Letter from the Producer, XXVIII (05/28/2012)

[Malakhim]

So word on the rumor mill(ie this thread) is that they're moving up the trailer(which could be nothing huge anyway) is being moved to August? That's a bloody brilliant(if not expected) move, and it shows that marketing knows what they're doing(and that they're smarter than most of you). For one thing, this move(and this letter) show that while this community might "help" with feedback in certain fine-tuning, it still isn't anywhere near big enough to have a large impact, and that's exactly what SE is going for.

A quick Google search will show you how many people have been in attendance to e3 over the past few years, and while it did increase over last year, it's pretty much flat lining around 45k attendance given the nature of the attendees, which is a relatively static number of industry professionals, analysts, investors, etc. SE probably isn't worried about all these suits because fuck it, they're SE and they've already mentioned previously that they ain't worried about that sort of thing.

Meanwhile over in Europa, Gamescom is only in it's FOURTH year(2009 -2012), and it has already seen a whopping 275 THOUSAND attendance. The audience also has a key element that e3 has dismissed: the gamers and fans. You aren't going to see non-professionals at e3, and that means that at Gamesom, there are actual THRONGS of people and fans(your target audience) PLAYING YOUR GAME.

There's still a large portion of gamers that don't get their information online or through the lodestone. I have people in my Linkshell that don't even know what the Lodestone even is. Hell, we see repeat threads on topics all the time here, so some people clearly aren't reading. Going to a gaming con and hearing a lot of buzz about certain things on the show floor can attract a much larger following. Besides, most major NA gaming outlets are sending people to Köln for Gamescom anyway. Give the site and online info for the people who know how to find it, and make it really visible at Gamescom like they did originally in 2009.

That ends speculation corner!

On to the actual poll results. Well I can say that I'm pretty cool with 'em, given that most of the responses with the biggest numbers were the ones that I selected in my version, so hooray to that. Given the scramble that the devs are going through what with gaming con season coming up, I think I can easily forgive them one more week for the other results.

I also think it's important to remember a little factoid(that admittedly most people here already knew) about how they've essentially split the dev team for the current patches we've been getting(which have been pretty sizeable) AND working on 2.0(which is even bigger somehow...). This right here is pretty damn impressive for any company at all, and I can't wait to see what we'll get once these two forces combine post 1.23 completion and 2.0 release.