[MUD-Dev] Reach out and bitch at someone

[Jessica Mulligan]

On Thu, 29 Jun 2000, Brian Green wrote:

> Why is this?  Is it because of the relatively easy access to company
> spokespeople/developers?  Is it because of the time and money investment
> that players feel they need to make?  Is it because online anonymity
> provides a buffer to be more rude to others?
>

All three of those (easy access/immediacy, investment and anonymity) are
certainly contributing factors.  Another is that commercial MUDs and MMRPGs
today can't, won't or don't understand how to perform adequate customer
service.  Then there is the attitude admins take when dealing with the
customers, which in many cases is defensive and arrogant.

Customer Service: When we had 200-300 simultaneous players at peak in our
commercial online games five years ago, CS was easy.  Most of used the "one
live GM or Volunteer per 100" formula and it worked.  We probably had as
many serious bugs and design flaws as today's games, but the smaller crowd
made them easier to deal with.  Now that we have 10,000 to 50,000
simultaneous players at peak in some games, we have to push just to have
even a 1 to 300 ratio at peak and it's impossible to keep up during even a
small crisis.  Players don't get helped in a timely manner and their
attitude gets nasty.

Which gives rise to the defensive attitude of some admins.  They WANT to do
a great job and have people enjoy the game; when they get bitched at and
called names incessantly, it seems to cause what I can only describe as a
'fear agression' reaction.  The admin or developer snaps back at the
customers, which accelerates the conflict cycle.

When I train developers, management, GMs and paid in-game admins, one of the
first rules I lay down is "50% of this job is understanding and accepting
that you have to eat shit constantly, with a smile on your face."  You
aren't allowed to justify yourself or snap back or even defend yourself.
What you DO do is listen, understand the problem, commiserate, do what you
can to fix things and, most importantly of all, follow-up with further
communication on what is happening to fix the overall problem.  You CAN use
what Bridgette Patrovsky calls The Justice Model, which is to be tough but
fair, as long as you are completely consistent in administration of it.
Most admins aren't consistent, <g>.

The unpaid volunteers tend to do this naturally, as they come from the
player base and truly understand what needs to happen.  Trying to get the
inhouse developers and admins to understand this is like pulling teeth.
Look at some of the recent and highly publicized problems in the high
profile commercial games; the players became really shrill only when the
developers or management (as opposed to GMs and in-game admins) became
involved, got defensive and snapped back.

The first commercial MUD or MMRPG to truly understand this and do it right,
right from Launch Day, will enjoy uncommon success.  To date, no one has
done it right from Launch, so all we've been doing is training paying
customers to be nasty.  I rather suspect that both EQ and UO could have
double the paying subscribers they have now, had they understood and
implemented it from Day One.

-Jessica




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