Sokko wrote:
Seriously though, anyone who fell for this has the intelligence of a common dust mote. I don't care how dedicated to DROD you are, there's nothing that could make you overlook both the craziness of the announcement and the date on which it was made. My only regret is that I could not join in on DiMono's illusion-weaving before the majority of the forum populace actually woke up from their beta-induced stupor and realized it was a joke. 
However, a suprising proportion of the forum populace fell for it, including a lot of people I thought would have given pause.
The thing is, the thing is, is that a fair few people thought it might be an April Fool's joke and wandered right into it anyway. Those people weren't that upset because they at least were cautious. People like DiMono and RoboBob saw the funny side and helped out, further adding to the fun. It was only those people who stopped paying attention as soon as they found out we were offering a 'beta' who ended up being upset, and they probably needed something to stop themselves taking it so seriously.
Erik and I did discuss, after the fact, that people are going to be quite disappointed about this (although I did try to be a bit obvious), hence the little easter eggs I promised people for being such good sports (comparitively - I expected an angry mob outside my door). At least, unlike the DRODIS joke, people will get the real version eventually.
And Sokko, the reason we stopped it so early was that it started to spread. There were people referencing the joke in other threads, so if it had gone on much longer (and it did go on longer than it really should have) it would have been
too cruel.
Eytan, I think one of the key things to this joke was the e-mail address. I didn't handle it as well as I would have liked (ideally I would have been there through the entire thing, firing e-mails back to people as soon as they sent me one, and letting them down gently which I only worked out a couple of e-mails in) but at least those people who did get their e-mails as soon as they sent them in didn't spend a whole night getting all excited about the beta, and didn't have enough time to salivate. I honestly have no idea how I would have done that if it was a preview, and the damage may have been worse because speculation would have fired up anew, which is hardly what I wanted.
For all those people who did send e-mail addresses and salivated while I slept, sorry I didn't get back to you earlier. I forgot about the sleep bit.
Matt
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×Lost.
Yes, yes, I was in on it all along... Helping out, see? Trying to put on a new york wiseguy accent through text, see? Just helping along the illusion, see? Glad so many people fell for this, you'll never find out that I was one of them.
, and please resume breathing.