Found a link to Blizzard's forums which led to this:

Sure to be removed quickly, because I don't recall a Blizzard employee that has ever referenced another MMORPG on their forums before. They corporately maintain some kind of fog-of-war over that stuff.

It's perfectly sane and reasonable of course, you can't expect people to play their own game much, if at all, but they've got an interest in these kind of games so there has to be an outlet in competing products. There's a bunch of other normal reasons, too many to list really.

Much of the fanboi trash talk seems so silly when (during the trade-shows especially) it's probably usual for the devs, CMs and employeees of these companies to sit down together over coffee to discuss what they have in common. Many of them have worked together in the past, the talent is related and interwoven this way. You can catch competing devs smiling at each other on discussion panels and they're honest smiles at that.

I've always liked Eyonix, even back when Warlocks saw no love and as the Warlock CM rep he was too busy enjoying his Mage. =P

I found the link for this on the AoC forums in a thread with the sensationalist topic "Even Blizzard employees play AOC", right underneath "AoC is the Ralph Nader of MMOs" and right above "Is Funcom Gutlessly Caving In To The Prudes..?" which just goes to prove that regardless of any differences in the games themselves, the general forums are exactly the same.

I'm providing these gems of insight to any company that wants to clean up their Customer Service. This is fairly specific to games, MMORPGs in particular.

This is meant as a simple guideline with emphasis on two key issues: Customer Perspectives & Solving Problems.

The mantra of this guide is Keep it Simple or to put it another way: Solve it more, deal with it less. The best customer service is misdirection. It sounds like a paradox, but it's true. To players experiencing problems, they should feel as though it's being worked on, to everyone else your customer service should be invisible. They should feel like problems are fixed mysteriously and magically.

Here are the points:

• Do NOT have Forums. It's drama you don't need. Focus your game on your design. If you want player feedback, ask for it via forms or hire perceptive people to follow the fansites.
• Provide strong community features in-game. This is to replace the server forums. Give them places to congregate and socialize, activities that build server communities. Lists of progression and otherwise. Cooperative content as well as the usual competitive features. Maybe even have in-game Community Managers.
• Do NOT have GMs. Unless you plan on them being actual Game Masters that control monsters and put the smackdown on griefers and exploiters. Otherwise, your GMs will just be magnets for abuse. Problems are better reported and forgotten than dwelling on them while waiting for a GM petition queue.
• Collect player reports. Instead of GM petitions. Sift them automatically if you can.
• Give automated feedback. It's just like gameplay, when you do something it should make a sound, have a visual clue and / or explanation. Player reports should be treated the exact same way, it's reassuring. If they're reporting a known bug, give an ETA on its fix, or point to a list of workarounds.
• Make a black hole. For incomprehensible or pointless player reports. Don't dwell on what cannot be understood. Feedback it as if it was accepted however.
• Do NOT discuss balancing issues. Not unless they're a glaring fix that's obvious. Let the theorycrafting players sort it out for themselves, that's what they like to do anyway. Meanwhile it will give those busybodies less control over your game and the rest of your players (the less vocal majority) will be happier with their characters by not being informed as much about who is overpowered and who isn't.
• Separate bug fixes from patch notes. Make your patch notes about content-only, no matter how small. This will allow players to celebrate the content without distraction. It will also reduce the "introduced more bugs than fixes" perceptions. Lists of fixed bugs should go elsewhere, but don't call them patch notes.
• Make a complete bug and issues list. Detail it thoroughly, categorized and catalogued. The point here isn't full disclosure, it's about flooding the information so it's too long and boring to read. This should result in less drama, although occasionally some nerd will be as thorough as you, but these obsessive geeks cannot be avoided anyway.
• Keep quiet on embarrassing bugs. At least until you fix them. The drama doesn't help the game or the players. Do this very selectively, only on the most extreme cases like say um, gender affects animation attack speed. =P
• Erase all mention of fixed bugs. List them as fixed once, then about a week later, obliterate them. No sense dwelling on the past, it's just another distraction from the game itself.

The idea here is to streamline the process, allow you to fix your issues while ignoring any drama from the players over the bugs. Ignoring and diffusing drama is key! It's not helpful to anyone, least of all the players themselves.

While following this guide, you may be accused of using draconian measures, but the truth is these are modern solutions. You cannot afford to cater to every little perceived need, do not handhold and babysite your players, it's just a waste of resources that could be better spent on your game.

To Players: This is a tongue-in-cheek guide.
To MMORPG developers and publishers: No, it isn't.

I've just made a small update to the MMOROG comments->forums bridge, enabling a template theme that matches my blog better, although it still needs more tweaking.

Overall, my forums site will still use the LeftHandPath theme, but I'll work on making appropriate themes for all of the sections supporting my other sites. This is all part of my attempt to consolidate forums for the numerous sites I update.

I've just installed a new comment system for MMOROG, using a Wordpress <--> MyBB bridge.

The plan is to migrate comments over to my forums @ Left Hand Path. I'm hoping this will put a stop to comment spam (I weed through it daily here) and reduce trolling, by requiring registration on the forums for commenting. It should also let me integrate some cross-traffic between my sites via centralized forums.

For the moment, old posts will remain on the old Wordpress comment system. I may change that later, but there are certain posts where I do not wish to disrupt conversations in place.

This change may bork pingbacks and trackbacks, but honestly the value of those has degraded significantly from spam and link farming exploits. I'm not sure if RSS will be affected, but I'm far more supportive of web-browsers than feed readers anyway.

Eventually I'll make a matching theme and try to autodetect visitors via MMOROG so the look and feel stays consistent.

I've setup a new forums site to support both our current Gloomy Bears WoW guild and our planned Age of Conan guild: Left Hand Path.

Age of Conan is still over 6 months away and I've never really setup a guild site in anticipation of a game before, but it feels right to do so at this time because of the direction changes we have planned. We are going to attempt a higher level of guild cooperation and community than before and AoC sounds like the right place to do it. We're also planning a little more roleplay in our experience than previously, although I doubt we'll become hardcore RPers it should be fun to have the options to interact that way.

We still have a fair bit to accomplish in WoW though, so I don't want to project any feelings of abandoning our guild there. In fact, adding guild forums to support us the Gloomy Bears should be a benefit too. All current guild members should sign up on the new site.