So we've heard confirmation that Cryptic did indeed use NCsoft's City of Heroes forums to attempt to recruit for the Champions Online beta. Public opinion varies pretty widely from it being a pretty underhanded move to use their forums, to people saying that's just the way business is done and anyone thinking otherwise is expecting too much. We don't think anyone wasn't expecting them to contact their competitor's players, but many were taken aback at the method employed - using the official NCsoft-run City of Heroes forums. After all, to use how Blizzard recruited from EverQuest guilds as an example, Blizzard contacted people on their guild forums and other sites not owned by SOE if they didn't know them personally. Why didn't Cryptic just head for Google and look up City of Heroes supergroups that way? A cursory search on "City of Heroes Supergroup" returns 59,300 hits, and that's not even drilling down into sites like GuildPortal and Guildomatic.So with the above in mind, and the handling of the situation overall; this morning we wanted to dig a bit deeper into your thoughts about it. Do you think it's ever acceptable to use a game's official forums to recruit for your competing beta or product? Or do you feel that all is fair in love and MMOs, so yes - using a competitor's official forums is entirely acceptable? Is it fair to expect companies to act in a 'gentlemanly manner' while squaring off for a duel, as it were, or is the idea outmoded in today's business world?
