Open letter to Lack, Twill and Andy

Dear Lack, Twill and Andy
I tried to send you a private PM yesterday but you ignored it so I'm turning to the next place-here.
Let me start by saying that I love Conquer Club. I enjoy playing most of the maps, love seeing what the foundry is going to turn out next and jumping in for 3-4 games every time a new map comes out. I enjoy the G1 forums particuarly those times when I can't keep up with the posts because there are so many coming at once. I enjoy running tournaments and meeting people from all over the world.
That being said, I'm very disappointed in the things that have happened over the past week. Its not even so much the things that have happened. Servers crash, I think everyone understands that. Lawsuits can cause changes and I think that everyone who has a reasonable perspective can understand that as well. The thing that has bothered me though is the lack of communication on where we're going from here.
We don't have a CC forum for G1 (as well as numerous other forums such as whatever you're calling Off Topic these days) which sucks and takes at least half my enjoyment from the site. Probably more. Worse than that though, there has been absolutely no word from anyone on how long this is going to continue. If you don't know you need to let us know that and let us know that you're at least working on it. From what I can see you're not.
The handling of the Classic and Middle Earth maps has been a fiasco. I totally understand that you needed to pull down the existing maps and that you threw up something temporary in the meantime. There needed to be an announcement thread on this. Yes there was something on the home page. However taking every discussion that was started on this and throwing it into one unmanageable poorly named thread in the Q&A subforum was not a good idea. There was enough speculating and accusations going on in there that there needed to be a definative thread about why this happened and where CC is going from here that people could be pointed to. Twill, I know you posted a couple times in there but lets be honest, those posts are now lost under the tide of unhappy customers that are coming in.
To date there has been no confirmation as to why the maps had to be taken down because of actions by Hasbro. That's certainly the rumor and expectation of the CC community but none of the Admin staff have confirmed it and one of you needs to either confirm it or correct that impression.
The Map Foundry has been consistently told that they're going to have to make new maps but that they can't make new maps because nobody knows what the parameters are going to be. This needs to be cleared up.
The focus has been on the Classic Map but the Middle Earth/Centerscape map needs to be addressed too. It is much less clear as to why this has been taken down although the speculation is that its too similar to Hasbro's LOTR risk version. There is no clear ideas as to what can and can't be done to fix/replace the current lucky charms version.
The idea yesterday to put a vote up for an hour as to which of the two "classic" maps to go with was a joke. Going with both of them was the right decision in the end but the idea that we're going to put a poll up for an hour, and an hour when many people aren't around but are working or in class or where ever was a pretty poor decision.
So here's what I'm asking for.
I would like to see you have a locked thread in the announcements forum that one of you will update daily telling us what's going on and what we can expect moving forward. I'd like to know how long we're looking at for a forum return (days, weeks, months, never?)
I'd like to know the official reason that the Classic and Middle Earth maps were removed. This may be a confirmation of the general wisdom and may not be.
I'd like to know what the process going forward for Classic and Middle Earth is.
that's fairly simple and, to my mind at least, not unreasonable.
People are passionate about things they care about and only want to make it better. Most of us want to see CC succeed and are reasonable folks so stop hiding from us and talk to us. You've already cost the CC community two of its best members (RJbeals and Optimus Prime)and if you think that quality people like that are easily replaced you're sadly mistaken.
Sincerely
Bryan Ellis
aka barterer2002
I tried to send you a private PM yesterday but you ignored it so I'm turning to the next place-here.
Let me start by saying that I love Conquer Club. I enjoy playing most of the maps, love seeing what the foundry is going to turn out next and jumping in for 3-4 games every time a new map comes out. I enjoy the G1 forums particuarly those times when I can't keep up with the posts because there are so many coming at once. I enjoy running tournaments and meeting people from all over the world.
That being said, I'm very disappointed in the things that have happened over the past week. Its not even so much the things that have happened. Servers crash, I think everyone understands that. Lawsuits can cause changes and I think that everyone who has a reasonable perspective can understand that as well. The thing that has bothered me though is the lack of communication on where we're going from here.
We don't have a CC forum for G1 (as well as numerous other forums such as whatever you're calling Off Topic these days) which sucks and takes at least half my enjoyment from the site. Probably more. Worse than that though, there has been absolutely no word from anyone on how long this is going to continue. If you don't know you need to let us know that and let us know that you're at least working on it. From what I can see you're not.
The handling of the Classic and Middle Earth maps has been a fiasco. I totally understand that you needed to pull down the existing maps and that you threw up something temporary in the meantime. There needed to be an announcement thread on this. Yes there was something on the home page. However taking every discussion that was started on this and throwing it into one unmanageable poorly named thread in the Q&A subforum was not a good idea. There was enough speculating and accusations going on in there that there needed to be a definative thread about why this happened and where CC is going from here that people could be pointed to. Twill, I know you posted a couple times in there but lets be honest, those posts are now lost under the tide of unhappy customers that are coming in.
To date there has been no confirmation as to why the maps had to be taken down because of actions by Hasbro. That's certainly the rumor and expectation of the CC community but none of the Admin staff have confirmed it and one of you needs to either confirm it or correct that impression.
The Map Foundry has been consistently told that they're going to have to make new maps but that they can't make new maps because nobody knows what the parameters are going to be. This needs to be cleared up.
The focus has been on the Classic Map but the Middle Earth/Centerscape map needs to be addressed too. It is much less clear as to why this has been taken down although the speculation is that its too similar to Hasbro's LOTR risk version. There is no clear ideas as to what can and can't be done to fix/replace the current lucky charms version.
The idea yesterday to put a vote up for an hour as to which of the two "classic" maps to go with was a joke. Going with both of them was the right decision in the end but the idea that we're going to put a poll up for an hour, and an hour when many people aren't around but are working or in class or where ever was a pretty poor decision.
So here's what I'm asking for.
I would like to see you have a locked thread in the announcements forum that one of you will update daily telling us what's going on and what we can expect moving forward. I'd like to know how long we're looking at for a forum return (days, weeks, months, never?)
I'd like to know the official reason that the Classic and Middle Earth maps were removed. This may be a confirmation of the general wisdom and may not be.
I'd like to know what the process going forward for Classic and Middle Earth is.
that's fairly simple and, to my mind at least, not unreasonable.
People are passionate about things they care about and only want to make it better. Most of us want to see CC succeed and are reasonable folks so stop hiding from us and talk to us. You've already cost the CC community two of its best members (RJbeals and Optimus Prime)and if you think that quality people like that are easily replaced you're sadly mistaken.
Sincerely
Bryan Ellis
aka barterer2002