Disclaimer: I’m a couple of days late commenting about this because I’ve been busy with work, and keeping some odd hours of late because of some personal stuff. So, with that in mind, let’s kick off this post.
A couple of days ago, there were a few people raging about how Mark Jacobs apparantly “threw” GOA under the bus because of the situation in Warhammer Online for the European Open Beta and some comments made by Iain Compton. Okay- first of all, the comments made by Mr. Compton, while hilarious to myself on a personal level, are just not things you post in direct contact with your playerbase. Ever. Are people batshit crazy? Absolutely they are. Are there a ton of morons out there? You betcha. But these are things PR, Community and Customer Service folks keep inside their head.
So this prompted a slew of comments, mainly this … and this … and of course this (amongst others).
Now, it strikes me as absolute hillarity that the first gut reaction is “ZOMG HE CANT DO THIS!” Oh my God, call the internet police, someone is blogging! If Mark Jacobs wants to make a blog of nothing but pictures of him and Paul plastered at some hole in the wall pub and called it a “personal album” I’m sure there would be people saying he can’t do this. What makes this blog any different than the communication he has kept up with people on sites like WarhammerAlliance.com?
Two words: Jack and shit.
The guy posted some comments out there. He’s also the General Manager of Mythic Entertainment (an EA Studio). I’m sure the only guy he has to report to is probably EA’s CEO. Mark’s a shrewd guy, he’s not going to post something so outlandish that he is going to get his Community people pissed off like Cuppycake and Moorgard sort of/kind of hint.
What all of these commentators need to realize is that Mark was responding to a huge issue. How huge? Well here’s a link to the thread on Warhammer Alliance. The thread is 71 pages long with over a thousand replies. This, in all manners of speaking, was a shitstorm. This was not the only post about this subject either. There were a shit ton of threads on WHA about this subject. THIS IS WHY MARK JACOBS WAS STEPPING IN.
This is clearly foot-in-mouth syndrome by Cuppycake at the very minimum, not to mention any other person who decided to comment on this situation with harshly critical comments towards Mark (I give Moorgard slack as he was basically telling stories about his experiences, and was looking at this situation from that perspective– or so that’s my take on his post).
I also enjoy comments such as this:
Like I said earlier, an official forum is a CM’s playground. It’s also a CM’s nursery and kindergarten..where they grow with the community as a strong leader and someone to appreciate and respect and trust. When you go through them and address the players on an external media – you are setting your CM up for feeling less able to react to the needs of the community, less approachable to the mass audience and less prepared for the backlash when it happens.
Why do I enjoy this? Because it’s like, not true whatsoever. Official Forums, while very good tools for communication are not a CM’s “playground”. I highly doubt that the CMs on the WoW forums consider it a plaything to wade through endless drivel. Granted, I’m sure it’s a great job because you can find a lot of stuff to laugh at, but seriously… who looks at CMs as strong leaders? Who? Most of the time, the CMs are the whipping boys of the fanbase who is pissed off over some sort of perceived slight towards their faction or class.
My mind reels from the entirety of this situation. I think Mark’s in the right on this one because the GOA stuff is pretty crazy, especially when THEIR CEO had to step in and comment on the situation. Mark stepping in on this situation really showed a lot of potential players of Warhammer Online that the buck stops with him and in some cases he will step in and handle things. As a player that really speaks volume to me. As an employee of a company, if the top guy came up and took charge because he felt personal responsibility to help people with something, that would make me even more excited to work at a place such as that.
Actually, it’s also really good Customer Service. You are showing the Customers that you want to step in and help them.
