Category: Community Management (Page 2 of 2)

The HoMMunity Speaks

January 31, 2006 / Damion Schubert

On January 25th, merely a week ago, the HoMM community (which quaintly calls itself the ‘HoMMunity’) started a petition drive to delay Ubisoft (disclaimer: ultimately my employer) from launching Heroes of Might and Magic V in it’s current beta state. The gaming community was still smarting in the shorts from “HoMM IV: Ship It, 3DO Needs Cash NOW”. HoMM IV was considered a pale shadow of HoMM III (still considered by many to be one of the finest turn-based strategy games of all time).

The people who ran the notable HoMM community sites felt that the HoMM V beta (which is currently up on FilePlanet) did not bode well for HoMM V’s imminent release. So they not only collected signatures and started email campaigns of press releases to the gaming press, but they also employed an interesting tactic I don’t think I’ve seen used in a game community before: news suppression. Continue reading

Star Trek Poll: People Like The Borg

December 1, 2005 / Damion Schubert

Players often ask why game companies running MMOs don’t run polls more often and show the players the results of those polls. The answer is simple: in the players minds, those results are binding, even if there is no way for a company to act on those poll results in the immediate future.

Things like that were flashing through my mind as I read the poll results that Star Trek Online released. In particular, even though STO will only be able to ship with the Federation, it seems that players would vastly prefer an opportunity to play a Klingon or a Borg (27% an 29%) to a goody-two-shoes Starfleet hack (17%). Continue reading

The Costs of CS for NCSoft Titles

August 8, 2005 / Damion Schubert

Will Leverett and Rob Simpson of NCSoft recently did a lecture to our local community college about the ins and outs of running the service side of MMOs (customer service, account management, etc). J. over at Damned Vulpine went and took copious notes, and the result is a good primer on this oft-forgotten and underestimated aspect of running an online business. Included is a breakdown of how calls get routed through an outsourced India office, and the difference between supporting a PVE game like City of Heroes and a PVP game like Lineage 2. Come to think of it, I wonder how the introduction of City of Villians will change that equation.

One interesting nugget: according to Will and Rob, the customer service costs of running Guild Wars is considerably easier than for CoH and Lineage 2. They attribute that to lower expectations due to the lack of a monthly fee.

An interesting read. And I’m not just saying that because he p1mp3d my upcoming panel.

Matrix Turned Inside Out

March 16, 2005 / Damion Schubert

Matrix wins the award for best end-of-beta event, with trippy melting reality, red, lidless eyes in the sky, and as a piece de resistance, turning all the player avatars inside out (last link is wmv file, found via Kotaku).

As a developer, one can only say ’someone spent time making that work’. Perhaps it’s used for something else. I know that if I were a CSR, it’d be my favorite way to tell Little Script Kiddie to STFU.

Vader Pops Down, Visits Troops, Has Brewski

March 7, 2005 / Damion Schubert

I couldn’t leave for GDC without posting this story: over in Star Wars Galaxies, Vader stopped by and paid a dedicated stormtrooper-only guild a surprise inspection. Talk about awesome. Continue reading

Thottbot: Ambrosia for the Impatient

February 24, 2005 / Damion Schubert

The most remarkable and innovative part of the World of Warcraft experience wasn’t coded by someone at Blizzard – it’s Thottbot, as in “Dammit, which god damn tower does this quest say I’m looking for? I’m paging out to Thottbot.” Now, of course, quest info sites are nothing new, but the twist for Thottbot is that instead of being built by a dedicated staff of people with no lives, it’s built by anyone who happens to run a popular UI mod for the game (and yes, it’s optional) – the data is collected from that player’s play experience, and forwarded to the Thottbot service, which then compiles it for all to see. Continue reading

Should Be Required Viewing To Post On Any Forum

September 16, 2004 / Damion Schubert

Posting and you.