If I was the CEO of SOE, I would be hoping that a mod locked the thread and banned this CSR after couple of replies pending internal review of his action. I would then hire that mod as the new CSR. The fact this has happened in the first place is very disturbing. Most companies (even small ones) have solid hiring procedures and internal training. The fact that this individual made it through SOE hiring procedure and did what he did make me think the company itself is having a problem. How can I trust the quality and professionalism of the developer team under such circumstances?
This is exactly what's wrong with that guy. No professionalism. What he should have done was say: "Forum Locked."
His "justified rage" against the trolls and nay-sayers in a business environment shows that he has no class and takes a vote of confidence away from SOE and its management. He did more harm than good with any of his rants.
His boss should give him a severe reprimand and have him apologize publically for his innappropriate behavior. If he refused - he can feed his daughter like the rest of us: having a job that he knows how to behave like a professional in.
Well, the one thing he has going for him is that he works for SOE. At SOE, you can do things, make mistakes, run the whole thing into the ground more than once, scream insults at your clients, etc and not get fired. It's like government work.
Just ask Smed. He's still pulling down a nice chunk of change despite ZERO positive accomplishments in the last 5 years.
Stil, though, I'd be surprised that he's around to even DO another Friday Feature. They did can GreyPawn much quicker for much less.
Hell, if they DONT can him, GreyPawn should sue SOE for unlawful termination.
I jumped into IRC today and at least two people immediately blasted me with links they thought I’d enjoy reading. Apparently, the latest Community Manager for Star Wars Galaxies has had… well… “meltdown” would probably be the best term. I’m actually really quite sympathetic, because he, like many before him, probably didn’t fully grasp what he was getting into. I haven’t talked about this, because the wound has been relatively painful for awhile, but I think I will now.
See, the thing about Star Wars Galaxies is that it is a unique MMO. It, like Ultima Online before it, was designed by a fellow named Raph Koster. I’ve spoken extensively on the topic not only with him, but also many of the UO CM’s that have worked on that game over the years. The parallels are astounding, and they both share a similar…what you might call “genome” as virtual worlds. The biggest similarity is that any world Koster seems to create imbues community with a sense of vast potentiality, which tends to result in a much larger portion of the playerbase being vocal. Compare, say, Guild Wars, or even WoW, who’s vocal board-posting population is magnitudes of percentage lower than UO or SWG’s. That’s just the way they were born - those MMO critters.
Consider what this means to a CM though. A CM working on a Koster-built world, I would dare say has a much more intense, more scrutinized role than a CM in another game where the community is less vociferous. The natural filters we CMs build to catch the precious feedback our dev team so desperately needs get blown to smithereens when the noise to signal ratio gets that out of whack. Now, as far as Star Wars Galaxies goes, this is even more difficult because of its history.
At one point, SWG was a vibrant, open-world sandboxy type of game. A natural evolution of the Kosterian design, with in fact many of the brilliant talents that brought UO into being having worked and still working on it. NGE happened, and there’s really no need to go into blame or finger-pointing, I really don’t think it was the actual feature-changes that did it. It wasn’t the thing, rather it was the “how”. In short order and without community feedback, the “genetics” of the SWG critter changed. Under the right circumstances, one could have actually rolled with such drastic cataclysmic change. But that was not the case. This is when it really began to happen.
Rather than comfort and understanding, the community was presented with a feeling of betrayal, even on the part of the community staff. Upon departure, the community staff, from what I saw in the posts, actually gutted the community. Disemboweled it. Under the circumstances, it may or may not have been professional - that’s not the point, the point is that this was the source. This wrenching, flesh-ripping leaving a gaping hole in the living, breathing community never did heal, and it is what I consider to be the origin of perhaps the only extant poisoned MMO community.
SWG’s community is poisoned. There is no cure. That’s a tough conclusion to come to, but it is a true one. It’s tough because I actually cared for the players, like, a lot. Shit, I bought a fucking sith robe. When I CMed, my short stint steering the community, I had such high hopes. I wanted The Senate to be the first real, true player voice in any MMO, with active involvement and an honest stake in what happened to the game.
I spent a lot of my time, during off-hours, eh. There are actually no such thing as “off hours” for a good CM. I spent a lot of my time talking to guild leaders, fan site owners, former players. I didn’t tell anyone, but I actually opened a dialogue with the guys trying to built an emulator, to find out what beefs they had - how they could be fixed. It was my hope to see SWG enter a new “golden age”. A term among others like “Star Warsy” that I learned were as dangerous as landmines. Countless times I was accused of not “Managing Expectations”… which by the way is CMspeak for “KEEP THEIR EXPECTATIONS LOW”. NO, damn you. Their expectations should be as high as MINE and WE should be MEETING THEM. You don’t reverse a decline by setting the bar as low as you can and striving for sub-mediocre. Fuck that noise.
But see, there were traps set well in advance of my arrival. Just like there were traps set well in advance of poor Draakull. Breath deep - that green gas wafting up from the forums won’t harm you, I promise. Hell is paved with good intentions, and lordy, my stint there was nothing but. I was told on several occasions that mmorpg.com was “no man’s land”, an environment hostile to CM existence where flames could destroy you or any well thought out post in seconds. On one of my fiestier days, I took it as a challenge. In retrospect, I can’t believe I actually necro’ed a post to issue an appeal to the refugees of SWG. I think at that point I had felt strongly enough about the positive signs the game and community were showing that I felt empowered enough to reach out to those “lost souls” that went away during the earlier mentioned “disemboweling”.
I am forever in their eyes, NoobPawn, for my efforts to give SWG a second chance. Eh. If I got just one of ‘em to try out the beastmaster upgrades, it was worth it. Still though, I drank that poison deep. It tasted like mild success at the time. As my time wore on, and my grace with my superiors waned, more and more of my communication became tailored to…well, managing expectations. I had a 12 month lease on a big ol’ Austin house, and a bunch of new furniture. I found myself at a place I never thought I would, arrayed on one side with the players and their interests, and on the other with the dev team and its interests.
In most instances, one coincides with the other - there is a large overlap that a CM can stretch out in, a staunch advocate for both, the very definition of our job. It was becoming less and less so, as I began to have quotas on number of daily posts, and my posts themselves were editted by committee. A slight forgiven was not forgotten, and errors began to compound. The seeds that I planted, like The Senate, that I had hoped would enrich and empower soon took on the more ominous character of an albatross. The bad thing you did, the beast you raised that you can now no longer feed.
It reached its culmination in the commitment of a minor error. One that affected nothing, but served as ample excuse to be rid of me. The CM equivalent of a dropped plate of french fries by short-order cook. I was however destroyed by the methodology involved in my removal. It was not kind or quick, and I did cry. I vowed not to reveal details or mercilessly gut the community I had so cherished in the way some of my predecessors had. The people who populate SWG had suffered enough, for god’s sake. I went quietly, and I miss its community still. Rambunctious noisy, needy bastards all.
Since then, I have not one day felt stability in my job. I’m good at what I do, I’m paid decently and I’ve seen growth in every game I’ve been the CM of (even SWG!). I dutifully took VMK to its bittersweet conclusion, I toil meticulously on infrastructure for a virtual world I believe will succeed, but… I still bear the scars from Star Wars Galaxies, and I think I probably always will. I joke with friends occasionally who ask about my time in SWG that “Being the Community Manager for Star Wars Galaxies is like playing Doom on Nightmare level difficulty. It is not a matter of winning. It is a matter of how long you last.”
So, no, I don’t blame the latest CM for his responses. He’s only visiting. I just hope that during his time, he learns the good, dark lessons that SWG’s community has to teach him.
I had a feeling part of his downfall was when he posted here trying to get former players back. This shows me the Devs have no interest in what the players want and the CM is just as useless as the senate (which I knew already).
Greypawn: "...Countless times I was accused of not “Managing Expectations”… which by the way is CMspeak for “KEEP THEIR EXPECTATIONS LOW”. NO, damn you. Their expectations should be as high as MINE and WE should be MEETING THEM. You don’t reverse a decline by setting the bar as low as you can and striving for sub-mediocre. Fuck that noise." http://swgblog.net/?page_id=979
Greypawn nailed $OE well here, and it defintiely shows.
GreyPawn ....The biggest similarity is that any world Koster seems to create imbues community with a sense of vast potentiality, which tends to result in a much larger portion of the playerbase being vocal. Compare, say, Guild Wars, or even WoW, whos vocal board-posting population is magnitudes of percentage lower than UO or SWGs. Thats just the way they were born - those MMO critters.
This is really interesting. I never thought of it this way. They cultivated an extremely vocal community by the design of the game. Perhaps it's because the game itself required a certain maturity level to appreciate?
.... At one point, SWG was a vibrant, open-world sandboxy type of game. A natural evolution of the Kosterian design, with in fact many of the brilliant talents that brought UO into being having worked and still working on it. NGE happened, and theres really no need to go into blame or finger-pointing, I really dont think it was the actual feature-changes that did it. It wasnt the thing, rather it was the how.
That's the only part of this whole blog where he doesn't seem to get it. Yes Greypawn, it WAS the feature changes. It WAS the new gameplay. You're right in that the "how" played a massive role, but the CU mutated the game, and the NGE destroyed it. The GAME ITSELF.
In short order and without community feedback, the genetics of the SWG critter changed. Under the right circumstances, one could have actually rolled with such drastic cataclysmic change. But that was not the case. This is when it really began to happen. Rather than comfort and understanding, the community was presented with a feeling of betrayal, even on the part of the community staff. Upon departure, the community staff, from what I saw in the posts, actually gutted the community. Disemboweled it. Under the circumstances, it may or may not have been professional - thats not the point, the point is that this was the source. This wrenching, flesh-ripping leaving a gaping hole in the living, breathing community never did heal, and it is what I consider to be the origin of perhaps the only extant poisoned MMO community. SWGs community is poisoned. There is no cure. Thats a tough conclusion to come to, but it is a true one.
Another interesting point. The fact is, as Greypawn found out, SOE has cultivated this mentality themselves. The people on the forums are a reflection of the company they pay. Bizarre, I know, but it's true. Gamers are a loud breed, as everyone knows, but these guys have Stockholm Syndrome and STILL complain. You gotta be a special kind of fucked-up to still play SWG if you liked the original game.
Its tough because I actually cared for the players, like, a lot. Shit, I bought a fucking sith robe. When I CMed, my short stint steering the community, I had such high hopes. I wanted The Senate to be the first real, true player voice in any MMO, with active involvement and an honest stake in what happened to the game. I spent a lot of my time, during off-hours, eh. There are actually no such thing as off hours for a good CM. I spent a lot of my time talking to guild leaders, fan site owners, former players. I didnt tell anyone, but I actually opened a dialogue with the guys trying to built an emulator, to find out what beefs they had - how they could be fixed. It was my hope to see SWG enter a new golden age. A term among others like Star Warsy that I learned were as dangerous as landmines. Countless times I was accused of not Managing Expectations which by the way is CMspeak for KEEP THEIR EXPECTATIONS LOW. NO, damn you. Their expectations should be as high as MINE and WE should be MEETING THEM. You dont reverse a decline by setting the bar as low as you can and striving for sub-mediocre. Fuck that noise.
I like this guy.
....I cant believe I actually necroed a post to issue an appeal to the refugees of SWG. I think at that point I had felt strongly enough about the positive signs the game and community were showing that I felt empowered enough to reach out to those lost souls that went away during the earlier mentioned disemboweling. I am forever in their eyes, NoobPawn, for my efforts to give SWG a second chance. Eh. If I got just one of em to try out the beastmaster upgrades, it was worth it. Still though, I drank that poison deep. It tasted like mild success at the time.
God bless ya though. Beastmaster was the afterimage shadow of a human vaporized in a nuclear explosion compared to the original Creature Handler, but you really had no way of knowing that. Making the game simple, then ratcheting up certain parts of it to completely outwit the "new" community they brought in with their changes was just cruel.
As my time wore on, and my grace with my superiors waned, more and more of my communication became tailored to well, managing expectations. I had a 12 month lease on a big ol Austin house, and a bunch of new furniture. I found myself at a place I never thought I would, arrayed on one side with the players and their interests, and on the other with the dev team and its interests. In most instances, one coincides with the other - there is a large overlap that a CM can stretch out in, a staunch advocate for both, the very definition of our job. It was becoming less and less so, as I began to have quotas on number of daily posts, and my posts themselves were editted by committee. A slight forgiven was not forgotten, and errors began to compound. The seeds that I planted, like The Senate, that I had hoped would enrich and empower soon took on the more ominous character of an albatross. The bad thing you did, the beast you raised that you can now no longer feed. It reached its culmination in the commitment of a minor error. One that affected nothing, but served as ample excuse to be rid of me. The CM equivalent of a dropped plate of french fries by short-order cook. I was however destroyed by the methodology involved in my removal. It was not kind or quick, and I did cry. I vowed not to reveal details or mercilessly gut the community I had so cherished in the way some of my predecessors had. The people who populate SWG had suffered enough, for gods sake. I went quietly, and I miss its community still. Rambunctious noisy, needy bastards all. Since then, I have not one day felt stability in my job....
Now I feel bad for him. Tiggs made the same vow, Greypawn, so don't beat yourself up if it leaks out. Quite frankly, however bad it was, it wouldn't surprise me. The micromanagement you endured, the hopes you had dashed, the petty BS that did you in, well... welcome to SOE. I've never worked for SOE, but I was never a Nazi either and I have a pretty low opinion of them, too.
I just love how that asshole blames the community for this problem and not the company. For god sake the players are still giving soe faith to do something right and he calls them poisonous? All they want is a game to play and for the company to stop nickle and diming them to death as a replacement for content publishes. Just the fact that there still are players in swg goes so far beyond rational expectations it just shows that they are willing to go well beyond any extremes and horrible treatment by soe to give them untold amounts of chances and if treated right I bet they would respond kindly. If anything those people should be given a medal for perseverance (and then be slapped in the head with a trout for rewarding the company with money).
Newsflash, if soe didn't do such a bang up job of lieing and pissing on the customers with such frequency maybe the community wouldn't be so damn vocal in the first place. Yes there are many reason they players are vocal and no it isn't due to raph koster. When you do things to upset players with the frequency that soe does, the players will get vocal. Imagine that? Cause and is obviously a concept that escapes him.
He acts like he was building some new democracy within the game and he alone was somehow going to revive swg. What the hell did he think he was going to be able to accomplish in a company that had already looked at the entire playerbase of SWG as disposable and tried to replace them with shiny new players?
Did he expect to march into a developer meeting with a list of player concerns and enlighten soe as to what changes need to be made and think they would snap to attention and hop to it? I cannot believe this guy is so ignorant to still not understand that this company has a long standing tradtion of ignoring the players and doing whatever they think will bleed another nickle from their customers credit cards. He just doesn't understand that he was nothing more than a smoke screen and damage control.
The ego and ignorance of greypawn is unbelievable. I just love the last part where he talks about some dark conspiracy that was set to get rid of him for a minor mistake. Doesn't he find it strange that when a SWG community rep has a meltdown with the playerbase the first thing people on IRC think of is him? Gee I wonder why they did that....
If they actually wanted this game to succeed they would actually try to hire someone who had some experience in Community Management and actually played some MMOs (not an online Black Hawk Down game or w/e) and maybe not hire a producer who's only experience in online gaming is working on cell phone games. Just goes to show how much SOE actually gives a crap about SWG and how much resources they put into it.
I just love how that asshole blames the community for this problem and not the company. For god sake the players are still giving soe faith to do something right and he calls them poisonous? All they want is a game to play and for the company to stop nickle and diming them to death as a replacement for content publishes. Just the fact that there still are players in swg goes so far beyond rational expectations it just shows that they are willing to go well beyond any extremes and horrible treatment by soe to give them untold amounts of chances and if treated right I bet they would respond kindly. If anything those people should be given a medal for perseverance (and then be slapped in the head with a trout for rewarding the company with money). Newsflash, if soe didn't do such a bang up job of lieing and pissing on the customers with such frequency maybe the community wouldn't be so damn vocal in the first place. Yes there are many reason they players are vocal and no it isn't due to raph koster. When you do things to upset players with the frequency that soe does, the players will get vocal. Imagine that? Cause and is obviously a concept that escapes him.
He acts like he was building some new democracy within the game and he alone was somehow going to revive swg. What the hell did he think he was going to be able to accomplish in a company that had already looked at the entire playerbase of SWG as disposable and tried to replace them with shiny new players? Did he expect to march into a developer meeting with a list of player concerns and enlighten soe as to what changes need to be made and think they would snap to attention and hop to it? I cannot believe this guy is so ignorant to still not understand that this company has a long standing tradtion of ignoring the players and doing whatever they think will bleed another nickle from their customers credit cards. He just doesn't understand that he was nothing more than a smoke screen and damage control. The ego and ignorance of greypawn is unbelievable. I just love the last part where he talks about some dark conspiracy that was set to get rid of him for a minor mistake. Doesn't he find it strange that when a SWG community rep has a meltdown with the playerbase the first thing people on IRC think of is him? Gee I wonder why they did that....
Daff, read it again.
He's not holding up the "poisoned" community as the problem. He's holding up SoE for poisoning the community in the first place.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.- -And on the 8th day, man created God.-
I just love how that asshole blames the community for this problem and not the company. For god sake the players are still giving soe faith to do something right and he calls them poisonous? All they want is a game to play and for the company to stop nickle and diming them to death as a replacement for content publishes. Just the fact that there still are players in swg goes so far beyond rational expectations it just shows that they are willing to go well beyond any extremes and horrible treatment by soe to give them untold amounts of chances and if treated right I bet they would respond kindly. If anything those people should be given a medal for perseverance (and then be slapped in the head with a trout for rewarding the company with money). Newsflash, if soe didn't do such a bang up job of lieing and pissing on the customers with such frequency maybe the community wouldn't be so damn vocal in the first place. Yes there are many reason they players are vocal and no it isn't due to raph koster. When you do things to upset players with the frequency that soe does, the players will get vocal. Imagine that? Cause and is obviously a concept that escapes him.
He acts like he was building some new democracy within the game and he alone was somehow going to revive swg. What the hell did he think he was going to be able to accomplish in a company that had already looked at the entire playerbase of SWG as disposable and tried to replace them with shiny new players? Did he expect to march into a developer meeting with a list of player concerns and enlighten soe as to what changes need to be made and think they would snap to attention and hop to it? I cannot believe this guy is so ignorant to still not understand that this company has a long standing tradtion of ignoring the players and doing whatever they think will bleed another nickle from their customers credit cards. He just doesn't understand that he was nothing more than a smoke screen and damage control. The ego and ignorance of greypawn is unbelievable. I just love the last part where he talks about some dark conspiracy that was set to get rid of him for a minor mistake. Doesn't he find it strange that when a SWG community rep has a meltdown with the playerbase the first thing people on IRC think of is him? Gee I wonder why they did that....
Daff, read it again.
He's not holding up the "poisoned" community as the problem. He's holding up SoE for poisoning the community in the first place.
Decent take on it, especially where SOE tries to dumb down expectations (to the level of their submediocre ability to produce) which I definitely think is true.
However he still gets it wrong about the NGE. Yes, the "HOW" in how the NGE was done, how it was developed behind our back, without our input, and intentionally not for us was egregious and made things worse.
But he dismisses the CHANGES THEMSELVES as being the core reason! The NGE is the NGE. It resembles the previous iterations of the game only in that the places in the game are the same. The fact that the Koster sandbox was drained and the legos taken away is the real reason why the rancor remains even 3.5 years later. This is why the SWG community is a poisoned well.
Had the Devs done what they've done over the past 3+ years to the game we loved (Pre-NGE) instead of the game we loathe (NGE), the results would have been vastly different. Instead they insist that the NGE itself was never the problem, just their egregious method of implementing it. All the while they continue to commit "in your face, EAT IT!" atrocities to those who are left, such as the TCG, which precipitated the current CM's meltdown.
The NGE itself is what we former players object to. It has never been undone. It's had lipstick applied to it, and had things bolted onto it, battlefields being the latest thing, but it's still the NGE. Forcing us to accept the NGE (and the TCG) as a "no negotiation" prerequisite to dealing with us guarantees failure. They can fix every bug, they can even change the laws of physics so that their combat system works without mass lag generation, they can even upgrade the graphics to the super modern ultra realistic eye candy level, it won't matter. All that is just polish added to the unchanged NGE that still lacks Koster's sandbox, skill system, and combat systems.
That's why this well is full of poison. Nothing SOE has done (and it was incumbent on them to do so) has drained even one ounce of poison from it. But nevertheless the level of water (subscribers) continues to sink, leaving the poison as an ever larger percentage of what's left in it.
I did not read the whole thread. but i don't blame him. there is nothing in that thread that is constructive, just a bunch of children making nasty comments about the developers.
that's what he signed up for. It's his job to deal with that in a professional manor. And that's clearly not what he's doing.
This is exactly it....
Waaaay back in 1998 I was in what you could term "customer service" for Ultima Online. During my training period one thing I remember still clearly to this day...
"When you are in this form you represent the company. Anything you say will be seen as representitive of the company."
The whole thing was my "personal self" was not the company nor was anything I said the opinion of the company. It was the fact that when I was buzzing around "in game" in my wonderful robe if I said something... players take it as a company statement.
If you cannot take a boatload of negative statements you do NOT do customer service EVER. Community manager is basicly a CSR for the forums.
Without talking about other crap that has been hashed to death for the last few years. One of the biggest problems SOE has is the sheer volume of stupid their own employees post on forums. (edit clarification: this has been an issue quite often on the EQ2 forums.. not sure about their other games beyond swg/eq2).
Guess what? When you post on this forum... or as a customer post on a game forum... you can be stupid. If you violate the forum rules they can deal wtih it on that level.. and not make some large public show out of it. As an employee you are NEVER allowed to act that way .. and if you do you should be fired.
This is pretty simple...
1) If the feedback is negative but within forum rules... you don't respond. Or you say something simple "I will pass along your concerns". It doesn't matter whether you do or don't.... its a simple statement that let's people know you are "reading" without stirring up the nest.
2) If its (1) but violate forum rules... you close the thread. "This thread is being closed due to excessive violations of our forums TOS. Please read <insert link> our forum TOS so that you are familiar with it." Then if needed you give some people a forum vacation...
Its really this simple.
A customer can piss off the company that keeps putting items into TCG that should be crafter items...
A company that pisses off enough customers will one day no longer be a company. For their new upcoming games they better really get a handle on what their employees are posting. Obviously this is just my opinion...
I've had people say crap to me in a game.. I've never had said to my face. Most of it honestly makes me laugh and I really didn't pay attention to most of it. You have guidelines and as with the above examples... you apply them in a professional way.
I actually liked doing the CSR thing as when I moved onto the Interest Team it was very easy to ignore people trying to distract me during "live events".
Oh and ya I had people tell me they would find me in real life and kill me... I can say it was probably not the best way for a call to start when I'd never interacted with them before... but I didn't make a public outburst so that other players would see a reaction. I pretty much just took them to a jailcell (loved UO) and said... I'll check back on you in 3 days... and went about my day.
When greypawn says things like there is no cure for the poisoned community he is incorrect, because the problem isn't the communityy and I am pretty sure if they were treated better they would respond better. I felt he laid far to much blame with those types of comments. Then to somehow conclude that communities in any game built by raph koster are harder to manage is like trying to blame the results of the problem on someone who wasn't even around during the cause. He is comparing two games that had massive changes that players didn't like to the communities of WoW and Guild Wars which both have very high marks of customer satisfaction. It is plain idiocy to make that comparison and then act as if his job was stacked against him due to the game design.
I understand he rightfully lays a lot at the doorsteps of soe, but most of that is done is the fashion of a martyr whos grand plans to rebuild the golden age of swg didn't pan out and then cries in the end that he was victom of some conspiracy to get rid of him. He can't even admit to the degree of what he did which really set me off. The impression I get from him is that he somehow thought he was the game producer or something and if he couldn't revive swg then no one in the world could possibly do it.
People that work on the internet are human. Why is it ok for vets to bitch/moan/flame/threaten IE Meltdown but not ok for this guy? Because it's his job? Doesn't matter, he's still human.
People that work on the internet are human. Why is it ok for vets to bitch/moan/flame/threaten IE Meltdown but not ok for this guy? Because it's his job? Doesn't matter, he's still human.
Because it is his job to be above board. It is his job to MODERATE said flames. Only 1 post was a personal attack against him. All he had to do was his job. His added dialogue only makes him and SOE look unprofessional but then again his outburst is a direct reflection of who he works for. With customer service people like that SOE's MMO competition has nothing to worry about.
People that work on the internet are human. Why is it ok for vets to bitch/moan/flame/threaten IE Meltdown but not ok for this guy? Because it's his job? Doesn't matter, he's still human.
That's exactly why. He's being paid to take the blows from the community to "shield" the devs.That's what every CM in any game company gets paid for, regardless of what they may tell him his job is.
He has a ban hammer. He should have used it. Instead, he stood there holding it over his head pretending he ws He-Man saying "I've got the power!!". Like the punk kid who says "I'll tell my mom on you if you don't stop!". He did none of the things in his legitimate power to do. He didn't remove/edit posts, he didn't ban anyone, he didn't even lock the damned thread until AFTER he had his little e-peen fun.
He is representative of the company to the companies customers. If he's allowed to stay, that's a definitive answer to the PAYING community of how important to the company their money is.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.- -And on the 8th day, man created God.-
Why would anyone Ban someone in SWG these days they need all the accounts they can get. The NGE killed the game the few players that remain in the game is starting to come to terms that NGE is there to stay and no matter what they do to the NGE when you polish a turd it is still a turd......
Most of the New dev team and CM's over there are straight from school or have very little exp in dealing with the public. The fact most of the Orginal people there have left to further thier carrers with a game that is not going to die soon.
People that work on the internet are human. Why is it ok for vets to bitch/moan/flame/threaten IE Meltdown but not ok for this guy? Because it's his job? Doesn't matter, he's still human.
The "vets" are not the ones who were complaining to him, it was the current paying customers that are obviously upset by this friday feature. The community manager wasn't venting his displeasure of a service he is paying for, he was openly mocking and insulting the people he was hired to build relationships with. It isn't like he had years of his life poured into the game and felt people didn't appreciate his efforts, he just started the job a few days prior to this and has no experience with the game prior to that. For crying out loud he is being paid to prevent situations like this, not to engage in them.
Yes people are human and make mistakes, but there comes a point where it happens enough that you can't just explain it away as human error. It isn't like this is the first time soe has waved stuff like this in the players face that they full well know will upset them and even this guy knew this topic would be heated before he posted it. It is the culture of the company to do these types of things and this managers response is all to similar to many others before him.
Greypawn: "...Countless times I was accused of not “Managing Expectations”… which by the way is CMspeak for “KEEP THEIR EXPECTATIONS LOW”. NO, damn you. Their expectations should be as high as MINE and WE should be MEETING THEM. You don’t reverse a decline by setting the bar as low as you can and striving for sub-mediocre. Fuck that noise." http://swgblog.net/?page_id=979
Greypawn nailed $OE well here, and it defintiely shows.
According to Raph Koster in his Laws of World Design:
Players have higher expectations of the virtual world
The expectations are higher than of similar actions in the real world. For example: players will expect all labor to result in profit; they will expect life to be fair; they will expect to be protected from aggression before the fact, and not just to seek redress after the fact; they will expect problems to be resolved quickly; they will expect that their integrity will be assumed to be beyond reproach; in other words, they will expect too much, and you will not be able to supply it all. The trick is to manage the expectations.
In any event, as I stated at the Fringe, I am leery about the authenticity of this article.
HAHA! He's not the only nor first SOE member to go bonkers on the forums like that, remember GarVa and that EQ2 dev? LOL, maybe SOE should start up a training program on how to be nice to customers.
HAHA! He's not the only nor first SOE member to go bonkers on the forums like that, remember GarVa and that EQ2 dev? LOL, maybe SOE should start up a training program on how to be nice to customers.
lol
still i think he needs to be fired and never work in video games ever again along with the other tools that gave us the nge
I did not read the whole thread. but i don't blame him. there is nothing in that thread that is constructive, just a bunch of children making nasty comments about the developers.
Actually there are some very constructive responses to the community rep's post. Like this one:
"I honestly wonder if you were expecting a backlash against a Friday Feature focused on TCG.
If you didn't have a choice on the content (as some are suggesting) then your boss should know better. It shows a complete lack of understanding / knowing the community to post this.
You know, we aren't allowed to post stuff about the TCG here. Even when there was an issue a few weeks ago when we could not claim LOOT IN SWG, it was locked.
Doing a Friday Feature about something we aren't allowed to post about is asking for people to get upset. No friday feature at all would have been better than offending your customers with something like this."
This is respectfully pointing out to the new staff person why people are likely to respond with a lot of frustration. It doesn't even hold the rep responsible for the poor taste of the TCG post in the SWG forum. The community rep's alleged reaction to this sounds much more childish and nasty imo:
"ahhhh.. you hurt me... I am...... I..... I am crying.. what ever. IT IS LOOT CARDS. LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT for in GAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMME and that brings in new PLAYERSSSSSSSSSSS. and new players mean more members for guildddddddddddddddddssssssssssssss.. and I am am tired of reading all this about TCG and getting nothing done for events I wanted to do let alone badge ideas. Now I just want to make a badge with a crying smiley on it and blast it out on here.
I get it. You don't like it. Attacking me got you on a list you would rather not be on with me. May as well go talk to yourself now.
Thanks."
All I can say to that is, wow.... I don't know if this guy's gonna hold up being caught between SOE and the people they regularly seem to piss on. That's not a sandwich I'd ever want to be in. I hope the guy finds a better job, for everyone's sake.
Comments
This is exactly what's wrong with that guy. No professionalism. What he should have done was say: "Forum Locked."
His "justified rage" against the trolls and nay-sayers in a business environment shows that he has no class and takes a vote of confidence away from SOE and its management. He did more harm than good with any of his rants.
His boss should give him a severe reprimand and have him apologize publically for his innappropriate behavior. If he refused - he can feed his daughter like the rest of us: having a job that he knows how to behave like a professional in.
<-- Manager of Employees
Well, the one thing he has going for him is that he works for SOE. At SOE, you can do things, make mistakes, run the whole thing into the ground more than once, scream insults at your clients, etc and not get fired. It's like government work.
Just ask Smed. He's still pulling down a nice chunk of change despite ZERO positive accomplishments in the last 5 years.
Stil, though, I'd be surprised that he's around to even DO another Friday Feature. They did can GreyPawn much quicker for much less.
Hell, if they DONT can him, GreyPawn should sue SOE for unlawful termination.
GreyPawn
I jumped into IRC today and at least two people immediately blasted me with links they thought I’d enjoy reading. Apparently, the latest Community Manager for Star Wars Galaxies has had… well… “meltdown” would probably be the best term. I’m actually really quite sympathetic, because he, like many before him, probably didn’t fully grasp what he was getting into. I haven’t talked about this, because the wound has been relatively painful for awhile, but I think I will now.
See, the thing about Star Wars Galaxies is that it is a unique MMO. It, like Ultima Online before it, was designed by a fellow named Raph Koster. I’ve spoken extensively on the topic not only with him, but also many of the UO CM’s that have worked on that game over the years. The parallels are astounding, and they both share a similar…what you might call “genome” as virtual worlds. The biggest similarity is that any world Koster seems to create imbues community with a sense of vast potentiality, which tends to result in a much larger portion of the playerbase being vocal. Compare, say, Guild Wars, or even WoW, who’s vocal board-posting population is magnitudes of percentage lower than UO or SWG’s. That’s just the way they were born - those MMO critters.
Consider what this means to a CM though. A CM working on a Koster-built world, I would dare say has a much more intense, more scrutinized role than a CM in another game where the community is less vociferous. The natural filters we CMs build to catch the precious feedback our dev team so desperately needs get blown to smithereens when the noise to signal ratio gets that out of whack. Now, as far as Star Wars Galaxies goes, this is even more difficult because of its history.
At one point, SWG was a vibrant, open-world sandboxy type of game. A natural evolution of the Kosterian design, with in fact many of the brilliant talents that brought UO into being having worked and still working on it. NGE happened, and there’s really no need to go into blame or finger-pointing, I really don’t think it was the actual feature-changes that did it. It wasn’t the thing, rather it was the “how”. In short order and without community feedback, the “genetics” of the SWG critter changed. Under the right circumstances, one could have actually rolled with such drastic cataclysmic change. But that was not the case. This is when it really began to happen.
Rather than comfort and understanding, the community was presented with a feeling of betrayal, even on the part of the community staff. Upon departure, the community staff, from what I saw in the posts, actually gutted the community. Disemboweled it. Under the circumstances, it may or may not have been professional - that’s not the point, the point is that this was the source. This wrenching, flesh-ripping leaving a gaping hole in the living, breathing community never did heal, and it is what I consider to be the origin of perhaps the only extant poisoned MMO community.
SWG’s community is poisoned. There is no cure. That’s a tough conclusion to come to, but it is a true one. It’s tough because I actually cared for the players, like, a lot. Shit, I bought a fucking sith robe. When I CMed, my short stint steering the community, I had such high hopes. I wanted The Senate to be the first real, true player voice in any MMO, with active involvement and an honest stake in what happened to the game.
I spent a lot of my time, during off-hours, eh. There are actually no such thing as “off hours” for a good CM. I spent a lot of my time talking to guild leaders, fan site owners, former players. I didn’t tell anyone, but I actually opened a dialogue with the guys trying to built an emulator, to find out what beefs they had - how they could be fixed. It was my hope to see SWG enter a new “golden age”. A term among others like “Star Warsy” that I learned were as dangerous as landmines. Countless times I was accused of not “Managing Expectations”… which by the way is CMspeak for “KEEP THEIR EXPECTATIONS LOW”. NO, damn you. Their expectations should be as high as MINE and WE should be MEETING THEM. You don’t reverse a decline by setting the bar as low as you can and striving for sub-mediocre. Fuck that noise.
But see, there were traps set well in advance of my arrival. Just like there were traps set well in advance of poor Draakull. Breath deep - that green gas wafting up from the forums won’t harm you, I promise. Hell is paved with good intentions, and lordy, my stint there was nothing but. I was told on several occasions that mmorpg.com was “no man’s land”, an environment hostile to CM existence where flames could destroy you or any well thought out post in seconds. On one of my fiestier days, I took it as a challenge. In retrospect, I can’t believe I actually necro’ed a post to issue an appeal to the refugees of SWG. I think at that point I had felt strongly enough about the positive signs the game and community were showing that I felt empowered enough to reach out to those “lost souls” that went away during the earlier mentioned “disemboweling”.
I am forever in their eyes, NoobPawn, for my efforts to give SWG a second chance. Eh. If I got just one of ‘em to try out the beastmaster upgrades, it was worth it. Still though, I drank that poison deep. It tasted like mild success at the time. As my time wore on, and my grace with my superiors waned, more and more of my communication became tailored to…well, managing expectations. I had a 12 month lease on a big ol’ Austin house, and a bunch of new furniture. I found myself at a place I never thought I would, arrayed on one side with the players and their interests, and on the other with the dev team and its interests.
In most instances, one coincides with the other - there is a large overlap that a CM can stretch out in, a staunch advocate for both, the very definition of our job. It was becoming less and less so, as I began to have quotas on number of daily posts, and my posts themselves were editted by committee. A slight forgiven was not forgotten, and errors began to compound. The seeds that I planted, like The Senate, that I had hoped would enrich and empower soon took on the more ominous character of an albatross. The bad thing you did, the beast you raised that you can now no longer feed.
It reached its culmination in the commitment of a minor error. One that affected nothing, but served as ample excuse to be rid of me. The CM equivalent of a dropped plate of french fries by short-order cook. I was however destroyed by the methodology involved in my removal. It was not kind or quick, and I did cry. I vowed not to reveal details or mercilessly gut the community I had so cherished in the way some of my predecessors had. The people who populate SWG had suffered enough, for god’s sake. I went quietly, and I miss its community still. Rambunctious noisy, needy bastards all.
Since then, I have not one day felt stability in my job. I’m good at what I do, I’m paid decently and I’ve seen growth in every game I’ve been the CM of (even SWG!). I dutifully took VMK to its bittersweet conclusion, I toil meticulously on infrastructure for a virtual world I believe will succeed, but… I still bear the scars from Star Wars Galaxies, and I think I probably always will. I joke with friends occasionally who ask about my time in SWG that “Being the Community Manager for Star Wars Galaxies is like playing Doom on Nightmare level difficulty. It is not a matter of winning. It is a matter of how long you last.”
So, no, I don’t blame the latest CM for his responses. He’s only visiting. I just hope that during his time, he learns the good, dark lessons that SWG’s community has to teach him.
http://swgblog.net/?page_id=979
I had a feeling part of his downfall was when he posted here trying to get former players back. This shows me the Devs have no interest in what the players want and the CM is just as useless as the senate (which I knew already).
Wow. I always had the feeling that the CM's at SWG were micromanaged.
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Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
Greypawn nailed $OE well here, and it defintiely shows.
There's a sucker born every minute. - P.T. Barnum
I just love how that asshole blames the community for this problem and not the company. For god sake the players are still giving soe faith to do something right and he calls them poisonous? All they want is a game to play and for the company to stop nickle and diming them to death as a replacement for content publishes. Just the fact that there still are players in swg goes so far beyond rational expectations it just shows that they are willing to go well beyond any extremes and horrible treatment by soe to give them untold amounts of chances and if treated right I bet they would respond kindly. If anything those people should be given a medal for perseverance (and then be slapped in the head with a trout for rewarding the company with money).
Newsflash, if soe didn't do such a bang up job of lieing and pissing on the customers with such frequency maybe the community wouldn't be so damn vocal in the first place. Yes there are many reason they players are vocal and no it isn't due to raph koster. When you do things to upset players with the frequency that soe does, the players will get vocal. Imagine that? Cause and is obviously a concept that escapes him.
He acts like he was building some new democracy within the game and he alone was somehow going to revive swg. What the hell did he think he was going to be able to accomplish in a company that had already looked at the entire playerbase of SWG as disposable and tried to replace them with shiny new players?
Did he expect to march into a developer meeting with a list of player concerns and enlighten soe as to what changes need to be made and think they would snap to attention and hop to it? I cannot believe this guy is so ignorant to still not understand that this company has a long standing tradtion of ignoring the players and doing whatever they think will bleed another nickle from their customers credit cards. He just doesn't understand that he was nothing more than a smoke screen and damage control.
The ego and ignorance of greypawn is unbelievable. I just love the last part where he talks about some dark conspiracy that was set to get rid of him for a minor mistake. Doesn't he find it strange that when a SWG community rep has a meltdown with the playerbase the first thing people on IRC think of is him? Gee I wonder why they did that....
If they actually wanted this game to succeed they would actually try to hire someone who had some experience in Community Management and actually played some MMOs (not an online Black Hawk Down game or w/e) and maybe not hire a producer who's only experience in online gaming is working on cell phone games. Just goes to show how much SOE actually gives a crap about SWG and how much resources they put into it.
Daff, read it again.
He's not holding up the "poisoned" community as the problem. He's holding up SoE for poisoning the community in the first place.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
Daff, read it again.
He's not holding up the "poisoned" community as the problem. He's holding up SoE for poisoning the community in the first place.
Agreed....that is how I read it as well.
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Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
Decent take on it, especially where SOE tries to dumb down expectations (to the level of their submediocre ability to produce) which I definitely think is true.
However he still gets it wrong about the NGE. Yes, the "HOW" in how the NGE was done, how it was developed behind our back, without our input, and intentionally not for us was egregious and made things worse.
But he dismisses the CHANGES THEMSELVES as being the core reason! The NGE is the NGE. It resembles the previous iterations of the game only in that the places in the game are the same. The fact that the Koster sandbox was drained and the legos taken away is the real reason why the rancor remains even 3.5 years later. This is why the SWG community is a poisoned well.
Had the Devs done what they've done over the past 3+ years to the game we loved (Pre-NGE) instead of the game we loathe (NGE), the results would have been vastly different. Instead they insist that the NGE itself was never the problem, just their egregious method of implementing it. All the while they continue to commit "in your face, EAT IT!" atrocities to those who are left, such as the TCG, which precipitated the current CM's meltdown.
The NGE itself is what we former players object to. It has never been undone. It's had lipstick applied to it, and had things bolted onto it, battlefields being the latest thing, but it's still the NGE. Forcing us to accept the NGE (and the TCG) as a "no negotiation" prerequisite to dealing with us guarantees failure. They can fix every bug, they can even change the laws of physics so that their combat system works without mass lag generation, they can even upgrade the graphics to the super modern ultra realistic eye candy level, it won't matter. All that is just polish added to the unchanged NGE that still lacks Koster's sandbox, skill system, and combat systems.
That's why this well is full of poison. Nothing SOE has done (and it was incumbent on them to do so) has drained even one ounce of poison from it. But nevertheless the level of water (subscribers) continues to sink, leaving the poison as an ever larger percentage of what's left in it.
that's what he signed up for. It's his job to deal with that in a professional manor. And that's clearly not what he's doing.
This is exactly it....
Waaaay back in 1998 I was in what you could term "customer service" for Ultima Online. During my training period one thing I remember still clearly to this day...
"When you are in this form you represent the company. Anything you say will be seen as representitive of the company."
The whole thing was my "personal self" was not the company nor was anything I said the opinion of the company. It was the fact that when I was buzzing around "in game" in my wonderful robe if I said something... players take it as a company statement.
If you cannot take a boatload of negative statements you do NOT do customer service EVER. Community manager is basicly a CSR for the forums.
Without talking about other crap that has been hashed to death for the last few years. One of the biggest problems SOE has is the sheer volume of stupid their own employees post on forums. (edit clarification: this has been an issue quite often on the EQ2 forums.. not sure about their other games beyond swg/eq2).
Guess what? When you post on this forum... or as a customer post on a game forum... you can be stupid. If you violate the forum rules they can deal wtih it on that level.. and not make some large public show out of it. As an employee you are NEVER allowed to act that way .. and if you do you should be fired.
This is pretty simple...
1) If the feedback is negative but within forum rules... you don't respond. Or you say something simple "I will pass along your concerns". It doesn't matter whether you do or don't.... its a simple statement that let's people know you are "reading" without stirring up the nest.
2) If its (1) but violate forum rules... you close the thread. "This thread is being closed due to excessive violations of our forums TOS. Please read <insert link> our forum TOS so that you are familiar with it." Then if needed you give some people a forum vacation...
Its really this simple.
A customer can piss off the company that keeps putting items into TCG that should be crafter items...
A company that pisses off enough customers will one day no longer be a company. For their new upcoming games they better really get a handle on what their employees are posting. Obviously this is just my opinion...
I've had people say crap to me in a game.. I've never had said to my face. Most of it honestly makes me laugh and I really didn't pay attention to most of it. You have guidelines and as with the above examples... you apply them in a professional way.
I actually liked doing the CSR thing as when I moved onto the Interest Team it was very easy to ignore people trying to distract me during "live events".
Oh and ya I had people tell me they would find me in real life and kill me... I can say it was probably not the best way for a call to start when I'd never interacted with them before... but I didn't make a public outburst so that other players would see a reaction. I pretty much just took them to a jailcell (loved UO) and said... I'll check back on you in 3 days... and went about my day.
When greypawn says things like there is no cure for the poisoned community he is incorrect, because the problem isn't the communityy and I am pretty sure if they were treated better they would respond better. I felt he laid far to much blame with those types of comments. Then to somehow conclude that communities in any game built by raph koster are harder to manage is like trying to blame the results of the problem on someone who wasn't even around during the cause. He is comparing two games that had massive changes that players didn't like to the communities of WoW and Guild Wars which both have very high marks of customer satisfaction. It is plain idiocy to make that comparison and then act as if his job was stacked against him due to the game design.
I understand he rightfully lays a lot at the doorsteps of soe, but most of that is done is the fashion of a martyr whos grand plans to rebuild the golden age of swg didn't pan out and then cries in the end that he was victom of some conspiracy to get rid of him. He can't even admit to the degree of what he did which really set me off. The impression I get from him is that he somehow thought he was the game producer or something and if he couldn't revive swg then no one in the world could possibly do it.
People that work on the internet are human. Why is it ok for vets to bitch/moan/flame/threaten IE Meltdown but not ok for this guy? Because it's his job? Doesn't matter, he's still human.
-Currently looking forward to FFXIV
-Currently playing EvE and Global Agenda
Because it is his job to be above board. It is his job to MODERATE said flames. Only 1 post was a personal attack against him. All he had to do was his job. His added dialogue only makes him and SOE look unprofessional but then again his outburst is a direct reflection of who he works for. With customer service people like that SOE's MMO competition has nothing to worry about.
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Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
That's exactly why. He's being paid to take the blows from the community to "shield" the devs.That's what every CM in any game company gets paid for, regardless of what they may tell him his job is.
He has a ban hammer. He should have used it. Instead, he stood there holding it over his head pretending he ws He-Man saying "I've got the power!!". Like the punk kid who says "I'll tell my mom on you if you don't stop!". He did none of the things in his legitimate power to do. He didn't remove/edit posts, he didn't ban anyone, he didn't even lock the damned thread until AFTER he had his little e-peen fun.
He is representative of the company to the companies customers. If he's allowed to stay, that's a definitive answer to the PAYING community of how important to the company their money is.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
Why would anyone Ban someone in SWG these days they need all the accounts they can get. The NGE killed the game the few players that remain in the game is starting to come to terms that NGE is there to stay and no matter what they do to the NGE when you polish a turd it is still a turd......
Most of the New dev team and CM's over there are straight from school or have very little exp in dealing with the public. The fact most of the Orginal people there have left to further thier carrers with a game that is not going to die soon.
The "vets" are not the ones who were complaining to him, it was the current paying customers that are obviously upset by this friday feature. The community manager wasn't venting his displeasure of a service he is paying for, he was openly mocking and insulting the people he was hired to build relationships with. It isn't like he had years of his life poured into the game and felt people didn't appreciate his efforts, he just started the job a few days prior to this and has no experience with the game prior to that. For crying out loud he is being paid to prevent situations like this, not to engage in them.
Yes people are human and make mistakes, but there comes a point where it happens enough that you can't just explain it away as human error. It isn't like this is the first time soe has waved stuff like this in the players face that they full well know will upset them and even this guy knew this topic would be heated before he posted it. It is the culture of the company to do these types of things and this managers response is all to similar to many others before him.
Greypawn nailed $OE well here, and it defintiely shows.
According to Raph Koster in his Laws of World Design:
Players have higher expectations of the virtual world
The expectations are higher than of similar actions in the real world. For example: players will expect all labor to result in profit; they will expect life to be fair; they will expect to be protected from aggression before the fact, and not just to seek redress after the fact; they will expect problems to be resolved quickly; they will expect that their integrity will be assumed to be beyond reproach; in other words, they will expect too much, and you will not be able to supply it all. The trick is to manage the expectations.
In any event, as I stated at the Fringe, I am leery about the authenticity of this article.
HAHA! He's not the only nor first SOE member to go bonkers on the forums like that, remember GarVa and that EQ2 dev? LOL, maybe SOE should start up a training program on how to be nice to customers.
lol
still i think he needs to be fired and never work in video games ever again along with the other tools that gave us the nge
I award the new community manager this
new article on the subject here.
Actually there are some very constructive responses to the community rep's post. Like this one:
"I honestly wonder if you were expecting a backlash against a Friday Feature focused on TCG.
If you didn't have a choice on the content (as some are suggesting) then your boss should know better. It shows a complete lack of understanding / knowing the community to post this.
You know, we aren't allowed to post stuff about the TCG here. Even when there was an issue a few weeks ago when we could not claim LOOT IN SWG, it was locked.
Doing a Friday Feature about something we aren't allowed to post about is asking for people to get upset. No friday feature at all would have been better than offending your customers with something like this."
This is respectfully pointing out to the new staff person why people are likely to respond with a lot of frustration. It doesn't even hold the rep responsible for the poor taste of the TCG post in the SWG forum. The community rep's alleged reaction to this sounds much more childish and nasty imo:
"ahhhh.. you hurt me... I am...... I..... I am crying.. what ever. IT IS LOOT CARDS. LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT for in GAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMME and that brings in new PLAYERSSSSSSSSSSS. and new players mean more members for guildddddddddddddddddssssssssssssss.. and I am am tired of reading all this about TCG and getting nothing done for events I wanted to do let alone badge ideas. Now I just want to make a badge with a crying smiley on it and blast it out on here.
I get it. You don't like it. Attacking me got you on a list you would rather not be on with me. May as well go talk to yourself now.
Thanks."
All I can say to that is, wow.... I don't know if this guy's gonna hold up being caught between SOE and the people they regularly seem to piss on. That's not a sandwich I'd ever want to be in. I hope the guy finds a better job, for everyone's sake.
i think that pic is what every member of the dev team along with all the fanbois and fanbots look like