At the ever-fun Broken Toys, long-time MMO observer Scott 'Lum The Mad' Jennings is discussing community relations, as sparked by an Aeropause article which claims: "The World of Warcraft forums are a good place to go if you’re feeling pretty good about life, and you decide you need that attitude adjusted."

Jennings notes that: "Stardock and Penny Arcade (huh? When was Tycho’s last patch?) are held up as paragons of successful community management, mainly from getting rid of the middle man." He then goes on to basically suggest that comparing the most rabid MMO-playing fan to the kind of relatively relaxed people who play games via TotalGaming.net or read comics at Penny Arcade is probably gently unfair - something we tend to agree with.

He concludes: "MMOs are special. MMO communities are special. They require a special, deft hybrid form of public relations, rapid response, and disinterested ombudsman. That is what an online community relations team SHOULD be. Whether or not it is in practice can be an issue. But if you feel that your game isn’t giving you enough feedback on what you find important, it isn’t because community relations is an inherently bad idea; it’s because that team specifically is falling down on its job."