Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 08 April 2014 - 02:10 PM, said:
The tracker is perfect for you then. You can keep up with info from the tweets without ever having to sign up. While we appreciate your concern that Twitter may be viewed as unprofessional, you can rest assured that many industry leaders in video games, software, technology and entertainment have their own Twitter accounts and use them on a regular basis for personal, professional and marketing purposes. We hope you don't mind if we continue to evolve and utilize the various forms of Social Media at our disposal to help us reach a wider audience and interact with players who might otherwise not regard forums as a preferable system of Community interaction. Thanks for your understanding.
It's not so much the need to sign up (I don't want to, but would be fine doing it) or the fact that it's "unprofessional;" (again, almost every major corporation has a twitter account) but rather the fact that Twitter is an awful way to communicate ideas with any degree of nuance.
So it's fine that MWO has a twitter. I actually think it's great. A fantastic twitter post would be, "MWO tournament this weekend, sign up today!" (short url) #MWO #mehwarrior." Twitter, however, is not a good place to post patch notes that are pages long, discuss why certain chassis are too good or not good enough, why it's important for the overall health of the game that SRMs get fixed, etc. Yet all those discussions have moved from the forum to twitter. Please tell me you understand the difference between "VTR getting -20% torso twist this patch #mwo" and a three paragraph post that lists what the change is, why it was done, and what the intended goal of the change is.
The other big problem with twitter is that it is essentially a unidirectional channel of communication. If I'm trying to explain why this game will never be healthy without functioning SRMs, I need to explain why the long range meta is prevalent and good, why SRMs are bad, why other close range weapons alone aren't enough to bring close-range fighting up to scratch vs sniping, and more. It is impossible to have a good dialogue about complicated systems on Twitter.
As an addendum to the previous: while I did say that twitter is not inherently unprofessional, I don't feel that the way it is being used now is terribly professional. Russ and Bryan have both been known to block and ignore anyone who disagrees with them, even if it is in a polite, rational manner. That's not good for the long-term health of the game. It shows that they've left for twitter not because they feel it's a better way to reach more people, but because it lets them broadcast without having to hear any replies that they don't like. The fact that they seem unwilling to listen to anyone who has even a fleeting negative opinion is troubling, and suggests that all the rational discourse in the world means nothing to them, and the game will go where they want it, the rest of us be darned.
So if you have any ability at all to get Paul, Bryan, and Russ back on the forums, please do it. Post a couple paragraphs every week, more if they can- and then link it on twitter. Twitter can be incredibly useful, but what it's being used for now is far from the best way to utilize it, and the fact that it is being leveraged at the expense of a system that would be better suited to the form of communication they're trying to use is frustrating.
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