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Wings Over Atreia: The anti-rant
Admit it: Whether it is born of a desire to vindicate yourself using the opinions of another or because you just sharpened your claws and are eager to rip said opinions to shreds, sometimes you just love to read a juicy rant. Love them or leave them, we all have opinions and tend toward sharing them, from superstitions to sports to Aion. What make rants so delectably special are the passion and power behind them. Unfortunately, this is not a rant. In fact, this week's Wings Over Atreia is going to be an anti-rant. No, that does not mean I will rant against rants because I am opposed to them (that would still be a rant, not to mention they can be cathartic at times); rather, this will be the opposite of a rant. Yes folks, I am going to do something radical! Trolls, cover your eyes: I am going to give a compliment. And not just any compliment -- I am going to give praise to NCsoft's customer service! *gasp* What confluence of events in Aion brought me to this? Take a peek past the cut to see for yourself.
Massively's Community Detective, Issue #7: Star Wars Galaxies
Community Detective is back after a week off and looking forward to bringing you news you can use when evaluating MMORPG communities and customer service. This week, I take a look at our third Sony Online Entertainment title, the venerable sci-fi sandbox known as Star Wars Galaxies. While SOE gets a lot of hate in the gamer community (much of it, ironically, for the same SWG that we're going to examine today), several of its titles provide some of the best customer service in the business, and SWG is no exception. Similarly, the game's community features an unusually high number of helpful people, particularly on the Starsider server. Follow along after the cut to see what we found.
Massively's Community Detective, Issue #6: Lord of the Rings Online
If you've been playing MMORPGs for any length of time, or you keep up with the latest happenings around the industry, you're probably familiar with Lord of the Rings Online's Landroval server. In addition to being the "unofficial" roleplay server for Turbine's Tolkien-based MMORPG, Landroval is consistently mentioned as one of the finest communities in online gaming. Whether it be in forum discussions on various gaming websites, chats with gaming buddies, or even internal discussions here at Massively, Landroval is almost always referenced when someone asks about a friendly server that offers a dense and mature population. For this week's issue of Community Detective, we decided to put Landroval to the test. While the community lived up to its billing, we did encounter some curious inconsistencies with regard to Turbine's customer service. Head past the cut for our findings and impressions.
Massively's Community Detective, Issue #5: Vanguard - Saga of Heroes
Much has been written around the MMO blogosphere regarding SOE's Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. From its troubled beginnings as a not-quite-ready-for-launch title, to fledgling Sigil Games Online's financial difficulties, to lead designer Brad McQuaid's well-publicized struggles with management and personal issues, the spiritual successor to EverQuest has always had a bit of a dark cloud hovering over its head. Happily, a fun game remains despite all the problems, and the title's snake-bit tendencies don't seem to have affected either its community or its customer service. Fly past the cut (on your rented pegasus) for more.
