The following is a short list of things I would like to see banned from the interweb.
1. Developer: It’s working as intended. Maybe it is. But normally, when people say that? They haven’t looked it up. Or checked with QA. Or anything useful. The speaker has made an assumption. Real community managers get someone to look up whatever “it” is, and then we go out and say “this seems to be working. If you are not getting this result, please submit the following information via bug report or email to me.”
2. Player: The developers are out to destroy X class. Oh. Right. People working fourteen hour days for less money than your mother would make streetwalking are spending huge amounts of that time plotting against a particular class.
3. Developer: That class is fine, I know because I have a Level 90 X. Um, no. Maybe that class is fine the way YOU played it, with your particular type of guild, leveling up during a particular patch, three years ago. Meanwhile, if a lot of feedback is coming in about that class? Maybe something CHANGED since you leveled it up seventeen patches ago. Even if you’re actively playing your X, different variations of X may be different. “The fruit is in great shape! I know because I have a terrific kumquat!” What about the bananas, man, what about the bananas? No one is such a genius that they can ignore feedback because of their personal experience.
4. Player: The developers all play an X class/None of the developers play an X. Of course. All developers are exactly alike. They share the same opinions, feelings, and personality traits. They always agree on everything and they never have huge fights where the different parties vow to never speak again over anything as simple as class balance. /sarcasm off The hell? Stop eating paint chips. Just because you only see the final decision does not at all imply everyone got to that decision in lockstep.
5. Developer: Players won’t notice if we do X. Excuse me while I stab out my eardrums so that I never have to sully my innocent brain with such stupidity ever again.
6. Player: It’s a slap in the face. This is invariably from someone who has not been slapped in the face enough. Developers just sit around all day looking for ways to slap your face. Totally. Look, I KNOW how passionate we all get. I’ve had a beloved character banned, remember, it felt like losing an arm. I know what it’s like to fight for something regarding a patch note that I really believed in and to lose. But for crying out loud, if you’re taking something so personally, something that was decided upon with no malice, no disrespect, and no emotion? Something decided upon by someone who sweats blood for the game as his career, not his hobby? You need an actual slap in the face to snap you the hell out of the hysteria.
7. Developer: It’s Friday. We can wait and solve this (game-stopping flaw) on Monday. If you wanted a nice nine to fiver with weekends off, you could make a lot more money somewhere else. Far away. The sooner the better. Thanks for ensuring your CS and Community teams were going to work all weekend, though!
8. Player: Too little, too late. Yeah? If that’s true… why are you still here, posting? Because, dude. That’s kind of pathetic. Meanwhile, the developers aren’t going to give up, because as long as there is life and active subscribers, there is hope.
Feel free to contribute your own pet peeves in the comments, y’all, and happy Friday.
Eating Bees 
L said,
June 15, 2007 at 10:48 am
My least favorite is “by design,” when what is actually meant is, “even if it is un-polished as a dried piece of seaweed and makes no sense to players thus forcing them to ask other players or read spoiler sites (or, you know, quit the game in frustration)… it still technically works and I’m too lazy to change it.”
Ibn said,
June 15, 2007 at 11:00 am
In the MMO community drinking game, “slap in the face” is definitely worth a drink.
I remember being in a meeting where a coworker commented that a particular company decision was a slap in the face, I quickly looked at my producer and we both mimed doing a shot. I think that might have been the moment we realized we were both doomed.
Jeremy Dalberg said,
June 15, 2007 at 11:09 am
I have not yet figured out a delicate way to tell my players that every time they use the phrase “a slap in the face,” it sends me into fits of giggles. Which is… not exactly the intention, usually.
David Burke said,
June 15, 2007 at 11:14 am
Player: I pay $15 a month
Since I am paying the developers’ salary, they should change the game to exactly match my requirements.
I am not sure why players think that $15 is an amount likely to cover the salary bill for developers of an MMO, but hey maybe their is an occasional lack of proportion in some forum posts
Servitor said,
June 15, 2007 at 11:34 am
One of my personal favorites, from players: X has ruined the game!
Really? One thing has ruined the entire game for everyone? That’d have to be something major, like no longer being able to move in-game or not being able to speak. Usually the player means, “X has ruined the game for me,” but even then, the people who say this *keep playing the game*. I know, because I’ve checked. If it were truly ruined, they’d move on.
I’m afraid I don’t have a favorite special saying from the developer side of things–let’s just say I’m blessed to work with some very mindful devs.
Brat said,
June 15, 2007 at 11:35 am
“Tabled – need a bit more information”
I win!
Rich said,
June 15, 2007 at 11:43 am
“Player: It’s a slap in the face. This is invariably from someone who has not been slapped in the face enough.”
Classic. Two thumbs up.
Jen said,
June 15, 2007 at 11:59 am
“People working fourteen hour days for less money than your mother would make streetwalking are spending huge amounts of that time plotting against a particular class.”
I peed myself laughing at that. Thankfully my co-worker also plays MMO’s, so he understood the comment.
InterSlayer said,
June 15, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Most players agree that this change was unwarranted.
Jason Ballew said,
June 15, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Let’s see…from the player side of things:
1) “First!”
2) Anything involving Chuck Norris, Rickrolling, or anything similar. Stop. It’s not funny. It wasn’t funny when it began, and it sure as hell isnt’ funny now. In fact, let’s just throw in anything quoting or referencing any part of pop culture. Which, y’know, kills about 1/5 of WoW…
3) “Noob!” Yeah. Because everyone in the game should have the same amount of expertise and skill that you yourself have, and you jumped into the game at level 1 knowing /everything/ about the game that there was to know.
Face it. We were all noobs. Doesn’t give you the right to be a dick about it. You want to powergame your three-box party? You go right ahead. I’m quite happy digging for flowers over here at level three. I’ll level later. Right now…ooh, daisies!
Jason Ballew said,
June 15, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Oh, and
5) “Go to (insert spoiler site here)”. Um. If I wanted the game spoiled, I’d go there. If I’m asking for help with something, I want exactly that. Especially if you’re going to mention Allakhazam or Thottbot. Yeah, I know, supposedly the gold-selling part of IGE is seperate. Y’know what? I don’t care.
Tony H said,
June 15, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Actually, I think “Too little, too late” is true at times. Sometimes changes to the game can be “Too little, too late” when the downhill trend in population numbers is at such a staggering low, that no amount of new content can bring back new players. Player retention is a big part of these games, had developers worked earlier on revising old content, maybe that would have done well to keep old players and help introduce new ones. The problem tends to be, a lot of games seem to just provide new high end content without working that strongly on helping modernize or streamline the low end.
Too Little, too late is quite applicable at times. Many games have suffered from issues of developers just flatly ignoring an issue till the point of no return. Things suddenly become forgotten and thus, the damage is irreversible. While I might agree with all your other points. Sometimes, developers do spend too much time, on the wrong things. And thus, when they go back to something… well…
Rao said,
June 15, 2007 at 12:38 pm
The one thing that I see all the time that annoys me to death is, “X company doesn’t care about their players. They only care about money.”
First off, that is an idiot contradiction. If a company doesn’t care about their customers, they aren’t going to have any money to care about either. Second, the company in question is a business… with expenses… and employees… and benefits… and all that other stuff to worry about. Of COURSE they care about money. Finally, to say that they don’t care about their customers is the same kind of mentality that causes someone to hit a beehive with a rock and then be angry with the bees for stinging you. If companies didn’t care about their players, they wouldn’t have developers working at all hours of the day and night missing sleep, unable to spend holidays with family and friends, and completely foregoing any semblance of a social life.
Michelle D'israeli said,
June 15, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Players: Fix X !
X in this case is normally something really broad, like “PvP”, “the client”, “the economy”, or an entire class or playstyle. We’re not talking about obvious problems, such as a single spell having double the dps it should have, but normally a specific small set of complex issues. Invariably they expect the next patch to have ‘fixed’ the problem, and if it’s not, the developers clearly all play X, don’t do Y and hate anyone who does… never mind how complex it is to resolve.
Players: Well, I fixed that problem in my java/ruby-on-rails/VB program easily, why haven’t the devs fixed it?
Do I even need to list the huge issues with that when it comes to any long standing piece of software?
Players: being more than a decade out of date is classy and competes well!
Awww, young love ^^
And now some from a helpdesk point of view. Due to the detail needed to explain them, I’m not going to follow the above format:
You’re the last staff member in a building, closing it for the night. And someone comes in and insists that they must quickly print something out. Only they don’t say that it’s a hundred plus pages, there’s a paper jam, and printer is out of paper.
In fact, any printer problem full stop that’s not described in full. Or when they just plain lie about the problem. Actually, I can see a lot of community management annoyances at similar things!
I’m afraid I think that anything else would be too specific to my work, so I should leave it there.
Groovymarlin said,
June 15, 2007 at 12:44 pm
Players – specifically players who are also forum posters – say all kinds of irritating things, but my biggest pet peeves are the “Learn to play your class” comments or even worse, “It’s just a game, get over it” (usually said in response to some passionate but well-written and well-argued plea or suggestion).
When it comes to developers, well that’s easy. I work in QA (regular software QA, not games), and without a doubt the thing I hate the most to hear is “it works on my machine” or some variation thereof, so I can totally sympathize with the community manager there.
What about the bananas, indeed.
DragonPup said,
June 15, 2007 at 1:21 pm
You forget,
Player: “[Another] nail in the coffin”
🙂
Beasthold said,
June 15, 2007 at 2:59 pm
As a player, here’s my list of things I hate hearing from other players – because it makes me look bad by association. 😉
“It can’t be that hard to do X” – usually said by someone who’s doing good to set the clock on their VCR.
“They’re dumbing the game down” – your personal success doesn’t mean that a bad system is really a good one; it means you’re too stubborn to say “WTF is wrong with this?” like a normal person.
“Stop listening to the vocal minority/whiners/attention-seeking dev whores” – the devs should only listen to you, of course!
Damn players…
Hanford said,
June 15, 2007 at 3:04 pm
“The following is a short list of things I would like to see banned from the interweb.”
One thing I want banned is the word “interweb”.
Heartless_ said,
June 15, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Rao I am sorry to inform you that yes, companies do make developers work into all hours of the nights without an iota of care for their player base. All it takes is one bad decision and you have an entire development team working against their playerbase knowingly or not.
Khan said,
June 15, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Player: “If you don’t do [x], I’ll quit!”
Player: “If you don’t do [x], all of [class y] will quit.” This is especially vexing if I play [class y] and even more so if I don’t think [x] is an issue.
Any post using “u” instead of “you,” “pls” instead of “please” or leet speak (ZOMG, ROFLCOPTER, etc). I’m not a stickler for spelling, but please, take a stab at it.
Bremyyn said,
June 15, 2007 at 6:26 pm
As a player – I know buffs are great and all, but if you can’t get them after an hour of /ooc and /shout either go play or log off. No, all the (insert buffing class here) have not logged off for the night. You’re just on their ignore list.
Besides, it’s probably past your bed time.
Apache said,
June 15, 2007 at 7:10 pm
While a lot of the above is frustrating to you I’m sure, feedback does help the final product, no matter how poorly its sometimes presented.
Aufero said,
June 15, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Players: I don’t want to hear the argument about casuals versus raiders ever again. If you’re not enjoying the aspect of the game that most appeals to you, don’t play it. If you are enjoying it, stop bitching about how other people enjoy the game, and how their way sucks.
Developers: Stop telling me your game has to be played longer to be really appreciated. (Or that the slog through the boring and badly designed parts “builds community,” for god’s sake.) If the first couple of hours sucked, I’m going to assume the rest sucks too.
VPellen said,
June 15, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Similar to one of the things that Groovymarlin said, “It’s just a game!” really drives me up the wall. Maybe that just makes me a needlessly passionate idiot. I don’t care. I want to stop hearing it.
But most of all, any kind of CS response which ignores my question and then thanks me for my time. I’m not unreasonable. If you don’t know the answer, then that’s fine, only human. If you can’t answer the question because you don’t have the resources, cool. I can appreciate that and I won’t press the matter further. But when I ask question X, I hate getting the response to question Y, followed by a perky “Thank you for your continued devotion to company X!”. Especially when my question was bloody engineered to be clean, readable, and polite. I really like humanity in my CS. I utterly loathe any kind of response that feels like a pre-recorded “Thank you for shopping with Dannoz!” message.
Stint said,
June 15, 2007 at 8:22 pm
WOOHOO!! Sanya is BACK!
Player: “Carebear”, “fanboi”, and the all important post count.
Primus said,
June 15, 2007 at 9:51 pm
My best particular peeve I haven’t seen mentioned yet:
Player: “I demand that the Devs respond to X, or I’ll [quit|protest|tell all my friends what a bad game this is on my blog].”
…for values of X where X is usually some very minor quality of life issue.
After a couple of non-Dev responses back, this is usually followed up by my second-best particular peeve:
Player: “I pay $N, therefore I am owed a personal response to all my problems. I am a customer, and as such I AM RIGHT.”
The amount of rage this kindles inside of me is unhealthy, which is why I generally don’t read the forums of the games I play anymore.
Moorgard said,
June 15, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Pretty much all of mine can be found here.
http://www.moorgard.com/?p=44
Mhykol said,
June 16, 2007 at 3:24 am
Perfect list Sanya, I have to add one though
“How come you guys did -insert art upgrade here- when -insert ‘complaint of the week (cotw) here- isn’t fixed yet?”
yea yea, lets take ARTISTS and let them work on the CODE, that’s a bright idea
Saturday Morning Linkage « Voyages in Eternity said,
June 16, 2007 at 7:24 am
[…] continues her entertaining evisceration of everyone in creation over at Eating Bees. This one is a true gem, IMO. (I thought I added her to the blogroll, […]
brainsnorkel.com » links for 2007-06-16 said,
June 16, 2007 at 8:19 am
[…] Eating Bees » Things We Never Want To Hear Again “The developers are out to destroy X class. Oh. Right. People working fourteen hour days for less money than your mother would make streetwalking are spending huge amounts of that time plotting against a particular class.” (tags: mmog games development) […]
Grimwell said,
June 16, 2007 at 12:19 pm
One that does not really irritate me, but makes me giggle every time I stop in post in a fun discussion (that really isn’t talking about the game at all).
“Why are you posting here when X is broken? Fix the game idiot!”
Especially when I’ve posted that X is acknowledged and the devs who know how to do that fancy code stuff are working on it (and we are providing regular updates).
HC said,
June 16, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Can’t resist posting my own peeves:
Player: “I pay $13 a month, so I deserve (special customer service) / (a bug to be fixed immediately) / (class X to be improved)”
Player to Dev: “We pay your wages, so you have to do what we say.”
Too infuriating to even start commenting on it…
Michelle D'israeli said,
June 16, 2007 at 4:41 pm
HC, you’ve forgotten one of the other irritating forms of that sort of remark:
Players: You OWE us to fix that!
(And this time, hopefully I’ve closed the tags :P)
The whole ‘owe’ thing makes me laugh. I did a calculation once for one MMO into how much of each developer’s salary a single subscriber actually pays for. Turns out it was around 10 cents at the absolute most, with 2 cents being more realistic.
I always want to say to those who say that the developers ‘owe’ them something, that yes, despite the terms of service they agreed to saying otherwise, they developers do owe you personally something. But it can’t be worth more than 2 cents worth of anything. And them putting up with all those posts of yours about ‘fixing X’ is probably worth all of that. Ah well. Sorry!
Cito said,
June 17, 2007 at 12:11 am
haha I love it!
There have been many, many a time I’ve felt like banging my head against my desk after seeing a ‘working as intended’.
But what can I say…I’m a heretical fool so to speak -grin-
Absolutely agree with a lot of the comments above.
Lomen said,
June 17, 2007 at 1:26 pm
LOL Good stuff! I really enjoy reading your Blog.
Mike C said,
June 17, 2007 at 9:00 pm
Player: You’re ignoring massive player demand for X (where X is some core gameplay changing mechanic).
This usually comes after a thread hits about 20 posts asking for X. In their world, the forums, and the 20 people on that particular thread represent ALL people playing, ignoring the fact that, as you say, most people wouldn’t go near a games forum if you gave them money to do so. It really all boils down to the sort of player who thinks that their vision for the game is the only right one, and everyone else is full of it/dev suck-ups, nerfers, no-talent noobs etc.
Funny enough, that sort of player is most likely to turn into the “Works as designed” developer.
John said,
June 18, 2007 at 4:44 am
Player: The developers are out to destroy X class. Oh. Right. People working fourteen hour days …. plotting against a particular class.
Player: The developers all play an X class/None of the developers play an X. Of course. All developers are exactly alike.
Player: It’s a slap in the face. Developers just sit around all day looking for ways to slap your face.
Player: Too little, too late Yeah? If that’s true
Many players whine. Many customers from any company whine. I agree that it happens. Some customers are totally unreasonable and can actually be psychotic. But they are customers. I have had to deal with some customers that would probably benefit from spending some time in an institution.
Even though I have had customers that deserved a slap in the face (sometimes with brass knuckles), they never knew I felt that way. It was my job to solve the problem not cause it to escalate.
Most customers do not know how to articulate exactly what they want or need. When the customer feels that they are being treated rudely or being ignored, the less that the customer knows about the internal workings of a product and/or company the more strange there anger driven comments will seem. It is the company’s responsibility to listen and interpret the customer’s comments because few customers, unless they are an expert in the subject, can accurately state what the problems are and how to solve them. A customer’s inability to articulate a problem does not mean the problem is only in the customer’s psychosis. It is a company’s responsibility to determine what the market wants and needs.
Just because a customer is only paying $15 a month does not mean it is fine for any company to treat the customer rudely. It is never fine to treat anyone rudely for any reason. Many seem to think that just because a customer is an underage 15year old it is fine to treat them with disrespect. It is not. It is not right even if all they paid was $5. It is not right if all the customer did was use the free trial.
Internal discussions that broadly paint angry customers in a derogatory manner are a disease that will fester and destroy a company. It makes those that should be responsive to problems feel arrogant and above the customers needs.
Players may say all those things, that are listed above, about developers but in the end, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, has duck feathers and lays duck eggs even if the company intended it to be a swan it is stupid of a company to ignore or belittle players that call it a duck. Yes the players that point and say, “it’s a duck” may have seen everything incorrectly but to them…that is exactly what it looks like and a company is stupid to brush it aside with flippant comments, even if the players never hear the commnets.
Belittling angry players is a symptom of a continuing problem that infected and still infects many failing companies.
Jade Falcon said,
June 18, 2007 at 7:19 am
Player pet peeves; My number one forum player pet peeve is any jackass that whines on the forums about his right to free speech being infringed upon.
Dev pet peeve;Anytime the devs come to the forums hinting at some super secret update they’re working on that will be the best thing since sliced bread but they can’t talk about yet.If you don’t have any details I really don’t want to hear about it,there will be plenty of time to hype it later when you have it in internal beta and your polishing it.
Lastly it was mentioned above but deserves another vote.Any Moderator/CS Staff that allows the forum posters to post that first/2nd crap.Nothing drives me more batty then having to scroll through the first two pages of garbage to get to anything relevant.
Needin said,
June 18, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Most of the high notes have been hit but the other one that’s just a plain poor choice for Devs and CS staff.
Devs: X fix/feature/review — “Soon.”
In Devspeak, “Soon” means “Never, ever but if we wait long enough, the little darlings will forget it in a spate of ADD.” We, the playerbase, know that. Just say no and deal with the short-lived storm. Or if you mean to do it, tell us a rough timeline. 90 days, 120 days, next year? There has to be some sort of planned implementation time frame.
A nod to Jade Falcon as well. The minute the CS community allows the inmates to control the sanitarium, all is lost.
The Lulz » RE: Shadowrun: Reminding me why I hate kids said,
June 18, 2007 at 1:15 pm
[…] to pistol/katana and, as long as you aren’t a retarded shit-eater, easily rack up a high number of kills. There doesn’t seem to be a single weapon that really outclasses any of the others (only […]
mattlow said,
June 18, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Whats sad. I believe you are quoting some of my emails to you over the years. 😛
Allow me to take a moment and say, “Sorry about all that”.
Kendricke said,
June 18, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Play the “I hate raiders” drinking game!
🙂 Every time someone says “elitist”, take a sip.
🙂 Every time someone says “I pay the same $15 a month as…”, take a sip.
🙂 Every time someone says “hardcore raider”, take a shot.
🙂 Every time someone says “equal treatment”, finish your drink.
Skeetarian said,
June 19, 2007 at 1:31 am
As a lowly player, I must admit to finding some of these a bit disturbing to hear from people that work in Customer Service.
At some point, we all get jaded to our clientele. But, that’s easily fixed after the clientele gets jaded toward your company and you’re out looking for a new job.
Yes, some of us players get a bit passionate about our hobbies. Does that make our passionate request any less reasonable?
Just because some of the posters here get paid to be involved with a game, doesn’t make their point of view any more objective either…although, it should. 😉
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you folks…if a couple hundred of us quit over something as trivial as a perceived nerf to Class X, that’s a couple slushies that you won’t be able to afford next month. :p
That said, I do understand how annoying customers can be. But, as John said above…as soon as you let the temperment of your internal communications, whether that be at the water cooler or the board room, belittle the very people you’re trying to attract to your product…the sooner that same attitude will spill over into the external communications.
Evaine said,
June 19, 2007 at 10:30 am
Glad to find this Sanya as I used to read the Herald for your comments.Well I used too read your Tweety rants also 🙂
1. Developer: It’s working as intended. The masters of that phrase was UO after EA got involved .It seemed to be the only answer given. BTW have you seen the changes they (EA) are making in DAoC. I closed my account as I have seen their tweeks to help(?) a game they took over before.
One of my pet peeves are young players ,say 10-13 that are turned loose to harass the adult player base..
Alishari said,
June 19, 2007 at 11:53 am
“As a lowly player, I must admit to finding some of these a bit disturbing to hear from people that work in Customer Service.”
It’s a good thing these nuggets didn’t come from someone working in Customer Service then.
That’s the cathartic nature of “mutually agreeing to part”. You are no longer bound to that relationship. She can stab hot needles in any nerve she feels fit to prick now.
Oz said,
June 19, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Awesome points!
Some of my own, which even in a non-game but still software company come up as much as I see them on game boards:
*X is an easy fix. Just do it.” Ever heard of spagettii code?
“I quit/I’m going to X, it’s just better.” Statistically speaking, I’d bet 75% of these people either never leave, or go for a short time and come back. Even with the software I sell.
“(developer) I know it works, I tested it in (isolated test enviroment, although this last bit is often implied rather than stated)” The classic example is EQ’s Alchemy. It still happens because of how we test stuff. I’m guessing it must be taught in software design somewhere, but testing your code in it’s own little confined space is ok to make sure that the code is working, but you have to confirm it works in real use and application.
“(developer) X doesn’t know what they really want” Never assume you know your customers better than you do. Even if you are really sure it’s confusion, you want to be sure that fancy UI/interface/feature/quest/item/etc works the way your paying customer wants before wasting time coding it, or you will often end up redoing it.
Goemagog said,
June 19, 2007 at 2:14 pm
“it’s probably past your bed time”
But it’s always past my bedtime.
Goe, only worked 40 hours last week.
=j said,
June 19, 2007 at 2:22 pm
What kills me is the people who anounce “I quit” on a board that REQUIRES a paid account to post. Every game I have quit (seven and counting) I have never had the urge to announce my disatisfaction. I’m quiting. I don’t care. I’m not interested in the drama. Hell. Count yourself lucky if I take the time to pour some bile in the “Comments” feild of the account cancelation screen.
Parizad said,
June 19, 2007 at 3:39 pm
My subscription money pays for your salery! Are you kidding me??? The $10 or $15 a month you pay only buys 15 or 30 mins of my time each month. It does not entitle you to know why I didn’t check the forums until 1 p.m., or why I did not return your e-mail the second I walked in the door. Your momma lied to you; you’re not all that special.
I’m cranky. QQ
Parizad said,
June 19, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Yeah, I should proofread before submitting. It is spelled salary. I know it. You know it. My fingers do not know it.
Heather Sinclair said,
June 19, 2007 at 5:12 pm
“Developer X should be fired!”
yeah, if every developer that has had that said about them had actually been fired, there’d be nobody to work on the game. I know players feel entitled and all, but you not liking one dungeon is not grounds for removal of someone’s likihood.
“I quit!”
If you were quitting, you wouldn’t be posting on the boards. If you care enough about the game to be posting how you’re going to quit, you care about the game too much to actually quit. For the record, I posted that I was quitting daoc a good half dozen times. I hit the cancel button every month, and resubbed every month. The time I quit and finally didn’t come back? I wasn’t posting about it.
“I work as a (car mechanic|burger flipper|door to door salesman) and if I treated customers like you did, I would be fired!”
Just because you can manage to refrain from spitting in burgers does not mean that I should personally respond to every post you make. Sorry.
“Slap in the face”
I can’t post anything coherent about this, the thought of it alone is enough to send me into nerd-rage
Michelle D'israeli said,
June 19, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Hey, you guys have reminded me…
“I quit” is quite tame and understandable, really. A last vent of frustration, or a display of inner turmoil.
What’s worse are such things as:
Player: “I hate this game, it sucks, the competition is so much better, everyone’s quitting, the devs just keep breaking it!”
In my experience, players who post this have been posting the very same thing for at least the last six months. They’re clearly never going to actually quit, no matter how bad or broken the game is. And they’re the same type who say…
Player: “X is too broken to fix”
…without ever detailing how it’s broken, and thinking that they can avoid having to think by just saying that. You have to pity these guys, to be honest. All that hatred, but they can’t bring themselves to move on. Just like…
Player who quit: “This change is going to totally ruin the game”
Yes, the one who actually managed to quit the game, but not the forum. Often a paid account holder only forum, for added lulz. Normally found working with wontus quittus to stir up a tiny yet vocal minority.
Skeetarian said,
June 19, 2007 at 7:11 pm
“It’s a good thing these nuggets didn’t come from someone working in Customer Service then.”
I didn’t say the nuggets were what I found disturbing… 😉
Skeetarian said,
June 19, 2007 at 7:16 pm
…it was the comments from those still in CS that do.
(darned tab/enter button!)
blachawk said,
June 20, 2007 at 9:43 am
I really liked your style when you ran the Herald. I remember how shocked I was when you posted that it really WAS you in #gawaine IRC.
I felt for you a number of occasions when you ran into numbers 1 and 5. Mythic really got served during the whole Left Axe equation debacle, and from what I remember, you took the brunt of it.
As far as number 8 though, I can understand that while it must be very frustrating to deal with that sort of attitude from a CS perspective, it’s hard to respond when it’s true.
I’d last about thirty minutes in your job. Not because I wouldn’t be able to deal with the customers, but because I’d want to grab designers’ shoulders and shake them like a rag doll every time I heard a stupid idea that was going to make my job infinitely more difficult. “I know our customers complained that the trek to 50 was too slow, and I know we had to lower the XP requirements to placate them; however, I think our next expansion should be a PvE grindfest that will make leveling to 50 seem like a breeze!”
Alexis said,
June 20, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Developer: It’s not my area.
GM: Our tools can’t do that.
This is the fault of the dev/mgmt team really, but honestly GMs are much more useful when they can actually interact with the game world.
My DDO guild got a server first on the Warforged Titan – twice. The first time, it got stuck on the last pillar, a GM froze the event and we spent HOURS discussing it. The GM was adamant he could not help us, but strangely, one hit from a robot-slaying weapon killed it and we got double Battle Coins (ie, worst loot possible). So we didn’t get a real kill and we didn’t get good loot… but we did end the evening on a high. The Titan is not normally susceptible to robot-slaying weapons. The GM admits nothing.
OTOH in WoW *rant*
I don’t see why the CS for a massively profitable game is so much worse than the CS for a niche / dying game. Asshole overhead maybe.
MisterMerf said,
June 21, 2007 at 12:21 pm
I’m tickled by the fact that half of the comments include a bash against some particular expression that I think is perfectly legitimate. Two examples:
“Developer: It works on my machine”
I do my share of bug-fixing at work and, in my case, this is a serious problem. If it works on my machine and I’m still responsible for fixing it, I’m in trouble. I have to obtain access to a machine where it does not work (not trivial, for me) and spend anywhere from 300% to god-knows-how-much more time to figure out what in the hell is wrong. A problem that I could locate and solve in 30 minutes with my debugging tools can turn into three days of wrestling with cryptic or non-existent log messages on some production machine.
My time can be spent much more effectively on EASILY REPRODUCIBLE problems of similar importance. This means the “intermittent” or “works for me” problem will fall by the wayside until I run out of higher-priority work. Or until I get bored enough to dare it.
“Slogging through badly designed parts” is good because it “builds community”.
Slogging CAN build community. All of the most memorable experiences of leveling up an alliance character in WoW, for me, come from quest or monster design that resulted in unusual frustration. Every time someone calls out “*&%^, I just got killed by Mor’Ladim AGAIN!”, I smile. And then I suggest that they learn the valuable skill of looking over their shoulder while fighting and additionally that they should probably stay away from the interior of the graveyard as much as possible.
To the newcomer, such frustrations may be a reason to turn off the game and walk away. To the old-timer, they’re pure, warm, and fuzzy. If it’s happening to someone else, of course.
Just because 40% of all MMORPG players think they’re the center of the game universe doesn’t mean there isn’t a basis for their complaints. Even if they’re badly stated. Very badly stated.
Philip Ripper said,
June 23, 2007 at 10:40 pm
Player: [Name of game employee that is publicly known] is a #$@%@! %#@! @#% %#@@!# !!!
If a developer were to be built of pure evil and #$@ mongrels, torn from R’lyeth with the sacrifice of a thousand screaming children, then I think credit should go where it is due, and not JUST to the few people of which players happen to know the names. I always feel for the hundreds of coders, artists, dessigners, QAs, and other nameless, faceless figures, hovering over their computers. I imagine the falling of tears from their empty red glowing eye sockets onto the unpolished bone of handmade keyboards as they stare at endless forum posts just wishing that for a moment, the hatred could be directed at them. How else can they fill their little jars of liquid angst that everyone likes so much at the company picnics?
Devs: we are banning people for the following exploits: [list of class abilities and simple strategies used in the game, like kiting (shoot a mob, run a way, shoot a mob, run away, wooo)]. I don’t remember the details because my psych meds are KILLER on the memory, but I was almost banned from WoW a few years ago along with the pick up group I was in for what we thought were clever tactics in an instance. We used a combination of class abilities in concert to basically skip past most of the mobs to the bosses. It was nothing that complicated, but it’s been so long since I played the game that I can’t remember what we did exactly. Anyway, not that relavent. The big point is that we used class abilities, not hacks or holes in walls or whatever to achieve what we wanted in the easiest way we could.
A GM pops up and takes away our loot and kicks us out of the instance and says if we do it again we’d be banned for exploiting. It later got posted to the boards by a Blizz rep that several strategies you could use were now considered exploits and would get you banned.
You should not, as a solution to things not working as you desire, use bannings as even a stopgap solution (except in extreme cases like duping, etc), let alone a several patch-spanning solution. To state that using your abilities cleverly is exploitation may be denotatively true, but it’s just a bit nutjobby for me. Change things, try balance, make patches, don’t ban people for playing smart? That’s just so opposed to my freaking brain that it’s about to spit out steam and ramen.
love & diatribe
Peter Puffer said,
June 26, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Wow Sanya you have WAY TOO much time on your hands.
Iakimo said,
June 27, 2007 at 10:02 pm
My current #1 Pet Peeve:
“ICONIC.”
My god, doesn’t anyone know what a thesaurus is these days?
Matennon said,
July 1, 2007 at 10:15 am
Player: (Insert any post in which the poster pretends to represent the entire class/player community in a complaint) You aren’t me, you don’t pay my subscription, and who the hell are you to think you speak on my behalf? (Team Leads, of course, are exempt from this, so long as they are truly listening to/representing their communities!)
Player: “(Insert name of MMO) is dead/dying/will be gone within X amount of time” after any major patch they disagree with.
Taemojitsu said,
July 2, 2007 at 1:20 pm
I can’t speak of the developer attitudes, but all the player attitudes listed are fair game imo. No one is going to listen to a logical argument of why your class is broken and needs to be fixed. No one. And even those that do, will not feel motivated to post, therefore bumping your thread and allowing your concerns to be heard.
So any effective threads on the WoW forums are necessarily sensationalist, and that often means using tactics listed in Sanya’s post.
Note however, that these are all tactics used by people who still want to play the game, because they all heavily suggest a way to fix the player’s problem. So you should be HAPPY your customers are still talking this way. It means you still have a chance to keep them.
Criticizing the tactics listed here is basically attacking the customer for adapting to the nonoptimal environment they are forced by YOU to operate in.
Taemojitsu said,
July 2, 2007 at 2:04 pm
@ #13 by Rhao, ““X company doesn’t care about their players. They only care about money.”
This is one of those things where what is being said is not quite the same as what is meant. What it is really meant when someone says that is that X company doesn’t care about elements of their already established player base, they only care about expanding the net size of their playerbase by attracting new customer segments at the cost of old ones.
Maybe it’s phrased the way it is because the new customers who are enticed by the traitorous new features do not really count as “players”? =p
Sullee said,
July 3, 2007 at 2:58 am
Nah Taemojitsu, I think you missed it.
I am reminded of one player who posts in the WoW forums and uses sensational titles and bumps her own posts (usually they are little more than elaborately disguised buff requests for mages or druids). Now requesting buffs is fine.. trying to sell them as necessary without backing them with anything other than subjective and limited personal experience (whilst pandering to the trolls) is probably not fine.
The first problem is that no… you don’t need to use tactics like these to get attention. People do read your posts but don’t for a second confuse that with them agreeing with you. I’m not sure why anyone would jump to that conclusion as the process is opaque. CMs are not going to necessarily report to you every thread they read and everything they ask the devs to look into. This leads to what I would like to never see:
CM:
Yes, by validating certain threads you can shape the community somewhat but please; there are way too many players who feel they are not being heard unless their personal thread gets blessed by you too.
Sure you are human and your opinion counts but the next time you want to post in a fluff thread or otherwise give a non-approved, non-official/company opinion then do it with an unknown personal avatar and not your recognized company account.
Sullee said,
July 3, 2007 at 3:01 am
Whoops.. What I would never like to see should be:
CM: Validates random thread by posting opinion
Todd Ogrin said,
July 7, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Player: Do we get compensated for the unexpected downtime yesterday?
If the devs were responsible, this may be a reasonable request. Most of the time, though, the devs aren’t the ones responsible for the source of the downtime, like snow storms, hurricanes, earthquakes, or AT&T satellites falling from the sky like the burning fingers of god.
Knurd said,
July 12, 2007 at 6:38 am
“I agree with the above poster 100%”
This phrase is akin to those professional atheletes who talk about ” giving 110%” to the game. First off, it’s fucking impossible. Secondly, to actually attempt to believe what you are saying, you are discrediting all of the real thoughts and feelings you have about the matter, and you would rather dish out a catch phrase or buzzword.
The people who agree 100% percent are those who are enamored with the moment that they read whatever was said. They did not bother to put any critical thought into it, but rather hop on the thread/bandwagon to just bump the shit.
I certainly can not count the number of times I’ve seen “polling” threads littered with “/sign” or “agree” and then have it stated that this is an accurate representation of the community’s feelings because it breached 10 pages.
If you’re going to have an opinion, the least you can do is add your own inflection to a post. One full sentence, with your own inference; it’s not that fucking hard.
kim said,
July 13, 2007 at 10:25 am
i absolutely love #6!
player: “If they don’t do XXX they are going to lose out on all our money because we won’t like the game!”
i hate people who act like they represent a certain group (all women, all rpers…)
Player: “they have just kept ignoring me, so i’m going to quit. they won’t get any more money from me!”
i hate people that announce they quit because the game doesn’t bend to thier personal wishes
Player: “im going to keep making these threads and complaining to everyone because that is the way to make developers finally agree with me!”
if you don’t agree with the developers decisions thats ok. you dont have to constantly bring it up everyday in every thread for the rest of your life. it becomes a headache and an eyesore and makes you look like a huge loser
Taemojitsu said,
July 21, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Sullee, in a perfect world that would be the case. But it doesn’t work like that. Time and time again the CMs demonstrated that no, they were not omnipotent; they didn’t have time to read every one of the hundreds of threads that are generated every hour on the WoW forums, much as they might have wished to (and considering the content of most of those threads, there’s no reason to suppose they did!). As Tseric himself put it (mm… yes I do mention Tseric a lot… I still think he was the best and most passionate/idealistic CM and the community’s hope, before he was fired), the forums are no more than a very inefficient one-to-many-to-one form of communication.
Some thread subjects, from posters who are trying to change the game, can stand on their own, gathering bumps and support from other players who feel the same way.
These threads are usually about buffs.
Other threads call for changes which are less dramatic, but no less vital for the game. It is these kinds of threads which would have to rely on such sensationalist tactics as are mentioned by Sanya in her post and in the comments following.
Of course, most posters either don’t think to use these tactics, or eventually get despondent and give up, but trust me… if you cared enough about the game to want to change what was wrong with it, and you had the intelligence to realize how futile reasonable discourse usually is, and your idea/suggestion was simple enough that it COULD support these kind of tactics to gather bumps from trolls who accidentally or deliberately mistook the intent or rationale for the idea, you would use these tactics too. Or you’d give up, your choice.
Taemojitsu said,
July 21, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Yah, sorry for all my double posts ~.~ But I just wanted to add…
If you assume that the forums are just another game, that their purpose is mostly just for the amusement of the various posters and trolls. After all very little of what is said actually reaches the devs and convinces them to change the game, and the feedback that does is so generalized and widespread that you can pretty much assume it’s going to happen regardless of what any one particular poster does…
Then there’s no reason to be annoyed at these kind of tactics at all, because after all, they create drama, they generate lulz, the CMs don’t take them seriously in any case, and everyone has something to talk about. It might be different on… smaller forums, but on the WoW forums, the very idea of productive discussion on the General Discussion forum is laughable. And not just light laughter either; this is ROFLMAO-type laughter.
So that’s why these kind of tactics are used, accepted, escalated, and parodied there. Again, other communities are likely to be very different.