[bf1942] OT: Communication with and from DICE Canada

[Andreas Fredriksson]

I thought I would chip in here, even though this doesn't directly
address me.

The BF1942 patch cycle (of which I was a part) and BF:V projects have
had overlapping life cycles in a way such that it has been hard to
incoporate changes from one to another. This is unfortunate and it means
that the BF:V team has had a lot of work to do to implement all the
patch features.

I know they are well aware of the current BF:V problems and are working
to fix them. And believe it or not, EA actually does care about the
feedback you send. They may not be the best at telling you they care,
but they do care about your feedback. They have very talented people
reading forums and email, and keeping up to date with the community is
an important goal.

For those of you wondering why the BF1942 Linux server is still at RC2:
I'm deep into Battlefield 2's development and with that in mind the need
for a BF1942-Linux update hasn't seemed a top priority. If I spend my
time improving the BF1942 server, we miss out on the BF2 server.

// Andreas

-----Original Message-----
From: Martin Steiger [mailto:martin at steigi.com] 
Sent: den 20 maj 2004 23:52
To: bf1942 at icculus.org
Subject: [bf1942] OT: Communication with and from DICE Canada

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... ;)