Curse

seut · Feb 22, 2009, 01:20 PM // 13:20

Martin posted this on a german fansite:

Quote:

ArenaNet hat mir angeboten, dass ich meinen Job von Seattle aus weiterführe, und ich habe das Angebot angenommen.

Wenn also mit dem Visum alles glatt geht, dann werde ich auch weiterhin das Vergnügen haben, mit euch zusammen zu arbeiten.

Ich wollte euch dies wissen lassen, damit ihr nicht das Gefühl habt, die Stimme der deutschen Community würde nicht mehr gehört werden

Also: Daumen drücken, dass mit dem Visum alles glatt läuft!

rough translation

Quote:

ArenaNet offered me to continue my job in Seattle and i accepted.
If everything wents smoothly with my working visa (permit?), then i have the pleasure to keep working with you.
I just wanted you to know about this, so you don't get the impression that the voice of the german community isn't listened to anymore.
Thus: cross your fingers, that everything wents smootlhy with that visa.

good news

Fril Estelin · Feb 22, 2009, 02:04 PM // 14:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by seut

good news

I'm glad Martin accepted the offer. It's good to have him as CM, and Regina should be happy

.

wb Martin.

Also very happy for the very nice German GW community.

Yang Whirlwind · Feb 22, 2009, 04:23 PM // 16:23

Great news! Good to see Martin got a chance to stay on board.

I think ArenaNet next order of business should be to hire someone to represent the Danish GW community,- no one ever listened to us!

Kay84 · Feb 22, 2009, 04:23 PM // 16:23

Great! Glad to have you back Martin.

Massive Impulsa · Feb 22, 2009, 06:41 PM // 18:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yang Whirlwind

Great news! Good to see Martin got a chance to stay on board.

I think ArenaNet next order of business should be to hire someone to represent the Danish GW community,- no one ever listened to us!

Well they do listen to Chop Chop:P

Lonesamurai · Feb 22, 2009, 08:16 PM // 20:16

Yep, I knew about this last week too (facebook and msn FTW! Martin is a good mate)

SO glad he is going to Seattle to carry on what he is VERY good at

MithranArkanere · Feb 22, 2009, 08:25 PM // 20:25

Nice... now what about Spanish and French? American region needs French and Spanish districts since they is spoken in Canada and South America, and we can't left out the Spanish community, source of the best suggestions ever made.

Inde · Feb 22, 2009, 08:57 PM // 20:57

Here's the message from Regina on it:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regina

It's been pretty eventful here recently. Last week we learned that many of our collegues in Europe and Austin had to be let go. ArenaNet felt the impact in our the Community, Web, Localization, and QA teams. Other teams throughout NCsoft have felt the ripples from the restructuring as well. In the long run, though, this will mean better information flows, workflows, and better cohesion across different departments. Short term, we're going to try our hardest to minimize any negative impacts.

German fans may have heard that ArenaNet was able to extend an offer to Martin Kerstein to come work here at ArenaNet. Martin posted this news on the German forums earlier today. We're super happy that he accepted. But let's not get ahead of ourselves or raise our hopes too high. Nothing is written in stone, because we still have to get past another hurdle -- the work visa. Yes, it all depends on the United States Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services now. So, please keep your fingers crossed for Martin and hope that the immigration process goes in our favor.

We truly regret that we were not able to offer a position to Peter Verhelst. Unfortunately, we are under budgetary and head count constraints, so we were told that it was not possible to bring Peter over, too. I'm really sad about this, as Peter is a super worker and it has been great working him over these past months.

I want to reassure our non-English speaking players that we are going to make every effort to ensure that you have a voice here at ArenaNet. Our Localization team in Europe was unfortunately affected by the restructuring. I know this message is ironic, because we currently don't have a localization pipeline, and it's not likely that our non-English speaking fans are checking my wiki page anyway, but for what it's worth... I am keeping track of website content that we published after the restructuring, and I will try and get those translated as soon as our localization flows are restored. We're hopeful that Martin can come over, and we will be looking for additional community managers in the future (though I can't give you a time frame on that right now).

I'd like to thank everyone who has messaged Martin, Peter, and I in the forums and on instant messenger with greetings of support for the Guild Wars community team. And of course thank you to all the people who posted supportive comments in the fansite forums and on the wiki. It was very thoughtful of you to think of Martin and Peter and to pass along your support. Sometimes when you think about a company, you don't necessarily think of the people behind the products, so it was pretty heartening that many players don't see us as an anonymous corporate monolith. It's nice to know that many of you think of us as real people with real lives (and feelings), so we really appreciated your greetings.

This morning I had a conference call with Martin to get synched up on our short and long term ideas for community, which I discussed with some of the bigwigs last week. At the end of our conference call, Martin and I concluded that these ideas were full of possibility, and will mean a lot of work. I can't talk about them at this time, though, because I can't make any promises and I don't want to raise expectations in case some of them don't materialize.

The prospect of having Martin work here in the studio is pretty exciting. Even though I'm fully aware that it's not 100% certain he's going to be able to come over here, I can't help but look forward to it. It would just be so rad to be able to work with him without having to do conference calls all the time, and there are a lot of creative, ad-hoc ideas that arise spontaneously when you're surrounded by teammates who you have a great working relationship with and who are genuinely awesome people to be around.

Next week, our Senior Vice President of Global Business & Legal Affairs (long title!), Randy Price, is going to be at the Xfire Debate Club to talk with other panelists about MMOGs business models. The title of that Debate Club is "Free to Play Vs. Pay to Play". I think ArenaNet will have some interesting insights to add to the panel, since Guild Wars kind of straddles the line between the two business models. If you'd like to attend, head on over to Xfire to check it out. Transcripts of the chat will be posted later on over on the Xfire site.

I'm going to wrap this up now. Thanks a bunch for reading this far. I hope everyone has an awesome weekend, and please keep Martin, Peter, and the other affected NCsoft staff in your thoughts. Cheers.

Vel · Feb 22, 2009, 09:13 PM // 21:13

Welcome back Martin. And great job ANET in getting Martin back.

slowerpoke · Feb 22, 2009, 09:52 PM // 21:52

cm for europe? i thought he only covered germany

makosi · Feb 22, 2009, 10:09 PM // 22:09

Dang, I was hoping for the dev team to roll out the Farewell to <s>Gaile</s> Martin event again this year.

I'm not that selfish. I just loved the event.

seut · Feb 22, 2009, 10:17 PM // 22:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by slowerpoke

cm for europe? i thought he only covered germany

The thread and its title was created by a Riverside mod, no idea where this "euro cm" is coming from.

Buster · Feb 22, 2009, 10:48 PM // 22:48

Good news and welcome back Martin!

JR · Feb 22, 2009, 10:54 PM // 22:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by seut

The thread and its title was created by a Riverside mod, no idea where this "euro cm" is coming from.

Martin was European Community Team Lead for Guild Wars, at NC Europe. He was rarely active outside of German communities though.

Billiard · Feb 23, 2009, 12:08 AM // 00:08

Great news - crossing my fingers for the Visa Martin!

Inde · Feb 23, 2009, 02:59 AM // 02:59

Yes what JR said. Considering though that there are no other Euro community team leads, I imagine he will be taking over Peter's role for the time being as well. It was his previous job title and since he said he's getting his job back... euro community team lead.

pumpkin pie · Feb 23, 2009, 08:50 AM // 08:50

i was right! another job opportunity, hehehe!

good to know you, Mr Martin, have accepted to continue on with Arena Net and hope visa won't be a problem!

Martin Kerstein · Feb 23, 2009, 10:42 AM // 10:42

Wow - my own thread on guru.

Thank you for the kind words- but let's not jinx it, and keep those fingers crossed that all works out fine with the visa.

GhostRaptor · Feb 23, 2009, 10:51 AM // 10:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Kerstein

Wow - my own thread on guru.

Thank you for the kind words- but let's not jinx it, and keep those fingers crossed that all works out fine with the visa.

Best of luck with it all, Martin. It's an opportunity you very richly deserve. Here's hoping the visa process isn't painful and the move goes smoothly.

Anon-e-mouse · Feb 23, 2009, 12:25 PM // 12:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

I'm glad Martin accepted the offer. It's good to have him as CM, and Regina should be happy

.

I'm so glad Martin has decided to accept A-net's offer. I know he had doubts about moving from Brighton to Seattle, because it would mean being further away from his family.

This is a win-win situation... and I'm happy Martin will contiue to be a part of the GW community.