MORE ON GUIDES [Author: wirehead]
Here’s an interesting note someone sent me regarding Bum the Sad’s guide program analysis:
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Still a Sony guide who has been trying to resign for a while….
Once a guide is promoted as a senior guide they go OFF the schedule. Guides never know when a guide or a GM will be online. That coupled with the fact that you can not talk between servers and no icq or irc means often guides are totally isolated.
You are subjected to /tell spam. There is a certain percentage of players who lacks the maturity to understand that a human being is on the other side of the guide program. There is an expectation that a guide should be responsive to anyone who sends a /tell (by players… as guides well know the problem of trying to work on a petition only to be getting 12 different conversations from a variety of people.
The guide bbs is heavily censored by those who never want anything bad being said about the program or the game for that matter.
Each server has its own sub board where guides report on each shift. These reports often have questions that never get answered.
For Verant it is a two edged sword. They have to try to keep the spoilers down on quests etc. but this leads to keeping guides in the dark on many issues.
The bottom line is that increasing guide numbers has become VERY difficult.
For me it was too wearing, too frustrating, and led to me quitting EQ even as a player… (well it was not the guide program completely, but the number of ill-conceived solutions to perceived problems…. (can anyone say lore items?))
For me, OSI has a lot of problems, but at least they have tried to establish a channel to the player communtiy.
I am back in UO on Siege and feeling a whole lot better.
*waves*