines of what was said. There's clear indication that this was taken seriously and was not something that was meant to happen at all, but some employees thought it was ok or whatever. They've said they were restructuring that part of the team which to me reads as the guilty were either fired, demoted or reprimanded in some form.

Hugh don't know what to say about this 'reporting' otherwise.... :/

Also saw the WHOLE post on the LAN issue. Way to misquote that as well:}

I stopped following Champions Online when I heard they were hiring people from Flagship.

This story just makes me glad I'm not wasting my time keeping up with Champions anymore. DC online is looking better all the time.

Yeah, Cindy. They're called Politicians, and they usually do it because they're wrong.