StateCraft

To the Editor: I’ve been playing Battlefield 2 for a few months now. When I cracked onto it I was fairly new to pc gaming in general. I hadn’t yet experienced the crack, that is CS:S, nor even seen a pictorial representation of the original Battlefield 1942. However, I was steeped in squad dynamics due to my extensive love for consoles.

When I broke into my first public server after a few rounds in single player, I think I was in there for five minutes before I was kicked for extensive teamkills. It turns out, somebody couldn’t accept the fact that I was laying claymores and decided to actively hunt me down and team-kill himself over and over, until all of the punished kills added up and I was banned.

For a few weeks my experience went on with its ups and downs, and usually doing amazing things vindicated all of the major shortfalls I experienced with the core game-play.

That is, until I found the Tactical Gamer Community.

Here was a community who treasured fundamental elements of this game. They played in squads, they used voip, they had special scripts kicking un-squadded members after a minute of playing in limbo, they had it all.

Playing a productive game of Battlefield 2 doesn’t require finding a clan and coordinating scrimmages. I would like to point anybody who is frustrated with the current offerings on ranked servers the chance to save your $50 and try out a tacticalgamer.com server. Read the rules and operating procedures in the forums and bring your maturity.

-Michael

To the Editor: May I say what a fine magazine you have here, and so on and so on. In contrast to many other readers who write in, I like the layout. It’s strange, but at least it’s new.

I’m afraid I am writing to express my disappointment that you allowed a certain Mr. Stalzer to paste a massive advertisement for his Online Gaming Guild right in the middle of your mag, free of charge. I myself was a member of his guild many many moons ago, and while I don’t want to go into the details of my long period of experience within the guild, I will mention that Sean is quite the mastermind when it comes to spin.

The Syndicate has not always been, and probably is not now, the massively successful and stable guild that Mr. Stalzer makes it out to be. At the time I left the guild, over four years ago, it was going through a stage of massive revolt among almost all the people in positions of ‘authority’ within the guild. The aftermath of this period in the Syndicate’s life was such that a massive chunk of it’s core membership left (albeit, at slightly different intervals and groups, but it was all around the same period).

The truth of the matter is, what really keeps that guild together is Mr. Stalzer’s own dedication to it, which I’m sure is commendable in some ways. But for him to make claims about how The Syndicate has survived this and that to become one thing or the other is slightly misleading, especially given that, by now, almost the entire core membership has changed a few times with almost the only consistent core member being “Dragons” himself.

Rich “Mythiran” Nolan

To the Editor: I see you spend a lot of time about guilds and their various dynamic. But do you think you will ever do an article about solo players? I know they do not have the social aspect that guilds represent and do not cater to the larger audience that guilds do, but we do have our place and do exist.

Thanks for listening.

-Ebon

To the Editor: Thank you for the incredible product. I love the format (I read it as PDF since I think the web-format still is difficult; how about the Extra! in PDF too?) I love the visual presentation (and that’s coming from someone who typically cares little for packaging and presentation) I love the content. Keep up the quality focus. I like the dedicated topics in issues.

I recently started playing Diplomacy online. I’ve been fascinated by the game itself (the first time I’ve played it) and the way the game is played. It’s almost as pure of a role-playing game as you could have, even if you don’t play in character. I wonder if there is any space in your content schedule for discussion of this game and format?

I echo other calls for expanding your content to include reviews or ‘games of interest’ or something like that. And I’m very excited for the day in the near future when The Escapist‘s reputation gets you interview access to the biggest and greatest names (developers and publishers alike). I can only imagine how good an interview by you would be.

Thanks again and keep it up!

-Jerrod Hansen

To the Editor: This “thank you” isn’t to any specific person who writes for or contributes to The Escapist, but to all those involved and everyone who contributes to the creation of this thought provoking and truly fresh publication. So, to all those who spent the time and effort bringing The Escapist into fruition and those possibly (and probably) many hours of sleep lost writing, gaming and some incredible hybrid of the two:

Thank you.

I’ve come to realize that in this world, many things we do come thankless. Even when those things we do are not for ourselves, but for others. Whether you’re the ones who has to grueling task of editing or the ones who realize their “eureka” moment into tangible text for the world, I want everyone who works on The Escapist to know that their work is appreciated.

That’s all folks.

-Kelvin Tam