Best Community Relations Award - Game Developers Choice

[Gill Halendt]

Originally Posted by Karate Jesus

Well, and a lot of people have been falsely banned for botting recently, since Anet can't tell the difference between a normal ToPK farmer and a botter.

How's that anything to do with "community relations"? Support and CRs are two different things. Community Relations are doing exactly what they're supposed to: communicate with the community when they have something to communicate. That is, pretty much nothing nowadays. So, I have to quote this:

Originally Posted by Zodiac Meteor

Dumb and talking is way worse than smart and silent.

Anet's CR is not really the best out there, but yeah, most of the times I believe the situation could have been so much better had the community been in turn a little better. That is, not so tragically delusional, more rational without absurdly disproportioned expectations - time schedules for in-development stuff? how's that any of your business? - , not to mention the embarassing ammount of lousy trashtalk toward CR and aggressive behaviour.

So basically, both the Community and the Community Relations have ample margins of improvement. None of them is doing any steps toward the other.

[Missing HB]

Originally Posted by BlackSephir

If it's about who avoids community's questions the most and when they talk, they say nothing important and specific then I'm sure ANet will roflstomp the rest.

Exactly , couldn't have say it better ...I would add also some things they say that will be done and that suddenly disappear ( i.e polymock , HA map , codex arena content , ...)

[Still Number One]

Originally Posted by Gill Halendt

How's that anything to do with "community relations"? Support and CRs are two different things.

Originally Posted by GDC Awards

The Best Community Relations Award honors the currently operating online game that provides the highest quality community feedback and experience, including customer support, forum moderation and leadership, weblog and information updates, real-life events, and other community outreach.

Maybe you should read up on the reward they are nominated for before you jump to false conclusions?

[Silverblad3]

Originally Posted by cosyfiep

R O F L!

It must be 'vote for the CM that you have had the worst contact with' award...they just got the name wrong.....since I cant really see how a team who rarely is part of the community could be on that list-----

(sorry for the negative post)

Why are you apologising? If anything it should be ANET who should apologise for the state of CR which for an online game is appalling by any standard.

Silver

[Gill Halendt]

Originally Posted by Still Number One

Maybe you should read up on the reward they are nominated for before you jump to false conclusions?

Ok, sorry.

There seems to be some confusion in this thread though, comments jumping from CR to Support as if these are interchangeable, cumulatively referred as "Anet". CRs have been admitedly rather weak in the last few years - again, tough, what are they supposed to do, when they have nothing to communicate? - , but I can't really agree with the fierce reactions about Support.

Most of the people I've seen complaining about "Support" during the years are those with little to no contact with reality whatsoever, expecting replies to their tickets and solutions in a matter of a couple of hours, egotic players that don't realize that Support cannot be entirely devoted to their own little problem.

Incidents happen, otherwise Support wouldn't even have a reason to exist. It's entirely possible to have glitches in a system - like the "payment fraud" mass ban last year - or false positives - like those farmers banned for botting.

Users involved in the "payment fraud" mass-ban were reinstated in 4-5 days - I know well, since I'm among those - and so were the farmers banned for "botting" we know about. With apologies and clear admission of their fault.

So, how do these incidents detract from the quality of Support in any way? People have been taken care of, their problems solved. Seems adequate to me. Sure, had these incidents never happened, the game experience of these customers would have been surely better. Support is not there to prevent problems, but rather to... support customers when issues arise.

Don't misstake quality of Support for quality of Service. Support is pretty much OK by any Internet standards, CRs could use some big improvements - but most likely they have less freedom of action than they'd like, and that's not their fault - , it's really the Service that doesn't work well nowadays, with too many issues and glitches that could have been prevented, leading customers to contact Support to have them solved.

[Karate Jesus]

Originally Posted by Gill Halendt

CRs have been admitedly rather weak in the last few years - again, tough, what are they supposed to do, when they have nothing to communicate?

There are ways of mitigating frustration that could prevent us from becoming enraged at Anet.

Granted, Anet has messed up a lot the last year or two, but the CR team could have done a better job of helping us understand why.

You know? Rather than lying to us or just ignoring us....they could have....explained things to us. Probably would have had a better outcome.

[Gill Halendt]

Originally Posted by Karate Jesus

You know? Rather than lying to us or just ignoring us....they could have....explained things to us. Probably would have had a better outcome.

I completely agree, but they're probably not allowed to. Honesty and clarity hardly have a place in business, so they can tell us only what they're instructed to.

That's the management's fault, not directly Regina's or Martin's...

[Morphy]

Originally Posted by Gill Halendt

I completely agree, but they're probably not allowed to. Honesty and clarity hardly have a place in business, so they can tell us only what they're instructed to.

That's the management's fault, not directly Regina's or Martin's...

It is, they took the job.

[Kharmin]

Originally Posted by Gill Halendt

I completely agree, but they're probably not allowed to. Honesty and clarity hardly have a place in business, so they can tell us only what they're instructed to.

That's the management's fault, not directly Regina's or Martin's...

Having been a mod on a different game forum there are certain things covered by NDA for legal reasons which cannot be communicated in forums.

Just my meager $0.02 FWIW

[Jk Arrow]

Originally Posted by Kharmin

Having been a mod on a different game forum there are certain things covered by NDA for legal reasons which cannot be communicated in forums.

Just my meager $0.02 FWIW

Well the Official Guild Wars Wiki was as good a place as any to post items that have approval of anet management. But again, they were told to no longer post there. Twitter apparently became the preferred method of fanbase communication and I doubt I'm the only one that thinks Twitter sucks.

[Cuilan]

Originally Posted by Jk Arrow

I doubt I'm the only one that thinks Twitter sucks.

Twitter is amazing. You get updates of all sorts of information and get to connect with many people you wouldn't know existed. The site is easy to use and has many applications for sites, browsers, phones, and on your desktop.

[Jk Arrow]

Originally Posted by Cuilan

Twitter is amazing. You get updates of all sorts of information and get to connect with many people you wouldn't know existed. The site is easy to use and has many applications for sites, browsers, phones, and on your desktop.

I figured this would come sooner or later.

Call me old fashioned but I like to read an actual newspaper now and then too...

[Essence Snow]

Originally Posted by Jk Arrow

I figured this would come sooner or later.

Call me old fashioned but I like to read an actual newspaper now and then too...

I think this shows our age...To me Twitter=12-14yr old girls gossiping, not a relavent news outlet.

[End]

Originally Posted by Essence Snow

I think this shows our age...To me Twitter=12-14yr old girls gossiping, not a relavent news outlet.

I am in-between on the matter, I think it's an ok outlet for person-to-person relations, but, as an actual corperate outlet it just seems unproffessional.

[snaek]

Originally Posted by End

I am in-between on the matter, I think it's an ok outlet for person-to-person relations, but, as an actual corperate outlet it just seems unproffessional.

i agree with "person-to-person". izzy should have a (gw-related) twitter, lindsey should have a twitter, regina should have a twitter, but i don't think anet/gw should.

[Lord Dagon]

i personally dont see twitter being like "the source for guildwars news". they should use the official site ,that they kinda made, to post stuff(and everyone has acess to).

I see twitter as being the "omg guess what i jsut saw this cute guy/girl and they were SOOOO fablous OMG" thats my general opinion of twitter(that and its a site designed to help predators but thats a matter of debate). I really dont think they should post GW info on there. Keep it to the wiki and they should be ok...

[Cuilan]

Everyone has access to Twitter, just subscribe to their Twitter RSS feed. No account needed.

I never get any of those kiddy or retarded tweets, as I mostly follow respected anime bloggers and other people or organizations of interest.

[Kula]

Do not underestimate the power of the twitter. It may not sound professional for a company to use it but it is one of the better of ways getting GW2 exposure amongst the masses. Twitter doesn't "belong" to just tweens, Justin Bieber fans can suck it.

[dancing gnome]

Originally Posted by Jk Arrow

Well the Official Guild Wars Wiki was as good a place as any to post items that have approval of anet management. But again, they were told to no longer post there. Twitter apparently became the preferred method of fanbase communication and I doubt I'm the only one that thinks Twitter sucks.

When were they told not to post on the wiki? I know Murdock stopped because her page became a spam fest and was no longer helpful, but I wasn't aware of a command from above (or anywhere) for their staff to stop posting there. It is my understanding that many ArenaNet staff, from Live Team members, Gaile Gray, Q&A members and occasionally community relations managers continue to use the wiki in some form or another (some more than others).

It's a myth that there is nothing for them to do to relate with the community; most of the work Gaile did when she had the role involved answering questions and discussing things with the community, regardless of whether they were being worked on or not. I recognise 100% of the 4th year anniversary content update to be attributed to FAQs from community talks with Gaile (something the current team chose not to do).

I'd say more but my last post was removed (without an explanation I can find) and I would probably just repeat things I said in the removed post so I'll stop on the final note that it's an insult to the gaming industry (or the people who decide the nominees for this category) that ArenaNet was nominated for Guild Wars 1. When you take away the GW2 content, you're left with the WiK campaign (which was very much player driven but also, I suspect, the reason for this nomination) and a massive failure to respond to community concerns, which should be their primary role.

[Jk Arrow]

Originally Posted by dancing gnome

When were they told not to post on the wiki? I know Murdock stopped because her page became a spam fest and was no longer helpful, but I wasn't aware of a command from above (or anywhere) for their staff to stop posting there. It is my understanding that many ArenaNet staff, from Live Team members, Gaile Gray, Q&A members and occasionally community relations managers continue to use the wiki in some form or another (some more than others).

I can't remember where I saw it but it was around the time of the WiK releases. I could be wrong so someone correct me if I am. Regina's last blog update (which was her way of saying what they were working on) was in May (the August updates on outages don't count.)