News: Smed Tweets update on ProSieben Deal

[Aurmanite]

Originally Posted by Skitrel

Ok, I'm going through this bit by bit now, but first and foremost, as community manager Radar, you need to get on top of this kind of buzzword laden corporate spiel. This does not answer the question, it is typical political/corporate spiel and in this day and age it only serves to annoy people, they see straight through it. In particular this applies most to gaming because gamers are a VERY unruly bunch. SOE and Prosieben need to understand that this kind of spiel will do them more harm than good come the time when problematic situations arise and they WILL arise. Gamer aggression towards publishers is at an all time high these days, mainly thanks to EA's constant nonsense, if/WHEN something happens to anger people.

If you want the respect of gamers, you have to be candid and honest with them. The correct answer here when digging through the corporate nonsense is in fact.

"We want to do our best, we're not certain and can't say one way or the other. We're hoping to tailor things towards specific demographics and countries based on their preferences as opposed to blanket changes, the idea being to make things more localised towards individual cultures. Though we haven't really entered any discussion about this, so it's definitely an "IF" even though it's something we'd certainly like to do"

And the rest of the FAQ at a glance is riddled with this kind of spiel. Now, I'm not blaming you Radar, I'm almost certain that you're not the writer and it's someone else within the company who's infected with the typical internal corporate buzzword fever that goes on in every company, but as community manager I know you agree with me. There are two ways companies in gaming go, one is the corporate route, using buzzwords and officialese speak, and the other is the candid route. One splits the company and gives them a very separate image from the community as a business, on the other hand the other is very personal and above all else it FEELS good and honest to be talked to in this manner.

It is the right way for companies to connect with their communities, and as you're probably going to be battling some resistance to change (as ALL changes meet resistance) trust, personalness (made a new word lol) and honesty are extremely important.

Don't be EA, be Valve.

Excluding Crash7800 in that little EA bash... He's possibly the best community manager I've seen in gaming in 15 years of moving from title to title and being far too serious about the games I play.

This post deserves it's own thread.

But aside from that...

Has SoE gained any good will with this update? Have they made any headway in proving that they are listening and are willing to make big changes the community demands?

[basti]

Originally Posted by Aurmanite

This post deserves it's own thread.

But aside from that...

Has SoE gained any good will with this update? Have they made any headway in proving that they are listening and are willing to make big changes the community demands?

Well, they clearly went fully away with the region lock.
MEans, if you completly dont want to play under Pro7, you can just stick with SOE. Wont get EU servers then, but pings these days are fine to the east coast.

After all, this is how i have played several MMOs for plenty of years, because they didnt have EU servers to begin with.

[Skitrel]

Originally Posted by Aurmanite

This post deserves it's own thread.

But aside from that...

Has SoE gained any good will with this update? Have they made any headway in proving that they are listening and are willing to make big changes the community demands?

I'm fine with someone reposting it in it's own thread. Going to be going through this faq for a while in the meantime trying to absorb it fully and creating a shortlist of it's main points.

[Vancha]

Originally Posted by Aurmanite

Has SoE gained any good will with this update? Have they made any headway in proving that they are listening and are willing to make big changes the community demands?

I'll certainly return to recommending the game, spreading the word and planning on playing.

As far as point scoring, it's still a net loss, but they're far higher in the leaderboards than they would have been had they stuck to their guns.