How are all the Mods?

OneLastGambit

You've had a hell of a busy weekend on here and have my sympathies. I'm sure many other posters on here will second my opinion that we were not mad at you guys and thank you for your thankless efforts this weekend.

AXP_isme

I second that. It must be a tough job at the best of times and this is about as far from "the best of times" as it's possible to get.

Chin up mods!
Presumably things will get better in Big G round 2...
Well, at least the level of vitriol should go down...
Never mind.

Unknown

AXP_isme wrote:

I second that. It must be a tough job at the best of times and this is about as far from "the best of times" as it's possible to get.

Chin up mods!
Presumably things will get better in Big G round 2...
Well, at least the level of vitriol should go down...
Never mind.

I like your optimism.

MajinDavid

While it wasn't my favorite event and by the end of it I was ready to be done as I was running thru too many health packs to do the pvp stuff, I do appreciate them giving us a new event type. I'm sure they will get the event tweaked just right soon and it will be as fun as they want it to be. Thank you devs for all the hard work y'all do

Linkster79

Don't worry about the moderators, they are used to events launching and failing on a Friday and having no administration support. They do a great job in letting the player base whinge, moan and getting things of their chests whilst making sure posts in general remain the correct side of civil.

Things to remember, first and foremost moderators are volunteers, they have no affiliation to D3Go or Demiurge studios or its partners and most certainly do not get paid! Secondly they are players too, what affects us affects them as well. Thirdly they have no influence on any decisions made by the development team.

In all honesty I am quite surprised that they are allowed to have their game name the same as their moderator names. A few games I have done moderating duty for insist on different mod names so that the player base cannot accuse them of favouritism when dealing with friends or alliance/clan members they may be a part of.

lukewin

I will applaud Malcrof for his attempts at keeping the forums from going insane. It was a noble cause and effort, but it was an exercise in futility that should not have been attempted.

The merging and locking of topics was a bit much. If it's an active topic, it's active for a reason. Trying to streamline the forums to put things in the proper place, one post per topic, is ideal, but impossible unless you are checking every new post. Locking / merging threads just creates one more gripe that has nothing to do with gameplay and it's just gonna snowball and lump the mods in with the other complaints that the users have with the devs/publisher, for the users that don't understand that the mods are NOT D3 / Demiurge employees. IceIX actually is a D3 employee, but he's a site admin, not a mod. I would hate for the green names (mods) to incur the wrath that should be going to the red names (D3 / Demiurge employees).

I offer my condolences for what the mods have had to put up with and will continue to have to put up, but I can't fault the forum users for the negativity, because the issues that most are being negative about, are legitimate. Hopefully, things do get better. With most things MPQ, people will forget about these issues over time, and they'll get swept under the rug, unless they get addressed. Then things will be quiet for a while, until the next problems pop up and the cycle starts all over again.

Those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. D3 and Demiurge to not learn from history, in regards to upfront or clear communication. They are reactive instead of proactive.

Unknown

I actually wrote a rather lengthy post defending Malcrof in another thread and then decided it was coming out a bit creepier than I had hoped, so yeah. Suffice it to say, I found Malcrof to be a reasonable, cheerful, extremely helpful dude long before he donned his "mod hat," and nothing has changed since then, for me at least.

While I wasn't the worlds biggest fan of merging threads to (in my estimation) make things seem less dire, I have little doubt where that directive came from, and I'm guessing it wasn't Malcrof or any other mod deciding for themselves…

As for other mods, I've never actually noticed them all that much in most of the forums I've belonged to, which I guess is kind of the point, but Dayv in particular gained TONS of respect from me this weekend, not that he wanted or needed it.

It's a fine line any developer is asking mods who are also active players to walk, and I think both of these guys did the absolute best they could.

Cheers!

DBC

slidecage

anyone see anything about rd 2 maybe they removed it.. That was the update the took the 2nd running down friday

blinktag

I appreciate their work it keeping out cruft, personal insults to forum-goers, and other things, I did get a bit frustrated at one particular mod that I felt was white-knighting for D3/Demiurge too much. It was interesting to see the occasions where the mods personally disagreed on issues.

This particular mod backed off, eventually, which I appreciated. It got noticeably better as the event progressed.

JamieMadrox

Thanks for the support guys. We're doing OK. We're all players too and feel your frustration so we've taken a lazy approach to moderating over the weekend. We're allowing you to vent your frustrations on the forums about the Galactus event and Anniversary in hopes that it's all seen by those in charge. That said, once the weekend and outrage are over we'll likely be merging the threads by theme just to clean things up a bit.

Malcrof

lukewin wrote:

I will applaud Malcrof for his attempts at keeping the forums from going insane. It was a noble cause and effort, but it was an exercise in futility that should not have been attempted.

The merging and locking of topics was a bit much. If it's an active topic, it's active for a reason. Trying to streamline the forums to put things in the proper place, one post per topic, is ideal, but impossible unless you are checking every new post. Locking / merging threads just creates one more gripe that has nothing to do with gameplay and it's just gonna snowball and lump the mods in with the other complaints that the users have with the devs/publisher, for the users that don't understand that the mods are NOT D3 / Demiurge employees. IceIX actually is a D3 employee, but he's a site admin, not a mod. I would hate for the green names (mods) to incur the wrath that should be going to the red names (D3 / Demiurge employees).

I offer my condolences for what the mods have had to put up with and will continue to have to put up, but I can't fault the forum users for the negativity, because the issues that most are being negative about, are legitimate. Hopefully, things do get better. With most things MPQ, people will forget about these issues over time, and they'll get swept under the rug, unless they get addressed. Then things will be quiet for a while, until the next problems pop up and the cycle starts all over again.

Those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. D3 and Demiurge to not learn from history, in regards to upfront or clear communication. They are reactive instead of proactive.

Couple of things.. this was my first new event as a mod.. and yah.. i tried too hard.. but, hindsight is 20/20.. and i probably owe a couple of apologies for over-modding..

I learned quite a bit from this though.. Next time.. (let's hope there isn't one).. it will go very differently.

OneLastGambit

I think the amount of upvotes my original post got shows you that very few of us (if any) hold you guys accountable for anything.

As for psychiatric services - I think I would've been overworked this weekend and have to refer some people to my colleagues. It did provide me with some data collection for a research project we are conducting next year on addictive behaviour with online gaming though - so galactus wasn't a total bust !

lukewin

Malcrof wrote:

Couple of things.. this was my first new event as a mod.. and yah.. i tried too hard.. but, hindsight is 20/20.. and i probably owe a couple of apologies for over-modding..

I learned quite a bit from this though.. Next time.. (let's hope there isn't one).. it will go very differently.

I do applaud you for trying too hard and sorry you had to learn the hard way.

Let's face it, there will be a next time. There's always been a next time, with MPQ. But glad that there are some good green names to help try to contain the chaos.

Dayv

Linkster79 wrote:

In all honesty I am quite surprised that they are allowed to have their game name the same as their moderator names. A few games I have done moderating duty for insist on different mod names so that the player base cannot accuse them of favouritism when dealing with friends or alliance/clan members they may be a part of.

I would actually worry that the level of secrecy would encourage favoritism. Having people know who I am in the game and able to find out who my alliance-mates are makes me more likely to be responsible if/when something that one of my allies posts needs moderation, because I want to avoid any appearance of favoritism.

On those rare occasions that someone I have history with needs a talking-to and I don't feel like I can be properly impartial, I just ask one of the other mods to have a look out. I think greater transparency is good, overall.

SnowcaTT

DayvBang wrote:

I would actually worry that the level of secrecy would encourage favoritism. Having people know who I am in the game and able to find out who my alliance-mates are makes me more likely to be responsible if/when something that one of my allies posts needs moderation, because I want to avoid any appearance of favoritism.

On those rare occasions that someone I have history with needs a talking-to and I don't feel like I can be properly impartial, I just ask one of the other mods to have a look out. I think greater transparency is good, overall.

I'm in here disagreeing with Dayv way more often than I do in-game!

I agree with OP: Thanks for Mods for all you are trying to do - it's rough with such a large/angry user-base (mob) that's out there with pitchforks right now. That mob doesn't always understand they are headed to dev offices with their torches.

Lystrata

In all fairness, when threads initially started being merged, I doubt anyone, including mods, could foresee just how much disappointment, frustration and anger was going to be expressed. On such a wide variety of topics / aspects of the anniversary. I probably would have done the same thing at the start.

Really glad you chilled a bit and let everyone vent though. Thanks.