Looks like shots of Project Copernicus have been released through one of our loyal fansites, 38 Watch. Wonder how they got those…

You can check out hi-res versions of the shots here.

I wish these reveals had been under better circumstances. We have a lot we wanted to show the world when the time was right.

Regardless of what comes, thanks to everyone who has shown interest in the project over the years.

I’m sure by now you’ve heard about Blizzard’s RealID system, and have seen many of the opinions against the upcoming change to WoW’s forums.

I think the move is lousy too, for most of the same reasons others have stated. I think ultimately the change is dangerous, both to the customers and to the health of the community. And I say this as someone whose “real ID” has been a matter of public record for a number of years now.

But there’s another aspect to this I’d like to talk about which I haven’t seen discussed so far.

My instinct is that this change will peel away yet another layer of the magic of MMOs: that of being able to pretend you’re someone else. Sure, anonymity can empower jerks to act like even bigger jerks, but the illusion of the avatar also does great things. It allows disabled gamers to ignore their physical limitations; it allows the meek to act with confidence; it allows the person with an average job and an average life to become a legend.

The danger of connecting MMOs too closely with real life is that it takes away the game’s function as a vehicle of escape, perhaps even limiting the potential of the game to inspire the imagination. That’s a heavy price to pay for cutting down on forum spam.

Of course the message boards are technically separate from the game itself, but they represent a big part of the MMO experience for a sizable number of players. That connection is being impacted by the RealID change, which means yet another aspect of the classic MMO experience is being lost–if you’re a WoW player, at least.

Now, let me pontificate to MMO developers for a minute.

From personal experience, I know that keeping a gaming forum as useful and troll-free as possible is a huge pain in the ass. Guess what? It’s also the price you pay for coming to the dance. I don’t care how big your community is or how many posts you have to moderate–hire the freaking staff to do the job right. I understand the motive of wanting to create a cleaner environment for your posters, but don’t take the positive experience away from the good folks in the name of shutting up the asshats.

There is a certain charm in the forum hero known only by a clever handle. The MMOs of tomorrow need to hold onto all the charm they can, not let it slip away–regardless of the motive.

The post on my site that gets the most spam is titled “Minnesota MMO Blog Explosion!” so I figured I’d make another post with a spammer-friendly title and give the bots a new target.

Anyway, I spent part of my weekend on a panel at the inaugural GameUnicon here in Massachusetts. I was joined by my cohort Shwayder and Justin Webb from Tencent Boston. We had an excellent discussion with the seven people in the audience (only one of which was a spouse!).

As proof of our awesomeness at the event, here is a video that Justin and Angela put together.

On RPG Vault, FusionFall’s Rich Weil outlines a lot of the reasons community management is a much more nebulous position in online gaming than many other development roles. Lum (honorary community manager) and Sanya discuss the article and agree with most of what Rich says, and there’s not much in the piece that I would argue about either.

But I think there’s more to this general misunderstanding about community management than a lack of metrics or solid job descriptions. The profession also lacks a sense of history.

If you want to judge a designer, artist, or coder on a game he or she has worked on, you can (usually) pick up the game and evaluate it for yourself, or at the very least do some digging into reviews and feedback on the particular aspects of the game linked to this person’s efforts. To evaluate the work of a community manager, what are you going to do–dig through years of forum posts? Search out fansite interviews? Google for vague impressions?

The very nature of community management is that it’s of the moment. These moments have a cumulative effect for members of the community–they either develop a sense that the community team is listening and actively working on their behalf or decide they’re useless corporate shills–but beyond the realm of the player base and dev team, the community manager has a hard time making a clear impression. Unless you were a member of the relevant community at the time, there is little chance you’ll know anything more than third-hand rumors about what Abashi did to piss off players, or what Sanya did to make the Camelot Herald kick ass, or what Moorgard did or didn’t say about frogloks. You can read random insinuations posted on message boards by those who may or may not have been there, but often those recollections are made through the hazy veil of selective memory.

So we’re talking about a profession that not only lacks standardized tools, job descriptions, and advancement opportunities (is there a pure community job in gaming anywhere above the director level?), but where new generations of community managers can barely get a sense of what their predecessors have done right or wrong.

Sure, I suppose if someone comes up with a formula for measuring exactly how a community manager’s efforts impact specific aspects of a particular product, those metrics would help justify the position to those who doubt its value, but we’ll never entirely get away from the fact that OCR is indeed a touchy-feely affair (as it should be; if it ain’t touchy-feely, it ain’t community). Personally, as much as I’d like to see the next generation of community managers armed with proper standards and metrics, I’d just as much like to see them endowed with a real sense of what went before so that they can help guide this discipline to a better future.

Gotta say, this is a pretty cool example of user generated content.

I wonder if he got by with just giving her a ring in game rather than IRL. Nah, nobody could be that lucky!

It’s a tough day to be an SOE community manager.

I’m as guilty as anyone: bloggers who don’t update their sites very often. What a slap in the face to the community!

Well, now there’s a solution to ensure that all blog writers get those updates done fast: Write or Die.

Genius!

On Thursday I’m making the cross-country flight to California to attend BlizzCon 2008. A couple of us from 38 Studios will be there in relation to a project called Azeroth Advisor which you may have caught wind about.

We’ll be walking the show floor, chatting with gamers and soaking in the sights. And yeah, we’ll be taking notes so that one day when we have Copernicus fan events, they will be just as exciting as BlizzCon.

Oh, and I want that polar bear!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I much prefer fan events over industry gatherings. There is no substitute for meeting players face to face–even if they’re not players of a game I’m working on. So if you see a couple geeks wandering around in 38 Studios gear, be sure to say hello.

Edit: These videos tell you everything you want to know about the Azeroth Advisor newsletter. And more.

Sanya is absolutely correct in this post. A big part of being an effective community manager is possessing a genuine love the player base.

This is why, if asked to choose between attending an industry conference or a player-centric event, I’ll hang with the players every time. During my time on EQ2, there was literally nothing more energizing than attending a Fanfaire and interacting face to face with people passionate about the game. And the best developers on the team always felt the same way.

Love is at the core of community management; love for the players, love for the game, love for the team. Despise any of them and you will burn out and suck at your job.

Cuppy posted some thoughts on the recent debate concerning whether or not Mythic’s Mark Jacobs should have posted the response he did to the EU beta issues on his blog. Her points are correct and reasonable, and I agree with them in spirit just as I do with Amber’s rant in the comments section.

However, in many cases the realities of community management are different from the ideals of it. The simple fact is that CEOs and execs get to say what they want whenever they want, and community managers just have to deal with it.

Believe me, it makes any CM crazy when he or she spends hours slaving over the exact wording of a post on a touchy subject only to have an Unstoppable Force leap onto the forums and drop a bomb that stirs up a hornets nest. It’s especially frustrating when you know that, no matter how well-intentioned the post was, the Unstoppable Force will only be personally engaged with the subject in question until he tires of it, at which point it becomes entirely the community manager’s mess to clean up.

(You might be assuming that I have found myself in such situations in the past. Perhaps this is true; I refuse to name names. Instead, we’ll just use hypothetical initials for this fictitious Unstoppable Force. Let’s randomly choose the initials “JS.”)

When it’s a fellow team member or even a producer who makes a post you wish they wouldn’t have, you can (and should) call them on it and try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. When it’s someone way up the food chain that does it, you should still call them on it. But be prepared for the fact that, no matter how positively they respond to your feedback, nothing will stop them from doing the same thing again.

This is the reality in this age where it’s easy for anyone to post their thoughts directly to the player base. Part of the job of the community manager is to remind the Unstoppable Force of the consequences of his posts, even if it doesn’t seem to do any good at the time. Eventually, you hope, something will sink in.

But the would-be community manager should have no illusions; this WILL happen to you, and you’re being paid to deal with it. You’re only in control until someone higher up the food chain swoops in and poops all over your picnic. It is in no small part how you deal with such situations that defines how well you do your job.