Lack of Dev in Stratics during this fiasco

[UODevTracker]

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[TheGrimmOmen]

I share your lament, but let's be frank: when developers post about problems on Stratics, they're immediately crucified. Genuine concerns get swallowed up by personal attacks, which leads to moderator intervention, which subsequently leads to dozens of PMs calling moderators ban-happy nazis, and so forth. It happens every time.

I hope we can coax the developers back. We really benefit from their time and insight. Unfortunately, before this can happen, I think some sort of culture shift needs to take place. Just sayin.

Before I continue my post I'd like to say that I'm not any sort of EA spokesperson and I know nothing about the inner workings of this account migration, and any issues it might have and because of that I can't comment on anything pertaining to it. So for the purposes of this post, let's set that issue aside. Not a dodge, I'm just not speaking on things I know nothing about. Da**** Jim, I'm a doctor, not an engineer. Ok, and I'm not a doctor, either.

<edit>
Also, after writing this I'd also like to say sorry for sounding preachy, it's just something that I care a lot about, and that's dev/player communication.
</edit>

So I think it's obvious that I second this comment. Woodsman and puni666 and others have made very insightful comments. I can't speak for my fellow team mates, but I feel pretty sure that most of us know little about the inner working s of the account migration issues and thus really have little to say on the topic that would be of any relevance to the questions you folks have.

But I saw this post from Syrus and really felt a pull to make a comment on it, especially in light of some of the other posts I've seen on this and other threads about dev posting. This is actually a topic that is important to me, so despite all the warning klaxons going off in my head to just close the browser and get back to work, I continue to type. I want to share with those who are interested my perceptions of Dev/Player interaction and posting on Stratics.

You should know outright that for me I believe that Dev/ Player interaction is a privilege, not a right. Player interaction is the probably the most rewarding aspect of this job for me, I kid you not. I have met some amazing people, and have been fortunate to call many friends - even those I've only met once, or have never met in person at all. I wish I could put into words what the player meet ups does for me, but in short, it's a powerful energizer.

But it's not a right and it's not actually a part of my job responsibilities. I do my utmost to treat it and you guys with respect and honesty so that I can continue doing it. I talk to you folks on this forum with the same regard as I would talking face to face with you. Those who have met me know this. Now from a dev's point of view posting to Stratics is dicey business - even posting about things we know about. Because there's so much potential for conversations to devolve. I have really thick skin and don't offend easily, and if someone has a beef about something I did or didn't do, I'm all about hearing about it. But the problem comes in when people start using their posts to air out personal grudges, vent frustration, or just troll. When these things occur, and they occur enough, it gives us good reason to give pause about the next time we want to post anything. Given enough crucifixions (to quote Syrus) and the interest in posting at all is gone. And this brings me to the flip side of the coin.

If I decided to never post to Stratics again, my job would not be affected at all. I wouldn't get any emails, or phone calls from team or EA. Nothing. And this goes for every dev on the team. I'll add that it's generally not in the best interest of ANY company to let any employee communicate directly to it's customers because there's to much opportunity for miscommunication. But this is the exact situation we enjoy here with UO/Stratics. I don't know if any other team at EA that enjoys this privilege, and I can't speak for how many other MMO's have this level of open door policy on a 3rd party forum. I worry that if dev / player interactions are perceived as being too caustic, that EA/ Mythic would determine that all communications would need to be through official EA channels only. I think this would be inconsistent with UO culture, and potentially damaging, but at the same time I can't say that I would blame them for making that call. Now, I'm not saying the above thing to spark any "If EA does <fill in the blank>, I'll quit!" posts. In fact, this is the exact thing I'm advocating NOT doing. At the end of the day, the responsibility is on us, the devs and the players as to how we conduct ourselves in these forums which influences the level of player/ dev interaction.

Personally, I want to hear about the things you guys like, the things you guys don't like, the things you guys would like to see in the future, but I don't like to hear about how some people think person X should be fired, doesn't care, or doesn't know how to do their job, when in fact (and let's be fair) unless you work on the team, or communicate with us privately, you really don't know us, what we do or what our responsibilities truly are. And this is just getting back to not commenting on things we really don't know anything about. IMO, I think it's totally appropriate to gripe about things that frustrate, as long as the conversation works towards solving the problem and doesn't devolve into personal skewering.

To finish up, you guys are great. I love a constructive (critical) conversation and I hope that I/UO enjoys many more years of this kind of connection between Devs and Players. But we should all appreciate what a rare and fragile privilege this is.

Regards to all,
Grimm "God, I hope I don't regret this post" Omen