I can attest the the validity of this.  About 10 years ago I was in the guide program for EQ.  I was actively going through petitions to resolve minor issues for players (stuck in a wall, etc.) and GMs would come on to reimburse poofed gear and handle the more sensitive issues.

If there were no petitions in the Queue, we were encouraged to grab items from the GM island and distribute them to players.  I still remember how players thought celestial swords (GM swords which guides were able to buy as well) were something like 100/10 in stats when they were actually 7/21, but the mystery of it all was fun.  I would buy celebration type food and hand it out as well as interact with the players.  Even guides, if proposed, could run an event and Sony would send a GM to help spawn the needed creatures, etc.

My point being that I agree with the article that GMs need to be able to be fun with the players.  It adds a dynamic element to the game.

Originally posted by Silacoid

 I can attest the the validity of this.  About 10 years ago I was in the guide program for EQ.  I was actively going through petitions to resolve minor issues for players (stuck in a wall, etc.) and GMs would come on to reimburse poofed gear and handle the more sensitive issues.

If there were no petitions in the Queue, we were encouraged to grab items from the GM island and distribute them to players.  I still remember how players thought celestial swords (GM swords which guides were able to buy as well) were something like 100/10 in stats when they were actually 7/21, but the mystery of it all was fun.  I would buy celebration type food and hand it out as well as interact with the players.  Even guides, if proposed, could run an event and Sony would send a GM to help spawn the needed creatures, etc.

My point being that I agree with the article that GMs need to be able to be fun with the players.  It adds a dynamic element to the game.

I was talking to a friend about this just yesterday. GM run events did a lot to add fun to EQ and I think a lot of MMOs would benefit from them.

It's such a shame. It only takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch. I can understand how the companies want to protect their players and remain professional, but it is my opinion that this is one of the major reasons why communities have continued to decline in fun and friendliness in general. Right now is when we need GMs and developers to be in game mingling with players the most. And right now is the time they are the least inclined or allowed to do so. Its really very very sad.

I'm sure there are a lot of players who don't like to be "told what to do," but there are a lot of other players that are looking for direction and someone to look up to. You are not likely going to find that kind of person among the general populace. We need real leaders in these games instead of NPCs, in my opinion. Someone above the normal player rank to decide when and were to attack the opposite faction. Someone who is going to be around for awhile. Someone to be devoted and loyal to.

I was a UO counselor.  I think UO went down hill after they removed them.  I thought the law suit was stupid.  The counselors added personality to the game which is lacked there after.  GM's are too busy to answer most of the common questions.  The sad thing was they also killed all the event coordinators who really did some amazing things.

It is something most of the current group of MMO's sorely lack.

I had some friends that were Wow GM's.  I can't think of a worse job, they were constantly hounded to not be human.

Such a good, and true article.

Around the time Trammel hit UO is when slowly GM interaction became a joke....and LBR just sealed the deal, with "generic responses" as you said in your article. Before that time, it was so awesome when, like you said, GM's were the "omfg look at that awesome char!"...they could have their own special items and armor, you could attk them, only to get owned by super spells...they would talk, move around, ect.

Other games (the only real others) that seemed to do this?

Shadowbane back in its first year had GM's that would literally become the uber boss monsters, set up in game events randomly....same with Everquest after launch, Dragon fights, random in-game events...

AC2 I believe had some of these events, and DaOC (at one point)

Any others I am missing>?

I say thou. WoW is the game that truly killed any type of GM that acted like a real player, probobly due to the sheer amount of subs.

Great Article Jamie,

To add to it, I remember a time when "customer service" and answering petitions was only a VERY SMALL part of a GM's job (and one that some didn't do at all)..... GM's were busy, making areas and items and enchancements.... doing events....and just jumping into mobs and playing around with players. But I come from the MUD environment.... My experiences there were pretty much 10 times more enjoyable then in any MMO I've played since..... and it's all because GM's were allowed to (gasp) Game Master...rather then reduced to glorified customer service drones. I've had hundreds of memorable experiences in those text based MUD's that still to this day (decades later) stand out in my mind.... I nearly have none from MMO's....and that's sad.

Unfortunately too many of the Corporate suit types don't actualy GET what tends to make games or gaming experiences entertaining to people. They get what it takes to serve alot of requests in a short time. Frankly, I think the best thing some MMO companies could do for themselves is to seperate out the "customer service" aspect of a GM's job....Let dedicated people handle customer service requests....and allow GM's to concentrate on GMing..... And one of the cool things about GMing, as you well know, is that it can actualy be FUN. Which means that you can actualy have supervised volunteers (i.e. very low costs) who are willing to do it.

Companies just have to stop being afraid of the occasional complaint or appearance of favoratism. Trust me...you'll gain ALOT more people then you loose by allowing GM's to Game Master.

I agree with the OP.  Alot of Gm's use to be really involved with the game and the players.  Unfortunatly, there were also quite a few who worked to the benifit of an ingame guild they would belong to and ruined it for others.  I remember killing VS in KC  for my epic drop with a group only to have one of the 'super" guilds complained that it was their turn ( based on a schedule set up by the 3 super guilds) to kill VS for their guild mates.  The GM came and took the item away from me  stating that the 3 guidls had a rotation on the Boss mobs and itwas this guidl turn to kill him and if i wanted the item I should join one of the 3 guilds.  Granted the next day  the head GM for the server appoligized and returned the item to me.

What I miss are the gm events.  When hate was going to open a GM game around and gathered some players in Qyenos and had us doing quests ( not telling us it was to support the evil Gods) being the nice tree hugging ranger that I was i refused to kill any of the wolves or bears in Qyenos Hills even though I knew I could not then complete the GMS quests.  low and behold I was given  a reward and have my players name shouted across the server solely because unlike all the other good aligns there I had actually stayed in character.  Turns out the quests were there to support the opening of Hate and were purely evil in nature :)

I used to play quite often on the Anarchy Online test server. There, the GMs owned the server, and the players were allowed to partake in possible versions of the game that could potentially be uploaded to the live servers, should everything work out. Needless to say, the players got used to things not always working quite right, but the GMs were fantastic about how they dealt with players on that server. There were systems put in place to reward bug hunting, yet it never felt like a "job" per se. We would report anything that looked out of whack, gain a few points based on our ability to find real bugs, our ability to be articulate, and the thoroughness of the testing done on the bug in question. Once in awhile, GMs would ask for volunteers to help test an aspect of the game and players would get to fight some special mob or run a quest that was being developed.

GMs over there WERE cool. They were allowed to have personalities, but still remain professional. The player base that played on AO:Test understood and respected a dynamic that just isn't found in online gaming anymore. While I've since moved on to different games, I feel, without a doubt, that AO:Test has been one of my all time greatest gaming experiences, simply due to this great interaction between GMs and players.

This is one of the reasons I'm warming up to Fallen Earth and Icarus in general, the GMs are not only 'human' to the community they are PART of the community, not some faceless gloyifed 'techical support helpline'

powers or not GMs are ment to bridge the gap between the player and the dev team, yea bug reports are part of that, but has FE proves the 'GMs in help channel' thing works, hell even the bug report cookie reply email thing makes the community feel they DO have a connection with the team behind the game and not just 'shouting at the dark' where things just get 'filed away' to may be looked at 'at a later date'.

Yea sure theres the odd 'T20's out there but it shouldn't be a reason to 'detatch' the GMs from the community, they help run the games we play, like I said active and social GMs like back in the day makes the community feel 'connected.

As a player I have really mixed feelings about all this. 

I am a roleplayer and I really enjoyed interacting with the event volunteers in AURORA in Eve Online.  They'd set up events big and small and interact with the RP fleets to create storylines that were published as "news" that effected the fictional world if only in small ways.  In fact, those are my favorite memories of Eve Online, period.  Nothing quite compares to being able to say "I was there for an event that's recorded in the history books of a single server game and my name is on a list of those who participated."

I've got logs of RPed interactions where my character would pipe up and have dialogues and interactions with AURORA characters and other player characters involved with various situations and in different contexts.  It was a huge, huge, rush.  I can't even call it favoritism because I was completely unknown there at the time.  My character just happened to be well roleplayed, I'm nothing if not modest, and meshed very well with the stories cropping up.  To this day I have no idea who the people were behind AURORA but I'd like to thank them.

The mixed feelings come in because of my history with RP MUSHes.  They're like MUDs but roleplay tends to be stressed over hack-n-slash mechanics.  Inevitably, there would be cliques forming and favoritism and favors behind handed back and forth between players that were friends out-of-character or who became friends because their in-character styles worked well together.  All kinds of interpersonal politics that had nothing to do with any objective IC reality came into play when conflicts arose.  Different wizards or "feature" character players could accumulate cliques of followers that had to do more with the powerful bennies they could hand out or OOC relationships, not all of them remotely sinister but just the natural grouping of like-minded folks, than things that had to do with the game world and how the characters might really interact.

Impartiality is hard.  Even if you're trying to be impartial.  You're going to like the guy that roleplays with a flair and makes your job as a roleplayer or storyteller more interesting and fun than the "jerk" who's only concerned with power and winning all the time.   You'll tell yourself you're just rewarding good behavior to set an example and encourage others.  But you're still playing favorites for personal reasons when it comes down to it.

In MUSHes, where setting that example is actually important, this can fly to an extent.  In MMOs, where setting that example usually has nothing to do with what the owners of the commercial product care about, this is harder to justify.  In both it can lead to really bad perceptions of metagaming and cronyism whether those accusations are fair or not.  And often people can be taken with the power, the status and the perception of "being cool" and "being liked" in a game especially if it's coming from folks they like and think are cool. 

MMOs are preferable to MUSHes for me these days for a couple reasons.  One is I'm also a gamer and I'm finding I like leavening the "work" of RP with the mindless fun of gameplay quite a bit.  But the other is the sense that an MMO is impartial.  If I do well amongst my peers as a roleplayer it's not because I'm part of some clique or have some special connections.  The seas aren't going to part for me anymore than they would for anyone else.

However, not just RP friendly volunteer GMs are biased.  Look again at Eve Online and you see all the controversy about paid professionals in CCP handing out secret goodies to guilds they're in.  I'll never forget a time in Asheron's Call when it turned out one of the guildies was also a paid GM and he showed us how to beat monsters by exploiting bugs.  This is human nature whether we're talking about roleplayers or anyone else.

If there's a special crackdown against RP friendly staff I suspect it may have more to do with a general hostility towards roleplaying, which actually does exist in many MMOs and among MMO administrators, than any reasonable reaction to favoritism.

So here I am with my mixed feelings and muddled message. 

I remember being assisted by a GM in original Everquest, when I had fallen beneath the world. The Gm was very helpful and teased me about rangers always poking into places they don't belong. She was a lot of fun and made the experience of rescuing me into a roleplay thing.

Roll the hands of time forward and my character dies in WoW in a bugged area where you don't pop at a graveyard. I petitioned for help and not only did the GM not help me, he openly mocked and insulted me for not being able to get to a graveyard. I had to get his supervisor to help, which he eventually did, but the whole experience was infuriating. 

The GMs used to be part of the community, with personalities and a desire to keep things fun. Not so much anymore.

Asheron's Call still, after 10 1/2 years, has GMs that show up in game and talk with players.

They spawn things, they kill people, they teleport people around, they joke.

So there are still games where this happens, just not those run of the mill boring MMOs :-).

 Another spot-on article.

I recently had an experience in WoW (yes, WoW) where a GM responded to my petition.  The guy couldn't do a darn thing to help me, but the experience was memorable for exactly the reasons Jamie described: he was witty, fun, and, noting that I was on an RP server and in an RP guild, made an effort to actually roleplay as a GM...which I don't think I have seen in-game in a very, very long time.  Honestly, it was one of the very best GM experiences I have had since Moonlite in SWG (and Moonlite from SOE still ranks at the very top of my list of good GMs, even if I didn't necessarily always agree with her decisions because she did - or at least tried to do - pretty much everything Jamie outlines in this article as being the hallmark of good customer service, despite having worked for Satan incarnate), even if the guy was unable to do anything at all to assist me with the reason I actually filed the ticket.  And yes, I actually did return the customer service survey for a change and gave the guy very high marks on his service and commented that if all GMs were like him, people would probably bitch a lot less about the customer service even when the GMs can't really do anything to help.

Digital acting, running around a world playing as bosses, spawing critters, making events, and generally spreading both joy and havoc (which is fun in a game so is technically joy :D ). . . This would be my dream job. :D If I were a game developer, I would so do things like that and to SWG with anyone who doesn't like it. :D

Originally posted by Bleakmage

Digital acting, running around a world playing as bosses, spawing critters, making events, and generally spreading both joy and havoc (which is fun in a game so is technically joy :D ). . . This would be my dream job. :D If I were a game developer, I would so do things like that and to SWG with anyone who doesn't like it. :D

Actually, to SWG with people who like that.  You can do most of that between Storyteller and Chronicles already.  Power to the players!

Unless there was more to that role player gm example I really don't think that was a big deal. If anything, the gm's should have been encouraged to do that.

There is a difference between giving a player an item or hindering a player or giving him/her info that might be hard to get (such as exactly when a boss would spawn) and a gm interacting with their customers to make the experience better.

In Disney World's Epcott center they hire actors to do shows and also to interact or "role play" with the park's customers.

I don't see why gm's can't also be tasked to do the same.

 Nice!!! i enjoyed reading this :)

On the topic,i rec" you guys to try out some private servers,if you find a good one you will be sure to enjoy GM's ingame events and chats like in the old days! ^.^ 

Originally posted by Sovrath

In Disney World's Epcott center they hire actors to do shows and also to interact or "role play" with the park's customers.

I don't see why gm's can't also be tasked to do the same.

 

Here's what gives me some pause.  Imagine if those visitors to Epcott were there every day, for hours, all year 'round and the actors could decide who they wanted to interact with.  Sooner or later you'd see exactly what I've seen on MUSHes.  The 'regulars', encouraged to be regulars because they get along with the actors, would get the lion's share of the attention.  Heck I've been on all three sides of that situation before on several occasions.  The actor, the regular and the outsider.  It gives you a pretty well rounded view.

Originally posted by OddjobXL

Originally posted by Sovrath

In Disney World's Epcott center they hire actors to do shows and also to interact or "role play" with the park's customers.

I don't see why gm's can't also be tasked to do the same.

 

 

Here's what gives me some pause.  Imagine if those visitors to Epcott were there every day, for hours, all year 'round and the actors could decide who they wanted to interact with.  Sooner or later you'd see exactly what I've seen on MUSHes.  The 'regulars', encouraged to be regulars because they get along with the actors, would get the lion's share of the attention.  Heck I've been on all three sides of that situation before on several occasions.  The actor, the regular and the outsider.  It gives you a pretty well rounded view.

Well of course people are going to be people. However, if I was in charge of the gm staff I would make it so that they had to interact with different sets of people each day.

When I was director of events for a local company we had a large holiday party for our customers. Now, some of these customers were regulars and people I knew for years while working at the company. And some of these people were strangers to me. So I made it a point to make the rounds "constantly" and make sure that all of my guests were taken care of. If that meant chatting with someone I didn't know for 15 minutes and then come back round again for another 10 minute round then so be it.

The issue starts when people cease to be professionals and just don their own personalities.

Another example would be that a good teacher will most likely have his/her favorites but it is his/her job to make sure that all of the students are taken care of.

My thought, and this is sort of generalizing so take it with a grain of salt, is that some players forget that they can be more than gamers at times and make decisioins based upon being gamers. But if your job is to transcend that then that is your job.

What a great article, Jaime. :)  Although...I have to admit it made me a bit blue and misty-eyed just remembering how very different communities used to be.

I think there's a difference between hosting an occasional event IRL and interacting on a regular basis with people who 'live' in a gameworld constantly.  Roleplayers or not there's a screw loose with us MMO players.  Sometimes in a good way.  The stakes of an outcome of a roleplayed event will matter much more to a player in an MMO whose status in a group, kind of the point of these things, will be effected by how his interaction plays out over a long term.

The dynamics strike me as very different.

I miss gm run events from EQ.  Now, almost no games run random events like them.  I miss NPC town raids, random dragon spawns and such.  My favorite classic 2d game was Dranisk (now Ashen Empires), the GMs used to raid the towns dressed up as demons, and they still do.  It's one of the best aspects of that game.  I think games like Lotro would be better off implementing a program where GMs could take players out of the PvP areas and raid middle earth every once in awhile (like 1 or 2 times a week).  Ever since it game out, I always thought it would be awesome if Monster Players gained and held control of all the sites, they should be able to assault middle earth.  It'd be something to actually work towards.  Players would try to stop Monster Players, because they dont' want them to raid middle earth.  Monster Players would want to capture everything and raid middle earth.  Never seemed right that Monster Players could take over just certain keeps.  They get to the middle earth gate and get killed in 1 hit.

I was an EQ guide. I use to go to outdoor zones and play comet. We had a wand that created sparkles and a spell that increased our speed so I would run across open zones with that spell while spamming the wand. It made me happy to see players yelling "Wow! Did anyone else see that?" I enjoyed putting unique experiences in EQ. I was  also a  part of the ARK program in AO for a shorter period. It was fun but I could not help but feel that the ARKs had more fun amongst themselves on a day to day basis than with.the community. That said, when we did interact with the players (mostly in roleplay) everyone had a great time. The ARKs really did bring RubiKa to life. But I had even more fun in RK on my player toon since I was even more free to plan and create player events. You don't often see as much going on in World of Warcraft by its playerbase and nothing by its CS.

I remember being an 'admin' on a role-play MUD 10 years ago. The position was completely volunteer, but it did offer a lot of power over the world: characters, objects, etc.  I remember summoning items into rooms to accent role-play, as well as making "global" text appear to set the tone for events and inform the entire playerbase of acitivies and "heralded" news. I loved it.

The problem was, and probably still is, the number of people who abuse these powers with minimal accountability. Turning GMs into "employees" is a direct way of enforcing a stricter sense of conduct, as losing these roles doesn't just impact their fun, it is their livelihood.

I would like to see a day when GMs can do more fun activities and be more than just CS agents in-game.

I was part of the AURORA project that Oddjob refers to for about a year prior to it's shutdown.  Bar none it was the best experience of my MMO life, though it sort of ruined EVE for me afterward (and MMOs in general I guess).  I grew up playing D&D, and the opportunity to perform a "live-action" DM role in a game with almost limitless storytelling potential was nothing but pure magic for me.

That said, getting things done was often a nightmare of complexity - trying to coordinate dozens of people from literally every timezone across Europe and North America, getting storyline and event setups approved by three levels of authority, actually working through a very primitive interface ... it kind of amazed me when any event went off even close to the plan.

I can kind of see CCPs point in closing it down, given the possibility of abuse or favoritism, the relatively low impact on the playerbase (an event can only play to so many people out of the playerbase as a whole) and the overhead of supporting a volunteer team that was almost a hundred people strong at one point (with five levels of authority at that).

Still, the day it closed down something special within EVE died never to return.  The Mercury team does a good job with the limited mandate they have (mostly ex-AURORA still trying to provide that magic) - but it's not the same as it used to be.

AURORA wasn't the only great volunteer element of CCP that contributes (contributed) to the community there though.  The volunteer forum mod team was a great builder of community and was very well recognized within the forum population prior to it's shut-down in favour of paid moderators.  The current Community Manager came from those ranks actually.  (Indeed, I know for a fact that at least several of the current developers and staff at CCP cut their teeth in one of the four vol programs, and a few more are working in the industry on other MMOs)

The newbie helping STAR team is a very nice touch, which once had a mandate to try and personally greet every new player to EVE and answer any questions they might have had.  I think they're mostly in-charge of moderating the newbie chat channel now - but still a very important function that you don't see much anywhere else.

And even though most MMOs have a test server and dedicated tester-players, the EVE bug hunter team just seems to outdo any of the ones I've seen.  Perhaps because they've been part of the QA department for so long that the devs trust the ECAID volunteers and their opinion - I don't really know.

CCP was founded by people who loved the original UO, and it showed in the creation of a volunteer program.  They've made some missteps over time, and they've given up on things I personally would have rather seen continue - but they're living proof that such things are viable as long as there is a political will to implement and support them.  Frankly, it's a value-added service that studios such as Icarus might well consider implementing as a way to enhance their product.

The main AURORA event I was involved in was the Khanid Carrier series of events.  It was kind of amazing to me that we even had that going on given how relatively few people were involved.  The battles would see pretty broad participation but the side events building up to them almost felt like they belonged to just a handful of small Corps that were vested in Khanid RP.  The whole thing blew my mind.

However, you can still have a D&D like RP experience in at least one MMO.  SWG, which is hard to otherwise recommend, does have a couple toolsets for player content creation.  The Storyteller system focuses on live interaction between a player managing the props and NPCs and a player party.  It's not instanced so the Storyteller can set up props in player cities, with permission, and many regions on many worlds for a real involved adventure.  As an old tabletop hand myself, I can say it's by far the closest I've come to old school roleplaying adventure in MMOs so far and that includes CoH's Architect.

In many ways, I think putting the tools of creation as much into the hands of the "right" players as possible might well make for a much more lively, dynamic and egalitarian system of adventure and narrative creation than what we've seen before.  And by the "right" players I mean those not so motivated by material reward.  That was the bane of Architect.  Why have a handful of RP GMs when you could have hundreds of player GMs and players organizing freely around them?  If one clique isn't working find another.

Originally posted by Gravarg

  I think games like Lotro would be better off implementing a program where GMs could take players out of the PvP areas and raid middle earth every once in awhile (like 1 or 2 times a week).  Ever since it game out, I always thought it would be awesome if Monster Players gained and held control of all the sites, they should be able to assault middle earth.  It'd be something to actually work towards.  Players would try to stop Monster Players, because they dont' want them to raid middle earth.  Monster Players would want to capture everything and raid middle earth.  Never seemed right that Monster Players could take over just certain keeps.  They get to the middle earth gate and get killed in 1 hit.

LOTRO is based on the books and so there is a limit to where such assaults might take place and in certain circumstances they were storybound.

Still, in such places like angmar it might be more feasible.

Originally posted by Lanthir

What I miss are the gm events.  When hate was going to open a GM game around and gathered some players in Qyenos and had us doing quests ( not telling us it was to support the evil Gods) being the nice tree hugging ranger that I was i refused to kill any of the wolves or bears in Qyenos Hills even though I knew I could not then complete the GMS quests.  low and behold I was given  a reward and have my players name shouted across the server solely because unlike all the other good aligns there I had actually stayed in character.  Turns out the quests were there to support the opening of Hate and were purely evil in nature :)

Heh, grats.  That's pretty cool actually and it takes me back.  I remember when some rangers and druids who started in the Qeynos area refused to kill wolves and bears even though there were no repercussions for doing so (unless Holly Windstalker happened to catch you doing it).

For my part, I can't say that I ever got to participate in any good GM events.  As I remember it about the only GM events I ever got to be a part of were the ones where the GMs would go into a zone as ridiculously overpowered monsters for the level range of the zone and then procede to massacre/gank all the players in the zone who were much lower level then the GM monsters.  That did nothing but piss me off.

My view of GM's is not even close to being a good one,not now or ever,and i have been around a long time.

What i have seen is lots of GM"s trying to act cool,and lots of ass kissers willing to make them look cool.You will ALWAYS have these little teenage geeks that want a GM friend to stick up for their arguments or want something free or special treatment,it is a sad use of GM's.

What a GM SHOULD be and usually is are two different things.A GM should have the ability in game to go in fly by mode,invisible,god mode for the sheer purpose of making sure the players are not cheating.Sure there is GM events i have never seen a good one in my life,i don't care what anyone tries to tell me,i have seen people praise the most idiotic events ,so i am not listening.

I don't want ANY of those dumb GM events,just make sure there is no botting and no cheating,if you can't handle that,then don't be a GM just to look "COOL".

You can't even have GM's stand in the noob starting areas,because you will have 100 players and 1-2 GM to ask questions,so that doesn't work either,unless you want to wait in line to ask a question every 20 minutes.Everything sounds good on paper,let's have GM's they can answer questions,run FUN events,well it does not happen with substance,so don't waste my time sending out a GM for those reasons.

Originally posted by skeaser

Originally posted by Silacoid

 I can attest the the validity of this.  About 10 years ago I was in the guide program for EQ.  I was actively going through petitions to resolve minor issues for players (stuck in a wall, etc.) and GMs would come on to reimburse poofed gear and handle the more sensitive issues.

If there were no petitions in the Queue, we were encouraged to grab items from the GM island and distribute them to players.  I still remember how players thought celestial swords (GM swords which guides were able to buy as well) were something like 100/10 in stats when they were actually 7/21, but the mystery of it all was fun.  I would buy celebration type food and hand it out as well as interact with the players.  Even guides, if proposed, could run an event and Sony would send a GM to help spawn the needed creatures, etc.

My point being that I agree with the article that GMs need to be able to be fun with the players.  It adds a dynamic element to the game.

 

I was talking to a friend about this just yesterday. GM run events did a lot to add fun to EQ and I think a lot of MMOs would benefit from them.

 

Ah yes I too remember those days in EQ. They were the fun times. They seemed to have been lost in the abyss of darkness to become more professional without the human touch.

I have been playing WoW many years now and I have spoke in private chat in game maybe twice and it was all pretty much standard replies. Most of the time the petitions go unanswered or I get that standard in game and email response. Getting nothing solved. Oh and then the lovely survey about my exp with GM in so and so. Which my comments are telling them that I didn't speak to a GM and therefore have nothing to say about the GM. Also letting them know my problem was not solved. 

The good times have passed and to robotic times seem to have arrived.

 would this be from Everquest? reminds me of when Afterlife/Clan blood claw where farming lady vox and Nag and had GMs help. in the end it resulted in a New GM for mith mar server and CBC being disbanded.  reading this gave me a flash back from over ten years ago.

after many years of gaming I can agree with this. i still remeber my EQ Guides and GMs,  sadly the industry just doesnt allow it anymore.

Hats off to Ex-GM Mith Marr Lily, . GM Chaolash, and Guide Partul

Originally posted by OddjobXL

The main AURORA event I was involved in was the Khanid Carrier series of events.  It was kind of amazing to me that we even had that going on given how relatively few people were involved.  The battles would see pretty broad participation but the side events building up to them almost felt like they belonged to just a handful of small Corps that were vested in Khanid RP.  The whole thing blew my mind.

However, you can still have a D&D like RP experience in at least one MMO.  SWG, which is hard to otherwise recommend, does have a couple toolsets for player content creation.  The Storyteller system focuses on live interaction between a player managing the props and NPCs and a player party.  It's not instanced so the Storyteller can set up props in player cities, with permission, and many regions on many worlds for a real involved adventure.  As an old tabletop hand myself, I can say it's by far the closest I've come to old school roleplaying adventure in MMOs so far and that includes CoH's Architect.

In many ways, I think putting the tools of creation as much into the hands of the "right" players as possible might well make for a much more lively, dynamic and egalitarian system of adventure and narrative creation than what we've seen before.  And by the "right" players I mean those not so motivated by material reward.  That was the bane of Architect.  Why have a handful of RP GMs when you could have hundreds of player GMs and players organizing freely around them?  If one clique isn't working find another.

That kind of thing was both the boon and the bane of AURORA.  Events were never "supposed" to target one particular faction of players (i.e. events "shouldn't" have been made that targeted Khanid roleplayers particularly) - but the best return on the event would inevitably come from the roleplayers, who would generally appreciate the event for the experience rather than the shiny loot.

So at once you've got criticism that AURORA was targeting cliques with preferential treatment, while at the same time having criticism that events were worthless because there weren't good enough rewards attached for the work.  It was always a catch-22 that had someone crying foul.

My personal philosophy when producing an event was to have the 'hook' be as public as humanly possible, giving as many players as possible the chance to be involved - but then to let the story evolve as it would after that.  Usually it would be down to a small core of roleplayers that follow the storyline through a series of events, with some others drifting in and out by chance.  At one point I ran an event targeted at a single player, because that was the way the story made sense (the next event in the series was then aimed at more, and frankly I doubt anyone ever came out of an event I ran ahead in either ISK or loot).

Rewards are the biggest problem with an official event system.

Sadly, the reason I started playing EVE was because of the clownshow that was SWG's early life.  I believe you when you say the Storyteller system would be a good substitute, but SWG has too many other issues attached for me.  I fooled around with the Ryzom ring for a bit too, but it just wasn't the same.

EVE has a huge, rich storyline to hang everything off of, and for whatever reason people in EVE would generally just start roleplaying along (casually mind you) if a bunch of green text showed up in local chat.  One of the things I really liked with eventing was hot-dropping into a random system and starting to roleplay the story, just to see the reactions.  With an in-game storyteller system you don't get that - the people you wind up with are looking for that experience.  I appreciate that the outcome would probably be "better" from an experience perspective - but it's also a little bit predictable, which is unfortunate.

This article has really made me think about why, in my opinion, MMOs are so awful and un-enjoyable today as opposed to just a few years ago.  And again, it seems it comes down to the people playing them. 

As far as I'm concerned, whether you're a roleplayer or not (I'm not), the fun of the game starts and ends with the community.  A good community can turn a lackluster game into a fun experience, or tear down a good game and make it something that makes you want to scrub yourself with steel wool to get filth off (see: WoW).  And really, communities are just like big families in many ways.  The problem is that when you remove the older brother and sisters from the equation (i.e. your community-minded GMs), the little kiddies have no role models to look up to in order to learn how to get along with each other.  I'm certainly simplifying it, but GM involvement certainly did seem to have a similar type of effect as an older sibling might.  While not carrying the authority of an actual parent, they were up the ladder a few steps from the rest of us, but not so far that they couldn't be considered one of us.  I kind of miss that.

Nowadays, GMs must be little more than faceless customer service automatons, and can no longer have that same stabilizing influence that (I feel) they used to have.  As a result, game communities often more closely resemble a really nasty scene from Lord of the Flies than they do a family.  This, more than anything else, is what limits my interest and participation in MMOs these days.

Human beings require leadership.  It's not sociology, it's biology.  It's how we evolved.  Remove that element from any kind of group activity, like online gaming, and things fall apart.

 I recall having mixed run ins with the GMs on DAOC. One would have mercy on me if my comp died half way to a boss mob and might teleport me there, even so far as teleporting our whole battlegroup if something outside of our control happened. I also had them give me gear that somehow went poof on its way into my inventory. I also had other GM's tell me that it was impossible for them to do such a thing when the guy next to me had a different GM take care of the problem.  

My favorite forgotten fellow took my angry abuse with a laugh. He was refusing to port me to a monster we were fighting, when for no reason I teleported outside the dungeon. I tried to appeal as there was no way I could make it back before the beast died. When he refused I asked him/her if it was Mythic's policy to hire all their CS agents from half-way houses, called him an unsavory name and then he says, 'Ok, fine, I do have the ability to teleport, but not being an ass will likely get me better results the next time I appeal.' He then teleported me to the middle of Lyonesse.  This was when Sidi was the thing to do so the only way back to Camelot was a run on foot and horse ride for over an hour. I didn't care to complain about what happened as I wouldn't have been so cool about it and actually laughed.

There was a lot of interaction with GMs when I played Linkrealms. If you liked Ultima Online..then you probably like linkrealms.  Probably the closest thing to it out there and the animations are really well done. Nice little game.

Originally posted by Neanderthal

Originally posted by Lanthir

What I miss are the gm events.  When hate was going to open a GM game around and gathered some players in Qyenos and had us doing quests ( not telling us it was to support the evil Gods) being the nice tree hugging ranger that I was i refused to kill any of the wolves or bears in Qyenos Hills even though I knew I could not then complete the GMS quests.  low and behold I was given  a reward and have my players name shouted across the server solely because unlike all the other good aligns there I had actually stayed in character.  Turns out the quests were there to support the opening of Hate and were purely evil in nature :)

 

Heh, grats.  That's pretty cool actually and it takes me back.  I remember when some rangers and druids who started in the Qeynos area refused to kill wolves and bears even though there were no repercussions for doing so (unless Holly Windstalker happened to catch you doing it).

For my part, I can't say that I ever got to participate in any good GM events.  As I remember it about the only GM events I ever got to be a part of were the ones where the GMs would go into a zone as ridiculously overpowered monsters for the level range of the zone and then procede to massacre/gank all the players in the zone who were much lower level then the GM monsters.  That did nothing but piss me off.

yup that was back in the day when Role Playing had nothing to do with kinky sex.  I was lucky got into the one i mention  and one with the GM playing FV  after Kurak game out.
 

EQ2 still has guides and they are great.  We don't dread GM's showing up, unless you know you been doing something wrong.

Now in lotro, the only time you see one show up somebody is getting the ban hammer.  Getting a gm to show up to help in lotro and having a favorable outcome, almost impossible. 

This just shows some games have great gm's and others don't.

Another great writing! I think I'll just go down this writer's list and read them all, lol.

To that effect, as addressed, the position of GM often becomes a game "vulnerability," but perhaps a necessary evil? As someone else noted, Asheron's Call (my original MMORPG love) did and still does have plenty of fun, mysterious, clever and intriguing GM interaction. Perhaps not everyone who plays AC feels this way, but it has been largely true in my experience. One thing that the AC team DID do away with were those helpers with the special shields. They weren't GMs because individuals could apply to be one, but they WERE helpers of some sort and that program was shut down entirely for some reason (perhaps favoritism as well).

Anyhow, that article was another great read and made me long for a GM event or some such. I've not thought about, missed, or considered the topic until now . . . and it's like remembering you put $20 in the back pocket of the jeans you wore the other night; except not as easy to just go back and get.

Keep the articles coming, Jaime!

Nice article. Is a pitty that it's kind of hard to go back to the way things used to be.

Incidently did you know your article title was the name of a song? by my favorite composer....

You know this was an excellent article, and very true. I was a Volunteer in EQ until they shut it down, the game back then had a dimension you just don't see today, I have a couple really good friends who are GM's for different MMO developers and their jobs are simply un-fun stepping stones that they are looking to abandon as soon as humanly possible.

 

I think the root of the problem lies in companies thinking GM == IT Help Desk, and that isn't how it should be.  They need to split the two roles so that you have one group of "professionals" who take care of the day to day problems like being stuck or banning hacks and these people need to have strict rules regulating them.  But there needs to be another group of people who's job is to interact with the game comunity regularly doing things like in game events and role playing. 

I used to work for Burda I.C  ( The guys behind Ragnarok EU ) and Alaplaya as a GM and MOD and also as an English to Spanish translator for many of their games and i even assisted them in Barcelona´s  animecon in Spain.
At first,  we were given a lot of freedom and powers,  and as long as we did not favor any player, we were given permission to roam freely and do pretty much what we wanted,  but that was cut short soon after.

I can identify fully with this article.

Originally posted by Latella

I used to work for Burda I.C  ( The guys behind Ragnarok EU ) and Alaplaya as a GM and MOD and also as an English to Spanish translator for many of their games and i even assisted them in Barcelona´s  animecon in Spain.
At first,  we were given a lot of freedom and powers,  and as long as we did not favor any player, we were given permission to roam freely and do pretty much what we wanted,  but that was cut short soon after.

I can identify fully with this article.

 

 

Customer service in current MMOs, at least the ones I have played, are crap. I don't care if it's the GM or the IT can't do anything desk you might contact outsdie of the game. It's like talking to a robot. They give you a cookie cutter answer, half the time that doesn't even match your issue and then disappear without another word.

Two points.

1) Fallen Earth is a great example of an MMO right now with this "old school" GM system; a GM always available to help out. That's one of the reasons I play and love Fallen Earth and one of the reasons I have no problems with paying them $14.95 a month - I don't have to deal with the endless obscenities and general antisocial behavior that goes on in the "global" channels of other games.  I won't name names.

2) Hiring more employees is *clearly* the option.  If you have to charge more, do it - I think another writer here touched on the market for niche games and increased price was one variable discussed.  Your argument fell apart a bit with the line, "Hiring more employees seems a simple fix, but doesn't guarantee an increase in free time."

Well, first off, if you are interacting with and entertaining paying customers, it's not "free time."  I've never personally roleplayed with any of the GMs of Fallen Earth nor do I expect to ever meet one, but I know their general personalities, reputations, and the fact that they are all very, very responsive and helpful.  They're more than nameless faces, for the most part.  That's nice.  

If you have X number of employees doing Y amount of work and you include this kind of thing - let's call it "Cadillac GM service" - and you can't somehow make more time for this valuable service with increased manpower; the math doesn't add up - you're mismanaging your manpower.  This equation starts to fall apart in mega-corporations, etc., due to the large numbers involved but a curious question is this - what is the approximate number of US players, only, of the most popular MMO out there.  Now, about how many GM's per, say...  10,000 players(?) for this kind of service - would the MMO have to provide?  What would be the cost?

Thought provoking; good article.

 That's one thing I like about BrightShadow... GMs always spend some time around to help players, but they can freely joke and chat, and show nice stuff including neat previews. Granted, there isn't always a GM, but it's already better than we see in most games.

I have enjoyed reading this thread, and especially enjoyed seeing the connection that has been made between the Fallen Earth GMs and the old UO staff.  Tigger from the UO counselor group and me (Morgana) from the UO companion program have worked together for a few years now. Bringing in the old time philosophy of good old involvement with the players is what Mig Squared is all about. As Tiggs knows any game that I become part of the community staff for, I will be in the game a lot as staff, and also in the game a lot as an anonymous player. Knowing the game and knowing the community as a GM is what makes the game's sense of community. As an Arch Companion I got to look after the new players that joined UO, and teamed up veteran players with them, this was the first game that ever used this concept. I still believe that a huge part of a game and players staying in a game is the community, events and interaction between players, Fallen Earth has been a perfect platform for this.

I was a Super Game Master in an MMO for a year and change . . .( SGM coordinates the GM team has acess to the databases and the ability to validate, place/lift bans and answers tickets petitions, spawn mobs in game coordinate events  etc...reporting back to the Game Admin and or to the The CoMa ). Over the periode of time that I worked as GM/SGM I watched many changes in the company's policy regarding player interaction and roleplaying leading to a decrease of human interaction and leaning more and more torwards a mechanical professional manner to deal with the players.  But in fact this was caused by 2 main factors, 1st Suspicion of Power Abuse by some team members favouring some players/guilds, 2nd the community. If the 1st factor can easely be controlled by supervising every step of the Hierarchy up to the CoMa, the second one isn t that easy to keep under control. 

Comunity's are heterogen and difer from server to server from game to game, and there isn t a sure way to hit the bullseye with every event. On the  other hand once a rumor of power abuse starts spreading through the comunity, the GM's are easely cruxified as they represent the in game fun but also and above all, the law and order in the server, they are the ones who aply and enforce the rules . . . so it is just as easy to love them as it is to hate them. The only way for the publisher company to keep the hate torwards the GM's under controll is to devoid them of any human trait hence the mechanical answers and the scripted e-mails that atest to an eficiency that is in 90% of the cases non existing.

 On the other hand the old GM's were expected to be always fun, they weren't supposed to have bad days in RL, they were supposed to be capable of enduring long long whinning sessions about how this item failed or the luck system in-game sux big time or how the Real life best friend hacked the account after the rightfull owner gave him the user and password . . . and that in itself will inevetably lead to the GM burnout if no fun factor is provided.Every GM was encouraged to interact with the players on the world chat and even fool arround with them, but even that can lead to players complaining.
 

One of the former Game Administrators I worked with once gave me an advice that I used alot during my SGM time ... "nod and smile..."  and indeed most of the time players only need someone to hear them out, someone that they can vent they're frustrations or brag about they're acomplishments to.  

Today's GM's lack the ability to interact with players, but on the other hand they have become much less biased when it comes to making decisions or aplying the game/server rules. I don't know wich type of GM's actually do they're role beter, in fact I do belive that both types working in conjuction would be the best. But right now we will have to stick with the drones ...