Azaroth

According to some.

Now, the skinny of this situation is that Sprint kicks out thousands of their own customers for requiring too much CS time. Interestingly enough, CS jockeys and, well, everyone working at a company that involves a computer or two in some way seem to be dancing and squealing with glee. Tales abound of how “crazy person” x, y, or z have taken thousands of precious CS hours that should have gone to “more worthy” customers.

And by my tone, you’d guess I disagree with the general stance that this is okay. And I do. But it’s not because I haven’t dealt with crazy retards sucking up all of my time when it should have rightfully been spent on someone who was worth it. I was the sole source of CS for quite some time after IPY launched, and even after that, generally any and all craziness was directly aimed at myself. But those are two other posts about volunteers and why they sometimes require more time than they save, and also about letting your lead people be visible and reachable by anyone who is drooling close enough to a computer.

The point here is that, regardless of how much trouble I was caused by these people, whether the situation was preventable and I’ve learned something or the person in question was just… nuts - the customer IS always right.

I learned so many lessons about handling people that I’d probably break the server this blog is running on if I typed them all out. But the point is that I learned and will be much more prepared next time. I’ll then proceed to make new mistakes, even maybe a few old ones once in a while, and I’ll learn something new (and re-learn when necessary).

For instance, one of the major things that was unearthed about this Sprint case is that some of the users who were banned from the service were exploiting systems to gain free time. Here’s a protip guys - people WILL invariably exploit anything that’s exploitable. Especially if there’s some kind of gain involved for them. But even if there isn’t. I believe that at this point, when the exploitation is discovered, it becomes Sprint’s obligation to fix the exploitable system. I realize frustration can run high and banning people is simpler — most especially when others are benefiting from the same exploitable system, but the logical step to me would be to simply revoke any and all gains acquired through exploitation of the system, and a tweak in the system’s design to disallow further exploitation.

And maybe a lesson learned.

For instance, I think I read that someone had “earned” himself $5000 of free time, somehow, through a design flaw in this particular system. He wanted it sent in check form.

Now, of course this makes you want to immediately tard smack the fellow in question. But what’s so hard about a form letter sent out to all of the people like this informing then that they exploited the system and their “credit” would be revoked, and then, you know, fixing the problem that allowed the situation in the first place. Probably not much. Any lawsuit that may follow certainly wouldn’t be avoided by an out and out banning from the service.

Of course, the next time I’m running a service, I may turn into a huge hypocrite on this issue. But one of the things that I’ve learned is that you can’t have Stallone running around Judge Dredding people’s asses in any kind of service, and especially in a video game. The Policeman can absolutely not be the Judge. That shit doesn’t work. Sorry. Decisions on bannings/jailtime/executions/whathaveyou MUST to come down from an (at least generally) impartial source. This is why these Sprint bans remind me of something some lone shard admin would pull while doling out his own brand of frontier justice while wearing white jockeys and a six shooter in his computer chair. It just can’t be like that.

However, some others regaled the internets with stories of generally innocent, yet lonely, woman who called constantly because a certain CS representative’s voice was “sexy”. Obviously she’s putting a large strain on the amount of available customer service left over for others who actually have problems. But she’s not doing anything illegal, or even shady… she’s just annoying and lonely. What’s the answer here? Is the customer wrong once again?

Of course not, and banning this person is silly. However, implementing legal speak into the ToS about using large amounts of CS time revoking your right to phone time with people (relegating you to email only, which is easier to deal with and less time intensive), or whatever, may have been a better idea. Of course this is pushing something into the contract with everyone else that they might take note of and raise a stink over. Which is in turn affecting everyone to settle one problem. However, you’re also solving this problem in the future. And I doubt the first idea off the top of my head would be the best one that could be concocted anyway.

The fact is… learn from your CS situations, adapt, and move forward better suited for, well, Customer Service.

And put some pants on guys.

Although I haven’t seen the exact way that they calculate subscribers, I’m guessing that it’s fluffed in one way or another. I’m just a cynical like that. How many of you would be playing if WoW listed its current subscribers as 250k? The answer is “not as many”. Also, don’t call me Alex.

The most interesting part about all of this is, I think, all of the hate coming from other individual game developers. Which is natural. Jealousy breeds hate. And it’s easy to conclude that “WoW is ruining the chances of every smaller MMO on the market… which must be the reason mine isn’t doing well!”. However, I think this conclusion is downright silly, and I’ll tell you why.

First of all, these subcribers don’t, for the most part, come from existing MMOs. I’m sure UO has lost 75,000 subscribers to WoW, as have other older games. However, the biggest MMO prior to WoW happened to be EQ, and it happened to have 500,000 or less subscribers. Very simply, the majority of the 9 million current WoW subcribers are playing their first MMO.

Now, if it weren’t for WoW, theoretically I suppose that these people might be playing other MMOs. However, the fact that they weren’t playing onlines games before WoW makes this highly improbable. The fact is that these people were brought in by Blizzard and Vivendi, where the chances are that they wouldn’t have been brought into the online gaming universe otherwise. In fact, just the simple act of announcing extremely high account numbers brings more people in. Everyone wants to be part of the phenomenon. Nobody wants to be a part of that thing that 100,000 people worldwide do - except existing gamers.

So it’s a given that World of Warcraft brought these people in, but opining that it’s a bad thing for them to have them because they brought them in is a little silly as well. There’s always a hemorrhage of players, and Blizzard can’t hold all of those 9 million subscribers indefinitely. Admittedly most of them will disperse into games in China and Asia in general, since that’s where a lot of them are, and where a lot of the future market is. But here in the west, the facts remain the same. No matter what games Blizzard opens in the future, or what expansions they put out for WoW, they won’t be able to hold these 9 million people indefinitely. In fact, the churn of accounts has already meant big things for the MMO industry. Specifically for games like Eve, I imagine, and even Vanguard. By its budget, Vanguard is supposedly quite a failure. However, I last saw its subscriber level listed at around 200,000. With 250,000 in Eve, 350k in EQII, 60k in UO, and, hell, countless others in smaller games and even free MMOs… you’ve already surpassed the previous count of MMO subscribers sans-WoW by leaps and bounds.

So like I said on another site, because you start wishing death destruction and cocacola on Blizzard’s datacenters, just remember that they’re bringing in people that wouldn’t have been playing these games otherwise - and that a lot of those people will end up playing other games, even if WoW’s subscriber base remains relatively the same. 50% will leave over the next couple of years, and another 4.5 million will come in to replace them in all likelyhood.

And remember that shutting off the servers entirely as some have suggested out of general spite would be a worse idea then letting these players disperse organically when they’ve become fed up with WoW. Force them to find a new game, and you’ve got a bunch of cynical players looking to tear apart every feature and magnify every bug. Let them get terribly sick of WoW (which, trust me, is very possible with any game that’s heavily PvE dependent), and suddenly they’re praising the next game they choose to play in part to coax their guildmates and friends over, and in part simply because because they’re sour.

So if you’re a developer of another online game, or even just a player of a smaller MMO, remember - something like WoW only increases everyone’s potential in the long run. Stop hating yo’.

I asked this question on a message board, but it got little response in the actual direction that I was hoping it would.

I think the question may be more suitable to be targeted at a more specific audience. Specifically, readers of this blog. Yeah, I know you’re all a bunch of old UO whores. Don’t deny it.

I’ll get into Skills vs. Classes and Nostalgia in upcoming posts, but for now, I want as many answers to this question as possible:

With all of the reminiscing about UO that goes on, one wonders if you guys would play a new game with much the same design… or is the nostalgia and familiarity playing a significant part in the fun you experience with UO, or even thinking about it?

Well, would you?

I mean really would you. The immediate “YES!” because you remember UO as a great time is one thing. But taking into account games like World of Warcraft and what they offer, would you switch over long-term to a game that was built on the principles of UO, even if it was a different game? There are no hally mages, no insta hit, no precasting. It’s a new game. It’s different.

Do you put in your credit card number and venture on to a long term affair with the game, or do you go back to the massive mounds of content that is World of Warcraft (or Warhammer, or whatever)?

Are your fond memories of UO simply due to the fact that you spent your early MMO gaming days in this specific world, or do the specific core systems of this type of MMO appeal to you more than what you find in a game like WoW?

Or Genius + Mediocre Execution = Mediocrity.

I really have other things I should be doing, so I’ll say this quick.

While watching a sports talk show absently as I worked on the computer, I heard the hosts mention something interesting.

In preparation for the Simpsons movie, they’ve converted 7-eleven’s around North America to resemble the Kwik-E-Mart. Pink donuts, Squishees, Buzz Cola.

Man. Buzz Cola.

Awesome. What an idea. This movie is going to be huge, even if it’s trash. Right?

Well, probably. But that’ll be in spite of this genius marketing stunt turned mediocre attention grab.

I went looking for pictures of converted 7-Elevens. I was curious. I was interested. That’s rare.

What I found were some pictures that made my excitement die. I quickly realized that if this marketing is anywhere near as genius as I assumed it to be, it would have to be an ironic play on an old Simpsons gag.

Remember the Halloween episode where Milhouse is dressed in a cheap plastic Radioactive Man costume, and Lisa quips “I don’t think Radioactive Man would wear a plastic smock of himself..”.

Well, that’s what you have with this Kwik-E-Mart stunt. You’re likely to see a wristwatch on anyone’s Bigfoot outfit, no matter how fantastic - but this was a cheap, plastic joke straight off the shelf of Toys-R-Us back in the 1980s.

Big pictures Wiggum, Bart above special displays of new items saying “Buy me now, man!”. Huge plastic picture of Marge in the window with Apu, and some posters that look to be advertising the upcoming movie.

This is what taking a stroke of genius and turning it into a bunch of disjointed business deals looks like. Contract Hostess Argentina to produce pink donuts and some packaging with Homer going “mmmm, donuts” on them. Contract some company in Taiwan to produce huge plastic images of the Simpsons family, and ship them all off to contracted 7-Eleven outlets. Set the new items up in front of the cash, just incase anyone is truly misguided and thinks that this is supposed to be anything but as far from authentic feeling as you could possibly get.

Not only that, but they paid off news outlets to run the story. Google it. You’ll find pages and pages of the exact same headline.

Who needs the Kwik-E-Mart? 7-Eleven does.

Because they sure don’t have one.