Marketing/Sales/Customer service "people" people don't have any reason to climb the current immortal ladder. Their purpose is not to interact with the player, or to code and develop. So what difference does it make if they are immortal, not immortal, 51 or 59? They wouldn't be, nor should they be, climbing the same ladder as the current staff.

HOWEVER, you can't say "Marketing is the most important thing outside of the game itself," but then turn around and say, "But you guys do whatever you do, get no recognition, don't expect to have any input, you aren't really a part of the CF staff, your just a highly motivated player." That's not right either.

In the real world most companies develop products that start in the Marketing dept. I have a friend whoes a marketer w/ an MBA who works in finance. Basically when they want to develop a product to sell, they go to marketing and say, "figure out what people will buy." When staff in other areas of the business have ideas, or people want to change something within the function of the company, Marketing weighs in with their opinion. For instance, someone might have a great idea that would be a tremendous help to the customers, but Marketing might say, "Yea, that's great but we have no means of articulating the benefit of what your talking about so that customers will buy right now, so we're not behind your project."

On CF this would probably work more like a lower level imm would need a project. Valg or Daevryn or whoever might then go to the marketing folks and say, "Okay, based on your research and the results of focus groups and polls, what do you guys feel could be done within the game to reactivate players or bring new players in?" At the same time, when ideas are being kicked around Marketing might come in with input that doesn't have to do with game balance or functionality, but is very valuable in terms of how to spin it to the playerbase in an appealing way, or to use it some way to promote the game.

So it's not that we would need an immortal CHARACTER, it's that we need to have access to the same communication media as the rest of the staff. What if I'm thinking about what might be a cool ad, and I want to kick around my ideas with someone the same way that Braemir (cameo!) might kick around an idea for his area? Well, Braemir isn't posting about his area on Gameplay, he's talking in the Gathering Room or on Hamsah.

(Uh, this post might not make sense. It's 10:13 in Michigan and that means I've been home for an hour and put a couple glasses of red wine down.)