And in that vein, I'd really like to understand where Bree's coming from and whether or not there is something that I can personally do to help make that right.
I figured this would be a place for me to chime in. I'm Eliot Lefebvre, the author of A Mild-Mannered Reporter and Bree's fellow longtime City of Heroes fan. Also the other person who was really pushing for us to cover as much as possible about the Save CoH movement.
Without talking a whole lot about behind-the-scenes stuff, let me just open off by saying that both Bree and I kicked into overdrive on the movement. If we could figure out a way to cover something being done by the community, there were no questions asked. I was collecting every bit of information I could regarding the movement, I read these boards every day (I tend to lurk), and I was certainly using my column as a platform to discuss what was going on. This having been said, I'm not Bree; it's possible she felt an annoyance I didn't somewhere along the line, or that there are tips/feedback/whatever that I've just forgotten about in the interim.
Bree's comment has less to do with the Save CoH movement itself and more with what led up to the movement. Specifically, the fact that we had
always given CoH a lot of coverage, due in no small part to the fact that we're both fans. It was after the horrible news hit that all of that coverage started getting noticed by the community, and that was when we started getting swarmed by tips about various activities around Save CoH and the like.
Which was great. The tips we got, by and large, were helpful and positive. But we also got a few emails asking, for example, if we were
aware the movement existed. After we'd been running columns and news pieces about it. Or asking if we had seen something an hour after we posted a story about that exact same topic.
Personally, I never mind getting a tip about something I haven't heard before. But sometimes I think people are a bit too quick to jump the gun and send in a tip when we're already aware of what's going on. At times, certain tipsters seemed to just know that Massively liked Save CoH and didn't bother to actually look at what we had already done to cover the movement and support saving the game from shutdown.
That was on the irritating side. It wasn't volume, nor was it urgency, nor was it passion. It was a case where someone wanted our coverage but didn't want to see if, in fact, we had already provided the coverage of our own volition.
Not to mention it's impossible to know a publication is going to be 'your friend' until they do something to help you, unless you're psychic.
Well, at the time that the shutdown was announced, I had been writing A Mild-Mannered Reporter for nearly three years, and Bree and I had both stated our unabashed adoration for the game so many times that I can't even remember how often it happened. So while it might not have been an entirely certain thing, with a regular column devoted to the game, odds were high.