New Community Manager/Representatives for UO?

[UODevTracker]

Original Thread

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[James_Mythic]

Hey folks,

Firstly - No, I'm not moving to be solely on Warhammer. I have been working on UO, Warhammer, and DAoC to some extent or another since I started here four years ago.

The good news is this doesn't mean communication is going to get worse, and I agree in some cases that it has definite room for improvement.

UO has become a priority to me in the past year and I continue to learn new things everyday from reading these boards and working with the team. The team here on Stratics has also been great in helping to identify and communicate issues you share, and providing priceless insight into this truly unique community.

Ultima Online is very important to the studio and EA, and a hallmark of the industry. It's an honor to be a custodian of this storied franchise and I assure you the entire team feels the same.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them

Thanks,

 

[James_Mythic]

Thanks for jumping in the thread so quickly, James.

Couple of questions for you that seem like they should fall in your realm of expertise:

- Are you going to handle UO all by yourself or will you have help? Who will cover for you when you're out on vacation, etc.?

My pleasure - In addition to myself there is Rowland Cox, Director of Community Relations (da boss); and our new European Community Manager who just started - we'll be introducing him shortly (his hire was simply coincidental with Andy's departure.) Both are aware and knowledgeable to handle my external facing responsibilities in my absence.

- Do you have any information on when we can expect to see the "dev diary" video or is that entirely Cal's project at this point?

The video is going through its final edits, I know Cal had a pretty slammed schedule last month but has really been using every spare minute he has to get it done. It is "his project" but it requires more than just him to get it out the door. It's coming very soon (we posted a small blooper teaser on Facebook last week).

- What are the plans for the official UO website? Should we expect to go there even less in the future for information about UO and rely more and more on sites like Stratics, or do you ever anticipate it once again becoming a source of valuable and up-to-date information? If the answer is that we should plan on getting the bulk of our information about UO from third parties, are there any plans on the part of the UO team to facilitate sharing reliable and current detailed game information with people like Petra Fyde for the purpose of populating information databases (e.g., the creatures database)? Every patch and publish note that is posted seems to be sketchier than the last one and full of ever more misspellings and inconsistencies, thus making it more difficult than ever to consider them a reliable source of information, especially if you are tasked with collecting and posting useful information about the game.

As far as the website is concerned I'm a one man army currently - I'm working to update areas when I can, but agreed that the information there has languished and not been maintained to the highest standard. This is why you likely will see more third party partnerships (such as Stratics taking the archives) as it allows these resources to be available without having to wait for my schedule to allow me to update the content myself.

Admittedly many of you are also more knowledgeable (as can be expected after a decade of play) than myself, and therefore know better than me what information is the most important to you. So please, feel free to provide feedback and insight from this perspective.

- Do you have any plans to resurrect any type of scheduled communication with UO players such as the Five on Friday feature? And do you have any insight into why the Ask the Devs forum seems to have failed and is there anything you can do to help get it going again? And by getting it going again, I mean more than a very occasional post that's really just a thinly disguised preview of some upcoming addition or change. Is there anything you can do to make sure the devs, designers, engineers, producer, and assistant producer check it regularly for new questions, go through the backlog of questions that has built up by now, and actually post some interesting, educational, and/or thought-provoking replies?

We really do like having the Ask the Devs section, but yes, we have not been as consistent as we would like to be in responding to these. Last weeks FAQ Friday won't be a rarity this year, but for now the feature may not consistently be weekly. Aside from that though I do want to get more answers up on a regular basis, even if we don't have enough to collate into a feature for the Herald each week.

Good questions, and thanks for the feedback!

 

[James_Mythic]

The new guy is still getting familiar with UO, but in the future he'll be able to provide a much more direct level of communication for our French and German speaking players and across all our brands improve our ability to communicate with everyone.

As far as Facebook goes - the page is definitely going to be used more, generally as a place for current and former players to stay up to date on UO and share their experiences, with the occasional teaser of what's to come. The Herald and Stratics for the foreseeable future will remain the places we go for serious or important communication.

As far as other offerings facebook is getting involved in I don't have any information at this time, but likely we'll need to update the account management system before we look into options such as these. Absolutely though we'll look into viable options for bringing our games to more people (or make paying for them easier).

One last note on the Ask the Devs - generally around the time of a new, significant publish the submissions blow up. This makes it difficult for me to keep up with the new questions as well as filter through old ones that may no longer be relevant because of the update. We generally try to focus on questions about a publish first as well, as obviously these are the most immediately relevant to current discussion. If I don't get to your question between publishes, you should feel free to resubmit it just don't spam

Thanks Tina!