Yes I know the name, she's another forum dweller. Someone that excels at having the ear of the developer doesn't make them automatically right about everything sort like everyone's favorite forum dweller "GoldenGirl" that being the next person that comes to my mind. I still look forward to heroes and villains regardless.
Worked with them in what way? Open beta and closed beta testing? Something more than that? How do you really know? I'm sure this will be taken badly but CoX has had it's fair share of forum gods that are able to convince you of anything. Really good writers and practiced at debating anyone can look like they know more than they really do. It's the internet after all
Favoritism is bad and often puts someone's word higher than it actually should be. But you probably know that.
I actually agree with you here: taking people's word without any good reason to do so can be and has often been dangerous. It comes down to credibility: I believe I was able to build credibility with people in a number of ways. By showing my work on analyses rather than just conclusions (which allowed people to spot errors and correct them). By sharing as much information as I could that I was privy to, which allowed others to confirm my claims in a variety of ways. And although I never asked them to do it, sometimes the devs took it upon themselves to correct misinformation others claimed about me in regards to my relationship with the devs (for example, at one point there was a rumor going around that the devs actually despised me and only tolerated me as a public relations issue: BaB in particular was quoted as saying such things. BaB went so far as to refute that directly).
It was actually a lot of work being me. You might think I had an advantage in that many less informed players took what I had to say at face value without any skepticism, and to a degree that was true - even though I myself personally discouraged that. But the flip side of that was that those players knowledgeable enough to be able to confirm or deny my statements didn't just give me a free pass; in fact I was often a much more visible and therefore worthy target of their skepticism and their time.
Rightly so if I said anything about the game that could be challenged, the most knowledgeable players lined up to take a swing. If I made a mistake, or error, or misjudgment, it basically never went unchallenged and uncorrected. Catching me in an error was practically a sport. It still is: if I misremember something or make a calculation error here, it gets caught pretty quickly. And that's as it should be. Most players didn't have the knowledge or experience to challenge many of the things I posted. But they could rest easy knowing the players that could, did.
This isn't a woe is me thing, its just the way it was. I'm not saying something a lot of other players (but not most of them) don't know: that there was a cottage industry of gamesmanship between the "quants" to cross-check, edit, educate, and correct each other, and I was certainly one of the larger trophies on the wall.
Now, as to the specific issue of whether I had actual inside information from the devs, that was confirmed lots of times, but it was difficult for me to keep confirming that while the game was still running because I was in a tough spot here: there were those who believed I was just making it up and I actually had no real contact with the devs. Then there were those that believed I had too much contact with the devs and it wasn't fair I had more access to them. That put me in a weird box.
Today, there's a couple of things I could do. I could post details of my involvement that were confirmable at one time, but would be difficult to confirm today. For example, I had knowledge about how the I7 critter accuracy changes worked, because I posted about that at the time. I was the one that suggested that the global hide command bring up an options panel to give players options on how to hide. I am the reason there was a tohit roll channel when real numbers launched. I'm literally the only person that posted information about how PvP diminishing returns worked, because I had direct knowledge about how that worked (the devs never actually released the specifics). Those kinds of things were obviously things I was involved with at the time because of my knowledge of them.
I could suggest references. There were other players in communication with the devs, and many of them would have sufficient knowledge to confirm I had some direct contact and relationship with many of them. The problem there is I wouldn't want to single them out, and that would just be kicking the can down the street, as it were.
I suppose the strongest evidence you could still confirm today is that I have a box credit for Going Rogue. That's due to my work with the custom critter system. You could check the manual, and you'd see "Arcanaville" listed there under a special thanks area I think. Of course, "special thanks" could mean something else, but there's also the Going Rogue wall. That was a wall at Paragon Studios in one of the conference rooms that everyone who worked on that expansion were asked to sign. When I had an opportunity to visit Paragon, I was asked to sign it. I was actually pretty honored to be on that wall, even though its landfill now. I know there were players that made up stories, but I guess you have to use your own judgment whether I would lie about something like that in a public forum I could easily be challenged on by people in a position to know.
Also, I once made Matt Miller momentarily speechless when I compared the evil in the Rogue Isles storylines to the human centipede. Of course, not many people can confirm that.
If you were a spectator to it all, its actually really difficult to confirm any of this. But my notoriety rested within two main worlds: the quantitative players, and those in contact with the devs (there was some overlap between the two). In both worlds, the truth is we could spot a fake from a mile away. The quants could *easily* tell when someone didn't really know what they were doing. And the players that regularly communicated with the devs could usually easily spot someone just faking it just because they would quickly say something about the devs known to be false. Short of asking the devs directly, I don't know if there is unimpeachable evidence of my involvement with the game. What I do know is that those two communities of players I mention above would never let me get away with being a fake. I'd have been exposed quickly and decisively. I could snow the average player. I couldn't snow all of them.
