Seems a bit odd for this to be my first post, but I joined in hopes of making myself useful so here I am. If this needs moving or deleting I'm sorry for the inconvenience.
Before I begin you should read this if you haven't:
http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,4944.0.htmlI'm looking forward to tomorrow's Virtue rally, and have been quietly joining and observing some of the protests in Atlas Park all week. That in mind I wanted to share a few of my observations and some thoughts about problems we're likely to experience.
As the community's efforts to save CoH have gotten more publicity they've also, to no one's surprise, caught the attention of trolls, both in and out of game. I don't doubt that there will be trolls in Atlas Park on Saturday, there were some tonight, and a more organized event of this nature will attract more. I'm sure everyone has also seen arguments in various channels about the reasoning behind NCsoft's actions, whether there's hope for the game, what our goals ought to be, even which emote sends the right message for the protest...
Tomorrow especially, we need to respond to these issues in a positive, mature, and brief fashion. With any luck we'll have the eye of the media on us, and it's important that we show the community at it's best even though we're all on edge. Don't feed the trolls. I've seen lots of divisive jabs thrown to try and start arguments among the protestors. We can't let that get to us. We don't need to get bogged down in arguments, we need to show a unified front.
I suppose my point is that there is likely to be a negative element at the rally, and we need to respond to that like heroes. Don't resort to troll-like tactics to fight trolls, it won't work, it'll just make us look bad.
Also, it's worth repeating that badmouthing NCsoft is just as likely to hurt us as help us at this point. I understand the sentiment, but they hold the cards right now. Besides, whatever the future brings for us as a community, it can benefit us to be on their good side no matter how we feel about the situation.