A New Challenger Approaches!

[krippa]

Sure, here is a virtual tour of it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a7OQZB-Y3E

Cool find. I always wondered what GM island looked like.

[Odonoptera]

http://aochideout.blogspot.com/2014/...view-2014.html

I wasn't aware of this article; thanks for the read.

I really appreciate all the feedback from this thread. There's a lot of work to be done ahead; I'll say that.

[LunaticAsylumLA]

The sentence currently means: "The amount of garbage was reduced globally." As Germany as a whole is somewhat interested in protecting the environment, that is nice to hear, but a.) probably untrue and b.) not really what was meant to be said.


Edit by Anzu: Meow!

I laughed for ten minutes about your explanation!
In reality, Funcom does not have money for translators, unfortunately. All of the translations since the release probably have had cheap-looking translations, even when native speakers did it.

[Kantakwa]

Welcome Odonoptera

I hope your job description is a little bit more customerfriendly than the ones of former/current CMs... Like, does it include specifically talking directly to players, posting and communicating on the forums? Because the biggest "problem" this community has with FC and CMs is poorly executed community communication. In every welcome thread for a new community guy people are begging just for simple and clear communication from time to time, and not even thinking of CMs hanging out with "their" community any more, because it was clearly stated that this is not part of the job of CMs. Don't mean to be rude, honestly asking if we can espect you to be around, let's say more often then Semzra (no other posts than server restart / update notes / "monthly letter").
Keeping people motivated and enthusiastic is about the details (like the little, hilarious detail that Semzras goodbey-thread without an actuall goodbey let alone post by her is a sticky, and a welcome-thread for a new CM is no sticky...)

Anyway, I think beeing a GM has hardened you enough, we are in Hyboria and not the sweet world...

[Slith]

I just found out that my guild bot login message is this:

:: [Odonoptera|Game Master]: Hello.
To [Odonoptera]: bihihih
[Odonoptera|Game Master]: ho hohoh

0_o

[Odonoptera]

There's another one of me floating around somewhere, where I reply with a simple "o_o" to something. I'll have to look around for it.

Also, haven't forgotten about the apple crumb muffins. Still working on acquiring the recipe from one of my coworkers!

[Achreen]

Hello!!!!!! Please don't ban me !

https://youtu.be/-DSVDcw6iW8?list=RD54zmJO810xI

[Jota180]

me too. After 7 years there better be something. I could count on my two hands what has happened CM wise during 2008-2015.

I think the problem is that CMs don't know a thing about AOC and are not interested to get into it whatsoever. AOC boards is a place where CM post patch notes and an odd letter put together in when-I-feel-like-it manner and consisting of dated information.

Odonoptera might be a single exception to that rule for what is very close to a decade of negligence and incompetence.

When I posted this review http://aochideout.blogspot.com/2014/...view-2014.html certain CM was offended yet somehow managed to do even less in 2015

so making this post constructive:

What I would be doing if I was a community manager?
- short DEV chats
- posting screenies of some work in progress
- posting artwork for some future content/content in progress
- QA sessions with the devs
- special events in game (we had like ONE, deer hunting event back in 2009 I think)
- more activity in MMO media (articles, interviews). Its super hard to find any news about AOC on sites like massively.com
- organizing contests (stories writting, artwork painting, fastest dungeon run etc.)
- writing articles on Conan and Hyboria to make people understand the setting better and to expose them to the works of REH
- AOC official podcast (even 20 minutes a month would be awesome),

and I could keep going (its just stuff on top of my head).

What I don't want to see:
- another community manager doing nothing but re-posting stuff like dev letters
- another community manager showing up just to write snappy response to why he doesn't care about players being angry (hello Famine!)
- another community manager writing "Hello everyone I am new" post and then disapearing for months on end,
- another community manager doing his work in a way that players are not sure what his job really is.

You can talk to game devs, community managers etc all you want but it's the boardroom that make all the the big decisions that those underneath have to live with and work within. It's possible the devs and community managers are not at liberty to tell all of us the full details of what they can do and the constraints they are under either. At best you'll end up with some general statements and very little promises not because that's the type of people they are or because they don't respect the player base but they're likely limited in what they can say by those above as is the case at any private company.

If you got a few boardroom suits in a Q&A session it probably wouldn't end up that illuminating either as the board of directors tend to be unable to go into certain details, the kind we probably would like to hear but the stuff they can't go into.

[Derek-Drake]

You can talk to game devs, community managers etc all you want but it's the boardroom that make all the the big decisions that those underneath have to live with and work within. It's possible the devs and community managers are not at liberty to tell all of us the full details of what they can do and the constraints they are under either. At best you'll end up with some general statements and very little promises not because that's the type of people they are or because they don't respect the player base but they're likely limited in what they can say by those above as is the case at any private company.

If you got a few boardroom suits in a Q&A session it probably wouldn't end up that illuminating either as the board of directors tend to be unable to go into certain details, the kind we probably would like to hear but the stuff they can't go into.

Let me be blunt here. The only good reason for a company to keep the details of it's inner workings so secretive is if they are absolutely dominating the market. Other large companies would be interested in finding out why they are so dominant and would be paying attention to any tidbits of information that they can find.

About the only thing that other companies would learn from knowing the inner machinations of FunCom is how to chase all of your players away from a popular IP and run several games into the ground.

i.e. the way Famine treated the player base. The fact that people who bought and paid for RoTG have absolutely zero access to that content unless they are subscribing. Making TSW Buy to Play while continuing to milk AoC players for subscriptions ad infinitum. Announcing anniversary content without announcing that it's going to be paid content. Announcing a complete revamp of the crafting system and then quietly trash-canning it several years later. Absolutely zero plans for an RoTGS sized expansion, yet TSW has had twelve expansions since it released. The inability to fix a single bug in this game except if that bug positively effects player progress. ("The rez bug keeps sending players to the rez pad, but screw it, that just slows down their progress so no need to fix it" VS. "Holy crap, they're only fighting the last boss in HoC? Get someone on this ASAP!")

In the middle of all of this there's the silence of deep space coming from nearly a decade of community managers. They report for duty, occasionally re-post other people's work and are otherwise earning a paycheck for... well who knows.

[Odonoptera]

The fact that people who bought and paid for RoTG have absolutely zero access to that content unless they are subscribing.

I know there's a lot more you have to say on the matter, but I'd like to mention that we're taking a look at our entire membership system for Age of Conan, and RotGS access is part of that review.