Curse

Vakir · May 12, 2006, 11:44 PM // 23:44

Can anyone explain to me the job of a Community Manager in Guild Wars?

I read these chatlogs on here and 90% of the actual spoken material is non-sense, is there a point for them?

They don't give any information regarding status on issues and above other things.

What is their job? I mean, I bet you atleast 75% of people in Guild Wars don't know there is even a community manager... I can tell you I didn't till I joined these forums?

What's your opinion? What do you think is the job of a community manager?

Navaros · May 13, 2006, 12:03 AM // 00:03

I agree with the comment that 90% of the stuff in those chatlogs is nonsense. I say that when representing Guild Wars in a Community Manager capacity, the representative should not be wasting people's time by making them read thru annoying fluff and sillyness in the hopes of learning some useful information.

Fred Kiwi · May 13, 2006, 12:08 AM // 00:08

to make people think that anet is a lovely kittin and is very fluffey, not SOE

Sir Skullcrasher · May 13, 2006, 12:08 AM // 00:08

to give us information?

generik · May 13, 2006, 12:13 AM // 00:13

To draw a salary.

Textural · May 13, 2006, 12:14 AM // 00:14

Well, they're not 'making' you read anything in hopes for useful information. Because their job isn't even to release future information to the public. From what I've seen, the Community managers for Guild Wars is there to answer questions, community interviews, promote the goodwill of the game, gathering community opinion. They act as the game representatives because they were hired for their charisma and knowledge to deal with players.

If you want to know the information, ask them yourself. If they don't give you a straight answer for it, then you should get a hint they're not obligated to answering that question. And you could either respect that or just make another topic about it later.

Red · May 13, 2006, 12:18 AM // 00:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vakir

Can anyone explain to me the job of a Community Manager in Guild Wars?

.... wait... Guild Wars has what?
This is the first I've heard of them... what ARE they? I mean, are they little Gaile Grey's running around? What do they DO? Oo

Omega X · May 13, 2006, 12:25 AM // 00:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Redly

.... wait... Guild Wars has what?
This is the first I've heard of them... what ARE they? I mean, are they little Gaile Grey's running around? What do they DO? Oo

Community Manager = Public Relations

The mouthpiece of Anet.

Vakir · May 13, 2006, 12:27 AM // 00:27

Ah the mouthpiece, what better way to put it so easily. It's a mouth not used at all, aside from really talking about nothing! AA.net is wasting their money truthfully.

hidden_agenda · May 13, 2006, 12:53 AM // 00:53

if anyone actually works at a software firm or web-based business, then you'd know what a community relationship manager (I'll abbreviate it as CRM here) does.

1. Customer relations -- in this case, the community is the users / customers, so the goal is to "manage the relationship" with the customer community. Generally speaking, the CRM will try to influence the customers so that they like the product (or at least not hate it too much).

2. Customer expectations -- set the customer expectations accordingly. If the customers are demanding feature X (say the 15k tormentor armor) and it's going to be late, then the CRM will do things like drop little hints that the devs are really busy, working past midnight, so might be a while before the armor comes up.

Generally speaking, the CRM is a person with one foot in the customer community and one foot in the development community. This is a GOOD thing.

Having been in the software business 10+ years, it's actually pretty common for software developers (esp. good ones) to be blunt to the point of achieving social ineptitudes. I could easily imagine one of Anet's programmer screaming at the gaming community over the AoE nerf or the lock gates in Cantha.

Despite my dislike of MANY design decisions in Factions, I have to say that Anet does deliver quality products.

Furthermore, in a business like entertainment software with thousands and thousands of customers, Gaile did very well at a fairly difficult and thankless job.

Nominal_Fee · May 13, 2006, 01:20 AM // 01:20

Making you buy additional chapters by managing an illusion that Anet cares about you, not your money.

Count to Potato · May 13, 2006, 01:25 AM // 01:25

Your right i dont know what your talking about!

Swehurn · May 13, 2006, 01:32 AM // 01:32

The OP's question was answered, and this this thread has very quickly degenerated...so I'll just go ahead and close it now.