Developers, in case you didn't know, have a secret language all of their own when communicating with their players. In today's Developer Perspectives, we take a look at what is said and what it just might really mean. Check it out!

Some really, really do not like to talk about bad things. These companies believe that Twitter and Facebook should be an unremittingly positive stream of happy juice. They believe that one single admission of guilt or acknowledgment of a problem will send potential investors and partners into a tailspin of fear. If you never admit to a problem, the people with money will never know there was a problem. (As if the forum of a post-launch MMO wasn’t a place where kittens are regularly killed by infant deities.)

Read more of Sanya Weathers' Developer Perspectives: Translations in Community Management.

HA HA HA nice ones.

I laughed a lot, wil try that on my commz xD

Nice article! Thanks for the laughs!

Thank you. This made my morning. I have used these phrases too many times..

I have to admit I rather enjoy a good "Quick!  An Corp on the hamsters!" thread when the forum-dwelling community sits in that sweet spot of being very excited to get back in the game, but is patient enough to know it will be up when its up and start treating the outage and its cryptic status updates almost as if it were an in-game event.

So true :)

Here is one for you Sanya:

We made some changes to the Trials of Atlantis abilities.

Translated: We know we screwed up by making the abilities acquired by the long quest chain extremely overpowered, but you seriously can't expect us to significantly nerf them for those few that have completed it.

(As the playerbase exits stage left)

Lol Sanya.... your engineers have clearly not watched enough old Star Trek episodes.....

One of the very first lessons I learned as an engineer was to always TRIPLE the amount of time you give Management or the CSR's as an estimate for a fix from what you think it will ACTUALY take.

Unfortunately my current boss has been working with me for 10 years now and he's actualy figured it out by now.

.......

Kirk: "Scotty, how long before those Warp Engines are back online?"

Mr Scott: <does a few mental calculations and comes up with an estimate of 2 hours>  "Well Cap'n I dinna think you'll have em back on line for at least another 6 hours, maybe more."

Kirk: "Dammit Scotty, I need those engine back online in 2 hours not 6!"

Mr Scott: <deep sigh> "I'll do my best Cap'n, but no promises."

2 hours later

Mr Scott: "Scott to bridge, Warp Engines now restored"

Kirk: "Scotty, you're a $%@@ Hero!"

Mr Scott: "Aye..."

Great list!  Anyone who has spent some time on game forums will recognize (and probably see a little of the themselves in) them.

Good read that made me chuckle.  Now everyone in my office is looking at me wondering why I'm not slamming code fixes and why I'm reading MMORPG.  Back to work.

There are times when something is on the to-do list but doesn't have an exact ETA, but I would strongly recommend any aspiring community manager should make a conscious effort to avoid using the most feared and distrusted of all words: "soon"

sanya is so right lmao

Lol soe is good at using the word soon.  3 weeks ago they said they would have an announcement soon about the sale off of its euro customers to prosiebien.sat.1.

You guys want an example of how a company should not talked to its customers I will point you at this thread from SOE, this is how you should not communicate with your customers.

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/forums/show.m?forum_id=2586

Actually Monday will be 4 weeks and counting, and over 219 pages and counting, and that's not the over 500 replies that have been removed for whatever reason.

Here's another one for you:

The servers are still up = Thanks for playing Guild Wars.

I try to give new games and new development teams the benefit of the doubt when there are comments like "We apologize for the inconvenience" in notes.

But some places over-use the 'Sorry" comments to the point that they read:

We apologize for the inconvenience.  Here's your boilerplate patronizing comment, once again showing how much we really don't give a crap about your inconvenience.

Moral: Mix it up enough to at least pretend the constant apologies are sincere.

Originally posted by GrumpyMel2

Lol Sanya.... your engineers have clearly not watched enough old Star Trek episodes.....

One of the very first lessons I learned as an engineer was to always TRIPLE the amount of time you give Management or the CSR's as an estimate for a fix from what you think it will ACTUALY take.

Unfortunately my current boss has been working with me for 10 years now and he's actualy figured it out by now.

 

.......

Kirk: "Scotty, how long before those Warp Engines are back online?"

Mr Scott: <does a few mental calculations and comes up with an estimate of 2 hours>  "Well Cap'n I dinna think you'll have em back on line for at least another 6 hours, maybe more."

Kirk: "Dammit Scotty, I need those engine back online in 2 hours not 6!"

Mr Scott: <deep sigh> "I'll do my best Cap'n, but no promises."

2 hours later

Mr Scott: "Scott to bridge, Warp Engines now restored"

Kirk: "Scotty, you're a $%@@ Hero!"

Mr Scott: "Aye..."

 

I thought it goes more like that:

• 
  Kirk: How much time before we can take her out again?


• 
  Scott: Eight weeks, Sir -- but ya don't have eight weeks, so I'll do it for ya in two.


• 
  Kirk: We are dead in two hours!


• 
  Scott: Aye Sir, I'll do it in one.

"We are investigating the problem. We’ve got a fix on the test server right now. Knock wood."

Test server? Experience suggests for several mmos, that's the one we're playing on....

You forgot:

This is working as intended.  Oh shit someone found something else we messed up but right now we have plausible deniability while we try to fix it.