Hope Mario don't get mad at me for posting this, but here was his response to my letter:
"I appreciate your polite and cohesive feedback. (Unfortunately some of your fellow fans of AH did not make the case quite as well and not without insulting us.)
Let me explain it this way --- we’ve always, as far as I recall, had to make some sort of cut off, or popular games from years ago with an active mod and support community would have to be included and the list would simply be unmanageable. This is not a WBIII vs. AH popularity contest or bias. The simple fact is that right now WBIII did release a retail version through Simon & Schuster in 2002 and AH, while well supported by the developer through patches, did not. There are hundreds of games out there that received significant patches, were repackaged by the publisher, and so on, all of which would have to be featured as choices, if we were not to draw the line somewhere. We are currently re-evaluating our entire list and are doing our best to make sure the standards are consistent across all games AND that we do a better job more clearly articulating why some games made the list while others did not. Perhaps this is a good topic to take to our forums and make your case there as well, explaining how well supported the game is and what an excellent muti-player online flight sim it is (and we agree with the assessment). It’s just hard to consider a game released in a totally different year for a best of the year award, when that game was not even published in that same year, and opens up a ton of issues and endless other games that we would have to add were our standards something along the lines of “any game patched or modified in the year of the award” or even “any game significantly patched and approved in that year” (which would, of course also places us in a highly subjective position (one we don’t want to be in).
If you could communicate to your audience and peer group that we are not singling out Aces High but that we made a simple error in including the game in the first place, I would much appreciate it."
Mario Kroll
CEO, Publisher, and
VP of Marketing and Business Development
The Wargamer Network
http://www.wargamer.comhttp://www.piestactics.comhttp://www.10-david.comhttp://www.ammocrate.comhttp://www.janeshangar.comI replied back and told him that HTC was offering a CD, I bought mine during the 2002 year (not sure if they are still selling them, though), so that in itself might bring AH back into the nominees' list. I noticed that he took the time to point out that this is not an AH versus WBIII war, which I appreciated. But to be fair, marketing the same old game via retail box when the same thing is available via Internet download (for free too) should not qualify said sim for the poll. This is what iEn has done, take what was available via free download and box it up and call it "NEW". I disagree with Mario's justification for not including AH in the poll, but that is his perogative.
Just because it is not included in the poll doesn't mean squat to me in the end. I'll still be here, still having fun, and still laughing when I think about the folks who buy into that other sim and leave frustrated from the lack of customer support alone.
