http://kotaku.com/world-of-warcraft-designer-gets-real-about-complaint-th-1775811149

When players are being insulting, they violate the forum rules, they surely deserve forum ban. But here they are getting bans not for breaking the rules, but because they dare to have their opinion.

There is a good example: RFP account is banned because he disagreed on edge nerfing. He didn't insult anyone, but got offensive response from the staff. He replied and, finally, got permanent ban. Did he deserve it? No. There are ways to handle it differently, without being an ass toward the players who speak their opinions, even if staff do not agree.

But the worst thing it is that this strive on the forum reflected on his characters. In other words, staff dislike his persona and brought that into the game. This is direct violation of the game rules (OOC brought IC). When his current will be gone, he'll post the full story.

Lastly, some posts, where are players criticize staff, are being deleted. I've seen at least three posts about Umiron have been removed. I don't know if authors were banned afterwards. I don't know if this post will be deleted too, by the way.

Do players deserve permanent forum bans when they disagree with the staff? How should they react, when staff writes them 'Enjoy your ban'? This is a provocation, and staff shouldn't be surprised that players get offended and begins to write not so nice things in return.

Reason of why I am posting this is to draw your attention that those matters can (and should) be handled differently. Staff is an example to the community and shall not act like this, or community will reflect it and it will keep snowballing, destroying and itself, and the game.

Most of the players never have any kind of conflict with the imms at all. Other people are riding the knife's edge of being banned ic and on the forums on every character. If you are the latter, maybe you should ask why that is? While you are at it, maybe ask yourself "do I get in fights with people irl all of the time too?".

Sounds quite a lot like the general state of CF Immdom for a while.

Did you have any personal comments to add? I'd also add that, sometimes, but not always the majority can be wrong. Good examples of that include: every market bubble in history ever. Of course this isn't the staff policy etc. but rather a personal observation.

Governance is a tricky thing. Expectations often deviate with reality. Theoretical solutions and additions fail at the implementation stage etc. Furthermore, "the grass is greener" can genuinely be the case, as once a policy maker/implementor embarks upon a specific route, the true reality of alternative outcomes are never known (and can only be speculated upon.)

Juggling chainsaws indeed.

No comments. In case it wasn't clear, I wasn't posting that to complain or be any kind of criticism. Just thought you might appreciate knowing the Blizzard guys are dealing with the same stuff you are.

I did a bit of research into WoW numbers/subscriptions, and they are very much where CF was in about 2005/2006.

If history is a guide they will probably slide further into decline in the coming years without major innovation and/or reinventing themselves. And that might be unlikely as, they are, to some extent in the trappings of CF with a tug-of-war between keeping the existing customers/repeat business happy, or striking it out with something new and trying to source a newer/reinvigorated player base.

Given that former is a substantially lower risk strategy (not to mention less labor intensive), it's unlikely they'll deviate from CF's experience too much. With WoW anyway. They might release new titles and so on which access other markets.

Basically taking what they learned from the previous edition, making the good better, throwing out the bad and starting from scratch around a really solid core. I imagine at this point it would take less work to re-write CF in a modern language (or use an already built engine in one) than to actually overhaul the code.

This is what CF "ages" sort of used to be. Certainly 2nd age was the major split between essentially stock Diku/Merc/ROM whatever and CF, then (I think) 3rd introduced empowerment and associated classes (splitting cleric) and possible the split of transmuter.

My memory is foggy, but I'm pretty sure 4th was data center explosion and 5th (Is CF in the 5th age?) was just a pwipe because of crappy server maintenance/backups.

Those last two would be like DnD releasing the PHB with new cover art and calling it a new edition. You aren't fooling anyone :P

WoW could essentially do the same, but they've chosen the "expansion" route (very similarly to CF) which has no end and eventually becomes IMHO unmanageable. For DnD it is that the splat books keep upsetting balance until you end up with Pun-Pun, and WoW has the same thing with area expansion/item inflation in exactly the same way CF does. Why visit new cool area? Because it has new cool item!

now i'm gonna have to email and pester him a bit!

thanks for sharing.


**edit to add: Isildur, did you realize that when you posted it? :D

Either way, that's kinda cool.

I always love telling people about Big Z doing big things with XBox. I'm like "I know a guy...", heh.

Gabe has probably talked to him more recently than anyone else because of when he had the WoW CF guild.

Anyway, Ion started as a player, then as a community manager on the forums, and worked his way up in game design to be the assistant director. Pretty dang cool. I think he was in med-school, that's a fairly big career transition : )

He and Jhyrb (and dev-) were my favorite CF'ers back in the 90s and early 2000s. Dude was a beast at CF.

He went to law school. And then worked at a prestigious law firm in DC. He was courageous to take the leap from that to work for a gaming company (as a non-lawyer).

Nope. Had no idea.