On November 1st, RPGamer posted its Review of Dragon Warrior VII to co-incide with the release. Since that time, the fairness of that review has been called into question. RPGamer would like to take a moment to clear the air, as it were, about the review.

First, as stated in the credits of Dragon Warrior VII, 3 RPGamer staffers did indeed work on the copy editing portion of Dragon Warrior VII. For those of you who do not know, copy editing is the process of taking the original translation, and correcting all syntax, typos and "engrish". However, Copy Editors are not responsible for putting the corrected text back into the game. Two of the staffers, Mikel Tidwell and Doug Hill finished their portion of the work at Enix approximately 5 months ago. The other staffer, Sean Peters, worked at Enix until the end of the Dragon Warrior VII project, in October.

Second, no attempt was made to hide this from the public, as some have claimed. It had been mentioned numerous times in Q & A, #RPGamer (IRC channel on the EsperNet IRC Network), staff bios, and in response to emails regarding DW/Enix that have been sent to Webmaster@RPGamer.com. Because we had mentioned it so many times elsewhere, it didn't occur to us that it should be mentioned in our review. Call it tunnel vision, if nothing else. RPGamer has never had someone in this situation before, and the lack of mention was never intended as deception.

When it came time to choose someone to write our review of Dragon Warrior VII, we chose Jake Alley. Jake has written many reviews for RPGamer, and we felt Jake would be best for writing the review for the return of the Dragon Warrior series to North America. Despite the fact that RPGamer's review was compatible with most other reviews of Dragon Warrior VII, it didn't take long before accusations of bias were made, regardless of who reviewed it.

Regardless of why the claims were made, the fact remains that we left ourselves open to such accusations, by not being entirely honest with you, our fans and loyal readers. For that, we sincerely apologize. We humbly ask your forgiveness. You have stuck by us through thick and thin, and deserve better treatment from us.

To publishers and developers who may feel that their games received sub-par treatment due to some staff members involvement with Enix, we deeply apologize and assure you that this was not the case. The staff of RPGamer has always strived to separate our personal and non-RPGamer lives from RPGamer. We appreciate the support you have shown us over the years, and sincerely hope this situation will not threaten future support.

To Enix, we sincerely apologize for any inconvience and any complaints that may be directed your way. We humbly ask your forgiveness for dragging you into a bad situation through no mistake or action of your own.

Despite our best intentions, it is quite obvious that more has to be done in order to prevent something like this from happening in the future. In the meantime, we ask again for your forgiveness and the opportunity to regain your trust. We thank you for visiting and allowing us this chance to explain and apologize.

Sincerely and Humbly,