Seizing the initiative

[Renko]

Hi everyone
Just to advise I’ve decided to withdraw from all Warlord official forums and Facebook groups. The reason being that I have been banned or threatened with bans from the Warlord Admins because I have been critical of some of their products, particularly the quality of playtesting and proofreading on SPQR and Cruel Seas, both of which were released and then needed major FAQs immediately. The actual wording being “Continued trolling across all groups. Continued breaching of the rules will result in blanket banning across all groups/pages and denial of entry to any newly formed groups”. So basically, any further comments I make on their forums or groups there is a sword hanging over me, and I have to toe the line or else. I’m not prepared to do that. Companies should be open to criticism where it is justified and should be mature enough to accept when they make mistakes and correct them, not try to shut down criticism. Noone is perfect and no rules set will survive contact with the scrutiny of public release, but there has been a clear pattern recently of lack of quality control.
To be clear I like Warlord. Every staff member I have met has been polite and helpful, and they do some great “stuff”. The problems seem to relate to whoever is running the web \ Admin role who remain anonymous and therefore unaccountable. This does not effect the facebook pages I run, specifically the Blood Red Skies Ready Room and the sister site The Cruel Seas Dock Office, which are and will always remain independent and supportive of the games.
Cheers

[Gordon]

That is a shame, Renko.
Companies should be open to fair criticism. I do not have Cruel Seas so I cannot comment on that but I do agree that SPQR could have been better playtested and proofread.
Good luck with your dice…

[Discoqing]

I agree, better playtested would’ve been good – I guess they maybe have used the release as a kind of playtest?

Sad to see you drop out

[Phil Barber]

Seems to be a sad and somewhat counter-productive situation really. I’m still painting troops for SPQR, so haven’t played the game yet and, consequently can’t comment on how they play, but there are areas of the rules that have left me scratching my head a little in the reading, but I don’t know if that is a problem with the rule writing or just me being dense! If criticism is constructive then surely, in the longer term, we all benefit because if glitches are identified and subsequently ironed out, then the game will be better for all of us who play. Is there any possibility of you and the Warlord tech people finding some sort of compromise, so that you can continue to use your experience of game play for the benefit of the rest of us?

[Author]

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