OT: Communication with and from DICE Canada

[Martin Steiger]

Dear DICE/EA

Since today was a "more busy day" on this mailinglist (I already thought, I
misconfigured my mailclient), I'd like to spend a few words about this
mailing list, the forums and the general way of communication of DICE
Canada.

Let me start at the beginning: When BF1942 was ported to linux, it was Ryan
C. Gordon who made the whole thing and started this mailing list. Every
input was (more or less) appreciated by Ryan, who never hesitated to answer
to any issue as fast as possible.

Then, BF1942 moved to DICE Sweden. Personally, I believe, Andreas sometimes
wasn't so happy about following this list, but that's another story... :)
Fact is, he took our complaints serious and, after Steve started the
lightcubed-forums, he was even a frequent visitor there.

At last, BF:V was given to DICE Canada (for whatever reasons) and since
then, communication was dead. No stop, I'm wrong: I remember having much
traffic on this list, when Peter Chang did it, asked for our opinion and
bugs and finally fixed them. His way of communication was sometimes sloppy,
but heh, at least we got some informations... :)

Ok, so far for history, now let's juggle some numbers...

Facts are gone now, the following numbers are only my assumptions: I assume,
this list has about 1'000 members. About 500 of them are "active" and wrote
at least one email. That would be IMHO about 500 more or less serious
admins.

Now let's go to the forums: ~1800 registered users until now, let's be brave
and take 900 as serious admins. That would be 1'400 until now... Let's be
modest again and say, every of them runs only one 20 slot server, or even
more modest and decrease the numbers of serious players to only 10 per
server.

We have the numbers, lets do the math: 1'400 * 10 = 14'000 (!!!!!!!!)

Now for the conclusion: I know, EA has their own forums for bug reporting,
and I'm sure, they have thousands of posts every day with people,
complaining about the same thing every time.

On this mailing list and the forums, you have these 14'000 opinions
_concentrated_ on a "few" mails and a "few" posts. Additionally, more
experienced admins are helping the less experienced out, so that's also
saving a lot work (and money) for your support people.

I know you heard this a thousand times already, but please keep in mind,
that WE are running the servers, that make YOUR game so successful.

We don't expect you to release your business plans for the next years or any
release dates, but IMHO, the lack of communication at the moment is
"inacceptable". The statements of "EA Mike" are just not enough to keep our
players happy.

Thanks for your time

Martin Steiger
(a "proud" member of the BF-community... ;)