The discussion about aliases on messageboards is a different animal. Carry on, folks.

I was addressing the direction that the thread took, which contained a number of references to the relative value of aliases in general, in which there were a number of mentions of forum posts. No offense to the newsworthiness of the original post, but the followup discussion was the interesting part here.

It is an interesting distinction, though. Credits have built in ambiguity. A developer who wants to remain anonymous on the forums might well not care if their name is one of a giant group in which individual tasks aren’t easily differentiated. You can’t say which designer of a list of 30 nerfed your class.

That said, if someone opted out, absolutely, I’d allow it. Granted, that has yet to happen – With credits, some who have been reluctant to share real names on forums have only gone as far as wanting their kids’ names excluded from Special Thanks sections, while leaving their own names grouped in with others.

And of course people get a chance to opt out! I can only speak for my neck of the woods, but we generally pass the final draft to the full team before it goes to print, to make sure that (among other things) everything’s right. That’s when objections to credits content have generally been raised in the past, and we’ve made changes as needed.

- Scott

As long as I have any say in it, no developer on any team that I’m in charge of will be required to disclose their real name or any other personally identifiable information in public.

Everyone on the EQ team just *chose* to use their real names for EQ Platinum, Scott? – http://www.allgame.com/cg/agg.dll?p=agg&sql=1:46019~T3

Ditto EQ II Desert of Flames? – http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/everquest-ii-desert-of-flames/credits

I could probably continue googling . . .

That is what we are discussing here – the official game credits in the manual.

On the pre-ren server thingy, I’d like to suggest MBJ start a new thread on certain fora to gauge community intrest, could make for some interesing reading at the very least…

I have little doubt that there are enough people out there to support a pre-UO:R shard. I can’t speak as to the cost for EA Mythic to open one, but if say 10,000 accounts are reopened and half of them are still subscribed after 6 months, would that be worthwhile to you? I can’t answer that question but I honestly think that’s a reasonable number and probably pretty far on the conservative end.

Let me point out that there is almost no reason for a UO player that quit years ago to come back to the game in it’s current state. The graphics upgrade is nice, but we both know it’s just a new coat of paint on a car that had it’s V-8 ripped out and replaced with a lawnmower engine. You may get a few former players to look at it and maybe even test drive it, but once they try to drive it the house of cards comes tumbling down.

Honestly I am completely baffled that there has been so much hostility to such a shard from EA in the past. Various player-run shards have been immensely popular, even lacking the stability of a EA-run server and the power of EA advertising. It’s definitely a risk to open a shard like this, but the possible payouts and the powerful publicity generated from it is something to look very seriously at. How many people cut their teeth on UO and would sign up for nothing more than nostalgia? How many people missed the chance to play UO and would sign up to see what all the fuss was about it?

Plus, lots of other EA studios’ CMs use them.. “APOC”, etc. Why buck the trend?

If I have staff who abuse any privilege intentionally or otherwise, I don’t assume that I have a policy issue. I have either a training issue (customer communication being a skill, just like making code or content) or a discipline issue, and it gets fixed as appropriate to the situation.

Indeed.

I’m not sure how anyone can buy into the arguement that a) the industry has “grown up” so more professional names should be used whilst simultaneously positing that b) using full names makes the professionals “less prone to childish behavior, outbursts, and personal insults”. Sorry Sanya and MBJ but that doesn’t seem to fit.

In fact, quite the opposite I don’t think most company to customer interactions within the gaming industry are “grown up” at all. This is an industry where today’s players who post rants containing little more than obscenities become tomorrow’s game designers, CM’s melt down on the official forums and are not employees the next day, and devs are accused of dubious practices involving cheating at the very game they make.

If this were professional the customer interactions would be much more formal. CMs wouldn’t give their opinion. The communications would be run by legal, delivered by approved and trained pros. The employees would not be allowed to blog insider information, post on their guild forum, etc. at risk of termination. Devs, designers, CEOs, wouldn’t post at all or if they did it would be guarded, sanitized, and sterile.

I also think that you (meaning Mythic) need to tread softly. I believe at the core the players have a valid concern in that you chose to back a company policy at the expense of a piece of their game culture. I don’t think it is a giant issue nor does it make you the evil new guys who wrecked the game they love but I wouldn’t want to have to try to sell it to those customers either.

In all seriousness though, do you think that there is a lot of support in the community for it?

Zuh? Are you serious? IPY had, what, just shy of a thousand accounts signed up in the first half hour of its life? And that was run by a pack of retards, entirely spread by word of mouth, with no official support. Not to mention the fact that every single time UO is discussed on Corp or F13 or anywhere else, the sentence “Man, pre-Ren UO was way more fun than XYZ” is usually the third post down, and QFT’d by nearly everyone. I’m honestly wondering if you are exhibiting some sick sense of humor by even asking as if it’s a question; whoever is doing your UO community relations needs to be fired for obviously not briefing you on anything relevant to the job at hand.

At this point I think Ray’s little kid knows more about what the UO community (ex OR current) want than everyone at EA…