Theres a new MMO thats getting huge hype right now because they have a Non-Verbal NDA. Which means you are free to talk about anything on the test build, you just cant record video or take pictures.
Personally for a game thats already release a minor patch doesnt seem like something worthy of an NDA at all. Test servers build crazy hype.
But seeing big streamers like Summit getting hyped like crazy over an over view of Ashes of Creation is a perfect example of why NDAs actually do more harm than good. I get the devs dont like the idea of people seeing rough cuts of their work but I think most people observing that stuff know its still a work in progress and arent going to make fun of the Devs for stuff.
The only legit reason I can think of for an NDA is because microsoft is enforcing it so that when inside xbox streams come around they have filler content in their announcements.
I just think a perfect instance of the NDA being silly is all the streamers getting told to stop breaking NDA when they would talk about "Ghost ships" because the developers were so out of touch with the community that they didnt know over 50% of their player base referred to skeleton ships as "ghost ships" and the current patch was introducing actual legit ghost ships.
I just dont understand how hype and communal discussions about upcoming changes is ever a bad thing? Rare loves to compare themselves to wow in terms of player count..... World of Warcrafts next expansion just came out of alpha testing and due to not having an NDA on their alpha there is active conversation between the dev team and the community about some of the systems players werent happy with in the alpha and during beta they plan to test out revisions to these systems. None of this would have happened and they would have released another broken expansion if they had an NDA in place preventing the community from talking about things.
well wow at its height had like 15 million ACTIVE users. SoT has just reached that number of "lifetime players" as no company reveals active numbers these days but wow easily has 3 million people still actively playing.
