Booted! When Good Bloggers Go Bad

Posted on September 25, 2006 No Comments

I was in the Vanguard SOH beta earlier this year. Wrote about it a few times too. And what’s funny is I started an article with this phrase:

No big spoilers, screen shots or surprises. I haven’t actually read the T&C of the beta yet… so not going to push my luck.

And then quickly lost sight of that as I blathered on about details and performance thoughts. I uninstalled the beta around June of this year and wrote another article grousing about performance. To be fair, more from the angle that my machine is old. But still…

Not that bright, am I? (that’s foreshadowing.)

On a whim, I thought I’d reinstall last weekend and see how things were coming along. Whim or nudge from Rich — one of those. Anyways, I thought maybe my meager machine would do better 3-4 months later with newer code. Found my original beta invite mail and re-downloaded the old setup package. Installed it and quickly guessed thatI probably had the wrong version. Couldn’t log in, couldn’t patch. I naively surmised that maybe the move from Microsoft to SOE had changed things. (cue timpani roll; start quiet, gradually build up tempo and volume)

Ok, no problem, I sent them an email and explained I was trying to come back and asked how to get rolling again.

(Cymbal crash! Stop timpani)

Whoops! Turns out somewhere along the line I was removed from the beta program for violating the NDA terms. (cue toilet flush) Through a bit of investigation (non-admissible in court but excellent deductive work) they determined who I was and let me know that I’d been removed from the beta program when responding to my email. Politely though — even said they look forward to seeing me in the release.

Turns out they didn’t figure me out until after I posted about uninstalling. And since I had uninstalled, they didn’t contact me. (We’ve traded some emails since I found out I was booted). I’ve never been kicked out of something by more pleasant people, for what that’s worth. *sigh*

Lesson learned: Read the terms before writing about anything covered by NDA.

Darn it.

Tags: beta, blog, mmorpg, nda, vanguard