Alganon steals press release from BioWare

First of all, I didn't accuse anyone of anything - and I certainly didn't say that anyone here didn't have lives. But if the shoe fits, go ahead, wear it - and don't let me stop you.

Reading comprehension is something that is taught at the very early stages of development. Some people basically never did learn it or leave school with the skills to put two coherent sentences together, let alone construct a paragraph that actually makes sense.

And others tend to deliberately take things out of context in order to continue promoting their attack driven agenda.

That said, I stand firm by what I said. Deal with it.

@ Warrior.

First of all, thanks for that particularly wasted effort. You clearly have no clue what you're talking about and if you - ever - worked in PR, you would know that everything you just posted is patently rubbish. To wit: A CEO should go and fact check a PR written by a company hired to do it. You must have been working for PR in an alternate universe or something. Go ahead, give me your name and tell me the PR firm where you worked. Go ahead.

It is always delightful to see people in glass houses throwing stones. Especially at someone who clearly doesn't care for angst driven man-children on the Internet behaving badly.

Attacking people - especially developers and people in authority - for no apparent reason is the real reason why gamers are, primarily, treated as nothing more than a means to a revenue stream and nothing else.

Even the headline for this news bit is quite unprofessional. Stealing is a serious accusation and quite clearly thats not what has happened here .This is yet another example of irresponsible writing passing for journalism in order to push people's buttons, gain hits etc. Buy hey, to each his own - and thanks for the memories. Most people have more than two brain cells and can clearly something like this for what it is.

That's the end of that.

http://bit.ly/cdbbxK

That link, are you joking me? “This was clearly an unintentional oversight and shouldn’t even be news.” You took credit for a statement that was not your own. This is plagiarism. And then to accuse a site of being unprofessional by pointing out your mistake?

“It started with an accusation of plagiarism by a little known blog site. Then it got picked up, completely and unprofessionally transformed by Massively in a news (!) bit no less and accusing Alganon of stealing a press release. Yah.”

Way to get nasty. People get sued over plagiarism. I sincerely doubt this will be the case here, but in the journalism/literary world… it’s a big deal. You don’t get to decide what is news or what gets swept under the rug. That’s up to the masses and the media to decide thankfully. And your apologies mean nothing when you do it with an undertone of disdain and sarcasm.

I'm really not sure why Derek Smart would waste so much time and energy scaring away potential customers. It is almost as if Mr. Smart strives to break all of the values on the company website:

http://qol.com/companyValues.php

Derek:
So far, I don't have a reason to blame you for the error of your PR firm. You pay them to do this right - you shouldn't HAVE to second-guess them. They fabricate a quote for you and you sign off on it, because it fits with your "vision" of the product.
Even if this is a PR blunder, it's certainly generated some publicity.

However, I'd double check with "BVRBandit" on the "Smedley said it first" claim before you run with it, or you may be digging a deeper hole for everyone involved.
Specifically, I'd verify that he can personally attest to the fact that Smedley said that at the 2004 keynote, and that he isn't just echoing Memmio's post on "Kill Ten Rats" from two days ago. I noticed that the wording, misspellings, punctuation, and capitalization are identical to Memmio's post. While that could easily be a coincidence, Memmio's post is the only reference I've been able to locate to Smedley's purported quote, and the similarities (down to the miscapitalization of EverQuest, misspelling of multiplayer, and the grammatically-incorrect semicolon) are evidence to the contrary.

http://www.killtenrats.com/2010/05/07/alganon-blatant-plagiarism/#comment-39460

What I like about most MMO's which this statement proves is the originality of them >.>

But seriously, there game is destined to fail if they can't even be original with a press statement.

My favorite part of all this is where, instead of taking the high road, Mr. Smart resorts to belittling and condescending people. Very professional.

For example:
"You do know how that actually *works*, right? Right? My guess is that you don't."

"Most of us with families and jobs, actually have *lives* beyond the Net. So its not like we're no-life-having cretins looking to stir up trouble at every opportunity."

"Anyone with more than two functioning brain cells..."

"... sites - trying to scrap a few dimes together - will do anything for hits."

".. have no common sense whatsoever; so arguing with you is going to just be a lesson in futility. So go ahead, have fun. I'm sure you need to validate your otherwise inconsequential [anon] existence."

All that from one post. You, Mr. Smart, are a PR nightmare.

The road goes on forever and the party never ends.

Just Me,
Tim - Hakiem

Do people really want to work under this guy? Seriously, this is the worst boss imaginable!

"Attacking people - especially developers and people in authority - for no apparent reason is the real reason why gamers are, primarily, treated as nothing more than a means to a revenue stream and nothing else."

Nice Freudian slip there, Smart. Problem is, when you make shit games, and then act like a 2 year old in a tantrum fit, that revenue stream dries up very quickly.

So, wanna tell us how "successful" Battlecrusier and Alganon together are? Please feel free to post the name and phone number of your accountant and bank representative so we can all call and ascertain any info you provide is correct.

What? Too much? not really, when you expect people to give you their name and the name of the place they worked to provide you with "proof" of their accomplishment.

You are the joke, sir. Plain and simple, no beating around the bush or political correctness, as I understand you like to be upfront. Perhaps you'll realize that although you seem to think gamers ( and people in general ) are somehow beneath you, I happen to know from public sources that everyone from celebrities to baseball stars to corporate bigwigs running multi-national corporations play mmorpgs. People who could, quite frankly, buy and sell your ass. In the big picture, in both game development and life in general, you are a very small peon who has to focus his anger on others he "hopes" are even smaller peons to make his little e-peen stand up straight again.

Good day, sir.

This Derek person seems to have a lot of free time and a horrible ego, who has daddy issues, show of hands. An authority figure is not a ranting game developer, just off hand.

I must have missed something. Has Derek Smart ever worked on a successful game? And by successful, I mean "More players than the MUDs I helped develop nearly 20 years ago".

And if you want to cite Battlecruisder 3000 AD... Wasn't that described as "It will go down in legend as the most bug-ridden, unstable, unplayable pieces of software ever released."? (Gamespot... admittedly not the best source for reviews...)

Derek is, at this point, more famous for being famous than he is for anything that he has actually produced. I wonder if someone gave him an opportunity to sit in front of actual gamers and answer questions, would he take it? or would he hide behind his TL;DR rants which are his calling card?

-Grim