[MUD-Dev] FW: [uodevlist] OT - Lawsuit on Lum's

[Norman Short]

Dave Rickey wrote:
in response to:
> >Related question:  Do you think Dark Camelot can employ enough GMs to
catch
> >all the grief-players skirting around the PK-switch code, or will you be
> >looking to implement social controls, player-policing, etc. instead now?
> >
>     Certainly we can, because the volunteers never had much to do with
> handling grief players.  The only useful response to a grief player is
> banning him, and such an action is rarely taken if a GM doesn't witness
the
> activity personally.  What volunteers mostly handled was routine
questions,
> and the occassional stuck player.  They also filtered the qeue for the
> issues that *required* GM intervention.  This gave the GM's the time
needed
> for "Grief" and exploitation issues, which normally require a lot of time
> observing (and tools that no volunteer could be trusted with).
>
>     Without them, the qeue will have to be handled the way I handled it on
> graveyard shifts in EQ (when I was the only GM on duty, and would cover
10+
> servers with no Guides on them): Ruthlessly.  Get a petition that asks for
> help you can't give?  Delete it and move on, the time you'd spend arguing
> over whether they should get help could be spent handling the petitions of
> several people you *can* help.  Get a petition that doesn't explain what
the
> problem is?  Delete it.  Got a petition about "So and so is saying bad
> things to me"?  Delete it, that kind of situation takes 15-60 minutes to
> handle, during which you can do little or nothing else.  Get a petition
that
> says "Help, I'm stuck in a corner!", teleport to that player, unstick him,
> and *go*, time spent chatting with him is better spent helping the next
one.

I have to say that it is disturbing that even on graveyard shift EQ would
force you or other employees to work in such a manner, with the knowledge of
how badly customer service would suffer.  Yet this seems to be par for the
course.  You could easily have deleted a petition to deal with racism or
some other serious problem.

>
>     The choice becomes "Do you handle requests that will take a long time
> and/or can't be resolved, and have a lot of people you could actually help
> get no assistance, or do you focus on the ones you can actually do
something
> for?"  You can't pay enough GM's to be nice and chatty, and handle every
> petition fully no matter what, so you go to a pure "Churn 'em and burn
'em"
> CS approach for your front line GM's (and I'm talking about "burn them out
> in 2-4 months"), do the minimum required to clear the petition and move
on,
> ignore requests that can't be effectively resolved quickly ("Sorry, I
cannot
> help thee with that" *poof*).  Watch them like hawks, these are not valued
> employees, they're cannon fodder temps you *expect* to quit.  Then you
have
> a senior grade of GM that handles "grief" and exploitation issues.  "Play
> nice" policies become history, you can't justify the manhours required,
> cheaper to have them yell at each other and occasionally quit.  Lost
> equipment is just so much tough luck, bug-related or not.

Even more disturbing is this idea of how the company would treat their real
employees; no wonder they treat volunteers like crap.  Why in the world
would you take employees and plan to work them in a way that would make them
totally burn out and quit inside 4 months?  And if the answer is that you
absolutely must do that in order to be viable, do you indeed have a right to
exist as a company?  Sounds an awful lot like sweatshop labor to me.  I
realize you're depicting what it *would* be like without the volunteers, but
how far is it from that now?  Even before this lawsuit thing the volunteers
have voiced many complaints that sound like they get treated just this
badly.  Speaking personally, I wouldn't pay to play a game that treated
people like you depict any more than I'd knowingly buy clothes made with
sweatshop labor.  Since I don't know which company is doing things right I
just don't buy much.

>
>     In other words, you take everything currently wrong with the customer
> service programs in these games, and you ratchet it up a notch or two.
> Think "First 6 months of UO, or first 3 of EQ", but it never *ends*.

I don't think a game that works with that level of customer service will
remain viable.  I could be wrong and often am, but I think it's disgusting
to think about.

Norman Short aka Shakkar





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