Smoke's Email on the Boycott

This is a public message from Smoke regarding the Starcraft forums "Boycott".

I would just like to be sure the gaming community understands where it started because this event has reached a larger audience than I had ever imagined possible..

Understand this boycott is NOT against Blizzard. We are NOT boycotting the game. The original post by me was meant to express concern by several forum'ers for Blizzard's web-pages. We were to stress only our sincerity by not posting. It was not meant to affect Blizzard in any way. Only to send a message.

The response we got was not only unexpected, but in a way unfortunate. As the number of replies climbed from 100 to over 200 there was really no reason any more to stress the message with a boycott. but the focus had been changed and many people were lining up to fight for or against Blizzard. I as much as anyone realize our message may have become lost in a flood of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. A message of support from a few fans turned into a riot of opinion overnight. We definitely sent a message, But that is all we have accomplished, and that is really all we wanted to accomplish. It should be clearly understood, almost EVERY-ONE of the boycott supporters are Blizzard fans who will buy the game the day it hits the shelves.

Secondly Blizzard's web page updates and Patch 7 are in no way a victory for the "boycott". This is not a war and the only victory to be claimed is Blizzards success in releasing patch 7. In fact all this would have happened even without the huge pressure valve that got blown last Sunday. Why did we all sign-up under that 'Blizzard needs an update' thread? Because we wanted Blizzard to be the best it can be, we are DEFINITELY here in support. Everyone of those nearly 250 replies is there because we love Blizzard games. We do respect Blizzards effort and sacrifice in bringing us the best game they possibly can. I can not say "THANK-YOU" enough. I respectfully ask that we do not make references to "the boycott worked" because there are updates from Blizzard now. We did not update the pages. Blizzard had the choice and, quite likely, previous plans to update their page on their own. The credit goes to them, not us for updating and posting information on patch 7.

In conclusion. The message of fan concern for Blizzards image was sent long before our posting ever stopped. I did make one post Wednesday on the forums to clear up some boycott issues.(only because I started it) However, I will continue from there till Thursday 7pm not to post only because to break any more would be inconsiderate me to post now and "abandon" the 150+ people that supported me, despite my own belief now that my methods were wrong. To Blizzard's credit, they have been civil and cordial about the whole issue and, as always, they are improving their software and providing as much information as they feel they can. Their message has not changed. It is still "we care about what our fans think of us". Kudos to Blizzard.

I look forward to renewed excitement on the forums and to eventually enjoying Starcraft with the rest of you.

Smoke.

For those that think we were "whining", I apologize for this misconception. Everyone signed for a slightly different reason but MY reason was originally to encourage improvement instead of complain about the current situation. Perhaps I wandered from that purpose and intent and I am deeply sorry if so..

Source - TWoS