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Thanks for all the hard work Neal. Give yourself a well earned break, you've done all that could be expected and more.
I believe this is still an improvement over where things were at before the petition organised by Moscovian. At least Jervis has reviewed the Change Documents - and even said he'd be happy to put them through, though he has expressed some caution about doing so. Given that he probably has no funding from GW, and little time, he has at first instance fallen back on trusty lieutenants from years ago. Some of these are out of touch or have quit. Nonetheless it is an understandable first move by him, and at least he is willing to engage with the Change Documents and what's left of the ERC. Also I don't actually see Jervis continuing to let community frustration increase forever if he is aware of it. I believe he will make a decision on some changes, though it may be slower than we like, and take more effort than we would like.
Thus I see the task at hand as continuing to build broad community strength and support. Initiatives to get more feedback on the Change Documents are necessary in this respect I believe. eg like the 2 page summary I made last week for Otters UK tourni group, to get some more detailed and specific feedback from them.
Once we have something with the broadest support possible, we could perhaps lobby/petition SG to stick that up (and a petition sounds like it may be necessary if the current lack of activity continues). The last petition requested that something more happen with Epic in rather broad terms, but at least it woke SG up and got some sort of dialogue occurring (which was honestly a lot more than I expected it to). Another petition may be a tool we can use to swing existing dialogue in the direction desired by the epic community. (Just something to think about for the future, not recommending we do this now).
I agree with Ginger that SG really just want to know what the wider epic community wants them to put up. The problem is they have no resources to invest themselves in finding out what that is, so it is up to us to make that as clear as possible. Their main concern is (same as ours) that we don't annoy lots of players in the process by including too controversial changes. So I say, let's continue to work on and refine what we're doing, with careful diplomacy and persistence, and engagement of as many Epic players as possible.
So yes to me this is a not an unexpected result at this stage. I also consider it early days yet given how long the Change Documents, and Handbook, (and summary sheet), have been available. Also worth mentioning that personally I haven't said anything to Andy or Jervis except "I'm making a Handbook using all your Intellectual Property, hope you don't have a problem with that. The idea is to work with you guys and not against you, expect to see more." (brief summary of a more diplomatically worded e-mail). So far after over a month there are no inquisitorial lawyers on the horizon... I take this to be a good sign, and don't personally like the idea of now renegging on those intentions until all other avenues have been exhausted.
One other minor point on terminology, 'NetEA or not', I see that as something of a red herring to this dicussion given that Epic Armageddon has always been NetEA - even with Jervis and SG in full swing it was still NetEA in all reality. The real issue here is just do we continue to try and engage with SG or not? I see no reason not to do so, except for the time and inconvenience of it. However, I've already stated my intention of continuing to engage with SG, and I can understand if others have had enough of attempting to do so.
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