I guess this is just my little beef, but I have to come out with it on my website.
I hate it when commenters say I or Massively are being bribed by developers to promote their products.
No, your daft little conspiracy theories on why we gave a good game a good grade are completely in your own little insane mind. John Smedley is, in fact, not sending me piles of money via UPS.
You know what, if he was sending me all of the money that people keep saying he’s sending me, I wouldn’t give a damn. I’d be rolling in it laughing and I wouldn’t be attempting to make my paycheck last from month to month. But GUESS WHAT GUYS, I live in an apartment and can barely afford television. Woo hoo!
So I want to leave you with a fun little tidbit of information — something that’s not advertised outside of the Joystiq network all too often, yet I think it should be recognized.
The writers of WoW Insider, Massively, and Joystiq (aka, the Joystiq Network) cannot accept any gifts over 20 dollars. Now some of you are probably saying, “All right, who gives a crap?” to your computer monitors right now, but this is a pretty big caveat.
Do you guys know how IGN, Kotaku, and other sites get some of their writers to interview developers? The developers pay to fly them out. The developers offer hotel rooms, airfare, and sometimes food to make sure that writers get to their press events. Developers do send thank you gifts and other items to writers as a token of appreciation for all the coverage that they get. The company does not pay for writers to be flown out to small events thrown by developers.
We here at the Joystiq network don’t do that in order to maintain neutrality. I’ve personally turned down some nice travel packages offered to me by gaming companies, thank you very much. I don’t take bribes, and any opinion I offer on Massively.com is my own.
If you don’t like it, sorry, but I’m not being bribed to say what I think.
Experience Curve 