MMO Community Management, Roundtable
Kevin O'Hara, Star Wars Galaxies
Folks from Uru, Meridian 59, The Matrix Online, in attendance
Pre-launch community was idealistic and in the honeymoon phase, where the game “could be anything.” The live community expected things as paying customers.
Good to keep forums readable for everyone, otherwise people will take it elsewhere and you’ll lose moderation rights. “What you respond to is what you get more of” – don’t start flame wars or fall for bait. Be strict at first, and set laws that you don’t bend. Start a precedent of what behavior is acceptable. Consider having a miscellaneous section of the forums, for areas not related to the game. Basically allows people to rant or talk about off topic things, without expecting developers to comment.
Commenting on fan forums create an immense amount of positive feedback. Officially link to fansites that meet a set of requirements
Get developers to comment on the best forums, thus increasing their quality and readership. Have a list of good and taboo topics for your developers, approved by PR. Tape this to their monitor. Spell check and use proper grammar. You’re a PR representative first and a game developer second--posting is a privilege. Beware disgruntled developers whose ideas get shot down internally, and get the community excited about it. This has been used as a tactic to try to get internal support and is ultimately another promise you have to keep to the community.
Smaller development houses deal with their own feedback—if you flame you deal with the fallout—unlike larger houses or places where the publisher “stirs up the pot” but doesn’t deal with the mess.
SOE can blacklist griefers, and kick people out of the game for their behavior on the forums.
They show all the posts of troublemakers to a reviewer, ie keeping an eye on them. Tools like Lithium hunt for keywords. Find tools that create visual patterns that can be scanned more quickly.
Remove # of posts to prevent people from trying to level up their post skill. Slashdot style ratings and moderation are considered not refined enough. 30% of players are on the forums. Creating town halls for in-game forum discussions was rejected because of the need for constant real-time moderation. Forum posting is not accessible in game for SWG.
April 6, 2004 09:43 AM