Wikis: Terrible Platforms for Communication
Meanwhile, in Guild Wars, a player is trying to help their friend get a simple password reset.
I dare you to try and make sense of the "conversation" he has with the Support Liason. I freakin' double dare you.
How is anyone who shares this issue supposed to get any value out of that? Not to mention it will inevitably be archived and lost to the Wiki mists.
Open Beta: Why Bother?
Cross posting from a KillTenRats comment I made.
Why should developers bother with a true "open beta" at all? Instead, they can use beta invites as leverage for pre-orders, funding from partners, contests to drive traffic and create content… etc.
Why let people in to an unfinished game, for free? You should at least weasel some good for yourself out of the deal. Beta players are generally just going to judge you on your flaws and move on.
Sure, there was a time when open beta was about testing, but that’s long since over. Generally (ignoring the hardcore fans) people will put up with the same number of bugs in beta as they will post launch. The game is either fun or not fun, and if it's not fun in beta very few will come back after launch.
So You’ve Been Hacked…
Congratulations! You have now joined a once exclusive and rare group of people that have had their gaming accounts hacked. This is an honor indeed. No longer are your days and nights consumed by raids with friends, flying around mindlessly extracting aether, grinding through your crafting, spending all your gold buying ale to get that drunkard title, or trying to get a great deal in the auction house. You are now frantically trying to find all your MMO serial codes, your receipt for the game you purchased anywhere from 4 months to 4 years ago and heading over to your friends house to produce scans of all of it. You have emailed every compromising bit of data about yourself from your address, your birth date, your phone number, your game accounts and your full name that you haven't uttered to anyone in months having completely immersed yourself into your "DragonLeetz" handle.
Tweeting Developer Communication
[Update - It occurred to me that the 'New Twitter' upgrade has had some impact on this post, particularly in regard to how feasible it is to have actual conversation take place on the service. For now, this post can be considered depricated, kept only for archive purposes, until I chose to update it.]
A large part of my role at GuildWarsGuru and GuildWars2Guru is keeping up with any new developments from ArenaNet, and ensuring the community is informed. I track all communication from ArenaNet staff, and note any interesting stuff on the news page, the forum, or even just give it a mention in our IRC channel.
What sounds like (and used to be) a simple task is becoming increasingly difficult. ArenaNet now has Twitter pages for both community managers (personal or not, they address Guild Wars stuff there), and pages for ArenaNet, Guild Wars, and Guild Wars 2. Then, of course, there are the multiple facebook pages. Oh yeah, and the wiki - including things like various employees talk pages. Just when you thought that was enough, they do actually post on fansites too. (I'd add the official site to the list of news sources too, if they actually put any news on there.)
I was originally going to rant about the dangers of spreading yourself across too many channels of communication, but I realized that I don't really have a problem with Facebook, as it has a viral-marketing purpose outside of communication. The wiki is a different story, but that's rather specific to ArenaNet so I'll save that for another day. What I really have a problem with is Twitter.
About Dan
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