Let me start by saying I am long time player of this game. Some might say I am glutened for punishment for supporting such a game for such a long time, 7 years now. I say that I was opptimistic, now after years of life experiance, one deployment, and a bit of real life lessons that has turned me into a bit of a realist.
WWII Online (WWIIOL), has been around sense June 6 2001, it was a very huge scope for the time. A attempt to cover the untold story of the Battle of France in May of 1940. When I first read about it in 2000 in a gaming magazine I was to say the least, VERY impressed. But after the games dismal release and troubled first year, I still maintained hope. Now after 7 years the game has gone from being about the battle of France in 1940, to fighting with most of the wars equipment from 1940-44. This leads to some real balanceing issues... how do you balance a war that in nature, is not balanced.
Sometime ago, the game went through a really large change. It went from being WWII Online, to being called Battleground Europe. With this change, came the balancing issues. First it was imbalanced for the allies. It was bad, the allies couldnt win a map, they didnt have the equipment, the people or the morale to do it. So their player run High Command, decided to walk out. They managed to get each of their squads, that they respectively lead, or are part of. To walk out. Leaving less than one third of the ussual allied playerbase available for the game. This imidiately managed to get the attention of the senior producer DOC aka Geoffry. At first the game was kept in balance by historical facts. But after the Battleground Europe change over and the balancing issues that turned on the allies. The RATS decided to fix the balancing issues by "taxing" the Axis (german) forces by cutting down on the numbers of armored vehicles and forcing several of the more experianced German High Command (OKW) officers over to the allied side to teach and lead the allied forces. They did a great job at first, it was a close first few campaigns, they went mainly in favor in the allies. But things didnt stop there. Much asked for Tables of Equipment, and brigade movement systems. The game took on a new face. This went REALLY baddly for the Axis forces. The TO&Es were really imbalanced towards the allies. And stayed this way for sometime. Till player numbers started to hit a whole new low for the game... dropping from the steady, 1500 players to less than 500 online at any given time. This was often brought up to the RATs in a polite and sometimes impolite manner. The situation kept getting worse. With Axis player numbers down, the playerbase morale at a whole new low. The RATs start to turn on themselves.. DOC managed to get the lead aircraft modeler to walk out. DOC didnt stop there. He has managed to get several interns and other programmers to step down or just quit. He is found more often on the games forums belittling players, and giving cryptic answers to legitiment questions. Then deleting what he finds as offensive posts, and changing his posts so that he appears to be the innocent one. I have also talked to people inside the RATs office who have stated that is not to uncommon for DOC to get mad at players in the forums and take it out in intra office emails with co-workers.
At first I thought the game was modeled incorrectly, then I started doing some research. I found out alot of what I thought I knew was wrong. But then I also found some of my practical experiance from the US Army, showed me that some minor things are grossly missmodeled. But when I bring these problems up, there is no legitement answers, just double talk and flamings by the lead RAT DOC. I found most of the balance and game issues is due to DOC. He has been the lead source of the problems in game. He has been ignorant, beligerant, and just rude, in dealing with the playerbase. Which is bad for buisness and just bad practice.
So this is my begining to my campaign to have the now ingame axis playerbase to begin a walk out till DOC is removed from the senior producer position.
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