As a business person myself, I will never understand your rationale on this. In my opinion, banning someone is a deed akin to firing an employee. See, I always have that option...always. The option I will not always have is the opportunity to influence them to see things how the company sees them Skuzzy. Influencing in this case is simply providing some answer or a reason for not giving an answer. That isn't an absurd request. But answering curtly or purposely avoiding isn't really warning anyone. People ask questions because they care. If they didn't care they wouldn't ask at all nor would they reply in opposition.
You guys are the boss. You guys have all the "wins". If you believe anyone of us don't know you have that authority, you're underestimating all of us dweebs who have united to play this great game. But authority and influence are not the same. No one that I saw attempted to leverage their monthly subscription to facilitate change but that's how it appears people were dealt with.
Do any of us really deserve an answer about a decision HTC made about the game we all love so dearly that we can never stay gone for long? Probably not. But refusing to see that people's continued questioning of a decision is about their passion for the game, not their passion to be disruptive.
I hope the events of late have not ruined players passion for the game.
A customer is not an employee. A customer is my boss. Part of my responsibility makes the customer my boss. That is how I look at it.
When the boss decides he is going to be disruptive, and you ask him to please stop, and he does not, then you are left with little choice. Then when the boss seeks out others to join him in his disruptive binge, it has to be stopped.
This is not about people asking questions. This about people being disruptive to the entire community. Much like someone ranting and raving in a restaurant. Until you take care of that disruption, you cannot deal with anything else. If you do not take care of it, others will join in.
It is a lot easier to have a discussion when everyone is acting with a modicum of respect. That is all we have been asking for. I am really sorry there was no other way to deal with this mess, but we were given no other choice.
What are you calling disruptive? I admit I do not scour every thread on the BBS, but are we talking about avatar protests about the 12 hour rule? And what does our subscription grant us when we want a discussion about an aspect of the game we're not happy with?
I am not going to get into the details of private dealings with members of the community. Please respect that.
Just think about this. Do you really think we enjoy doing these things? It was the last thing we wanted to do.
We are always open to rational, respectful communications. What has happened in the last week, or so, was anything but that. The rationalization used was, "Well, if HiTech had only responded to us.." There is no rationalizing bad behavior. Not at all.
It went from bad to worse and there seemed to be nothing we could do about it because the instigators refused to listen to any voice of reason. They were clinging to an untenable position and then they drug others into it. It was looking more like a plague or cancer than anything else.
Of course, there are those who would say, "you could have stopped it had you only made the change". Guess what? A business cannot survive by making decisions based on threats.
