I hate to be the naysayer here, but in terms of format and interview technique thumbs up Pinky.
In terms of realism of players feeling and general community feeling I think it is wildly wrong. I would not call what the community is in general "excited". imho and what I have experienced in game the proper term would be "angry or disappointed" in a fair share of cases. I also feel that the congratulations on improved communication is indeed unwarranted. Personally myself and a lot of acquaintances feel we are being fed more fluff information and propaganda and seeing it called communication. I have seen
MA ask us what we wanted but once again, only imho, and those of my friends, we have seen none of it implemented with the exception windowed mode. In fact we have seen things we expressly asked NOT to be implemented come to being.
The community vehemently expressed their opinion about amps and we received no response and it was implemented, a large portion of the community vehemently expressed their disapproval of 100% item loots in a number of threads on this forum in polls and replies and it happened anyway.
I give
MA full credit for the new interface. Overall it is a good change but I do think it needs some major fine tuning. I do realize this is normal for such a major change.
You stated in your interview that
MA has "promised" to change the team system back. I have seen no such promise. All I saw was them asking us for suggestions on how to make it better and to my knowledge
MA has published no official response. If they have then I stand corrected and apologize.
Don't get me wrong, I love
EU. If I did not I would not be here trying to give constructive input. I also would not be depositing. I fully realize the mammoth scope of this project and that it is going to have some flaws. I think it is important to say though that the questions seemed more of a way to throw some meagerly deserved praise to
MA. I did not see ONE thing in that interview that addressed any of the obvious and again imho rampant dissatisfaction that exists and is very obvious.
Please do not think this is meant to be disparaging or negative towards you. You did a great job. It just seems that everyone who speaks to Marco is afraid to talk about anything that might anger him. Personally I would like to see more courage in the interviews with questions that resemble the following in terms of sentiment, honesty, and community representation:
"Marco, a fair number of community members are displeased with
MA's performance and feel they have been abandoned or not heard. Is
MA aware of this and do you have any plans whatsoever to put players minds at ease?"
"Marco, a fair number of players feel they get unsatisfactory responses from support and find that support often contradicts themselves. Has
MA considered a system for users to rate their satisfaction with the support they received and a way to hold support responsible for customer satisfaction?"
"Marco, there is a relatively significant group of players who feel they are customers and not just players or community members and feel that
MA should be held fiscally responsible for monetary losses that are caused by system malfunctions. Support continuously refuses to reimburse for losses that are obviously caused by system malfunctions. Are there any plans to change this?"
I don't know if these are good questions or not. I am not a journalist nor do I consider myself extremely well spoken. I do consider these questions realistic, to the point, and representative of the users who feel they are constantly left out in the cold because all they see are questions like the following:
(The following are somewhat exaggerated fictitious examples only and not real quotes)
"Marco, good job, how is
MA going to do an even better job?"
or
"Marco, everyone thinks
MA is doing a great job what great new feature is coming next?" (Ignorant of all the previously implemented features that do not work properly or have been left undeveloped and the players who are unsatisfied).
Personally I would like some answers to some hard hitting, butt burning questions, that aren't fluffy and wrapped in a nice bow. This does not mean disrespectful, or bashing ,this just means unbiased and more accurately representative of a balanced portion of the community and not necessarily just the views of the interviewer, or just the happy people.
Imho a big portion of journalistic integrity is trying to ask things and obtain facts that are representative of a diverse slice of the public rather than things that are easy to ask or safe to ask. Mike Wallace made a career of asking hard hitting questions that in a lot of cases may very well have endangered his life. I just feel that to some degree this forum censors people who post things that may mar to MAs image to some degree. I do not condone bashing but I do think that it is time that we are able to express our concerns in a clear honest way to
MA without fear of censorship or banning. I also do not think it is unreasonable to expect clear concise answers to the hard hitting questions either. Obviously there is proprietary information that they can not and will not divulge and I would never expect them to. But come on, I think at times the answers and the fluff they are wrapped in does get a bit ridiculous.
Just some thoughts. I am sure I will get flamed badly for this so be my guest.
Last thing I would like to say is:
+rep to Pinky I really do think you did an excellent job. I certainly could not have produced such a well written article.