Community update - Oct 24th

Hi everybody,

Thought I'd give you an update on what's happening in Community nowadays, and how things work right now.

The team
First of all, I am now the one person on the Funcom Community Team. That means my e-mail (in my signature) is the one to use for any contact with Community. And you can blame me for all things that go wrong. Hopefully that won't be too much. :)

Another change is that I have moved to sit with the designers (yay! :D). I'm right next to our Game Director (Gaute) and Lead Designer (Johan). This should improve both the dev team's access to the information Community gathers from you, the players, as well as the information I'm able to give you in return. Note that I give the former - information from you to the designers - highest priority, so if I can't cover both, you know what I focus on.

Bulletin board
I now have moderators to help me on the bulletin board. They are moderators only, and will not be posting. We do not take applications for a moderator position. If you have any questions about moderation or the social guidelines, please contact me.

I hope to be able to start up the Community Answers threads again, but this depends on how much time I get for it. I'll keep you updated on this. I also hope to be able to give you an update like this each week, to let you know what's happening on my end.

IRC
The IRC is handled by a group of selected volunteers, as was first intended, and I drop by when I feel like chatting, have important information (patch days is an example), or just want to be available. Other Funcom employees also visit, so it's a nice place for getting to know some of us better. Just don't expect us to answer too many questions on the fly there. ;)

AO sites
I'm in touch with most of our major sites on a more or less regular basis. This is largely controlled by what I have to share, like screenshots, leaks, beta test accounts, etc. For this, I focus on sites covering AO news. If you have an AO site, make sure to let us know, so we can add it to the listing on our main site.

The Notum Wars
The booster is closing in on release, and I help out a bit with that too. Testing, player impressions of the booster, and bulletin board forums for the beta are among my tasks here, and has very high priority right now.

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Hm, that's what I could think of for now. Feel free to add your comments and questions here, but keep it to the topic, please. :)

Thanks Cz, if you can do a summary post like this once a week looking at what you've been up to and what information you've given to players via these forums etc then that will be wonderful, keeps stuff all in one place and acts as an archive. Write it up as you go along though or it probably will not happen - a sort of Cz's diary :D

Look forward to hearing more.

And.. /me waves bye bye to Cosmik :( MIA...

So, whats the deal with Cosmik ?

Sacked ?
Left ?

Im not flaming, just would be nice for a truthful answer =]

edit: oops! I can't read... sorry *hides*

Sounds like you're overbooked... hope you can keep up with the workload. IT-biz is nasty. :(

This post also hints at Cosmik being gone... clarify, please. :confused:

- schma

reality, I hope to (as said in the original post), but can't promise anything yet.

For those asking about Cosmik, we're waiting on word from him before I have any news. :)

Thanks for the post :)

A status report on what has/is happening (like this one) is great!
Just a short summary once a week would be perfect, nothing fancy is needed.


Oh, hope you got time and resources to start the community answers :)

Yes... it is good to know what is going on. Thanks :)

If you can give a brief blurb on what you see happening with the Professionals programme, I know many professions are feeling unloved.

I'll keep my fingers crossed that Cosmik will be back.

yay for irc :)

Hmmm... Sounds like you will be pretty busy :) You might want to bully someone else to do some posting too.

My main concern is the bug forum. Lots of posts, no answers. If you can get someone *inside* FC (and working on AO :D) to compile a bug list in there it would be very helpfull. Also the bug forum should be heavily moderated, rooting treads about issues that need more feedback from us players, and closing treads once enough info is gathered or an old bug is reported (and closed with a reply and rtfm :) ).

Its a simple fact, when you can't see anything happening, you've got to assume that nothing is happening...

The bureaucrats on the forums are starting to get restless because the professionals program with Cosmik is gone. Are there any plans at all for Cosmik to resume the professionals program (which was working wonderfully before he left.) in the near future? If not, any plans to find someone else to resume Cosmik's former duties?

The professionals program, the only reliable conduit of knowing wether the community's voice is reaching the developers has been silent for far too long.

We can use a reply to the professional reports me and the other professionals have filed prior to Cosmik's dissappearence.

Dai Galean is now full time developer ?

And what do you mean by "we're waiting on word from him" about Cosmik, is he lost in the australian desert ? ;)

Like Darkbane mentioned, we need more threads in this forum, weekly updates on what Funcom is doing would be great. I was disappointed when the (now deleted, I guess) Community Answers threads stopped a couple months ago, maybe this can be turned around again.

If you're the sole Community man, then will you be in charge of giving the MP forum new professionals? Last word you gave us was that it was Cosmik's job, but since he's no longer with the community team, that answer seems outdated.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Greystar
And what do you mean by "we're waiting on word from him" about Cosmik, is he lost in the australian desert ? ;)

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Probably that FunCom has decided that the reduced player base for AO no longer requires a full-time member to monitor their boards. Cz is here many times, but has quite a few other duties that will restrict his time. Sounds like we're on our own most of the time now...