Tag: Community

Runescape: No, We Don’t Vet Our Moderators


I’ve been involved in more player moderator/volunteer positions with online games than I can count, and one aspect that has always remained the same is the expectation of involvement. If a player asks for help and I ignore them, I stood to be fired. If there was a player cheating and I did nothing about it, I stood to be fired. If a player was harassing other players, and I didn’t mute him, I stood to be fired. If I acted like an idiot, or made false statements, I stood to be fired. Just because I wasn’t getting paid, didn’t mean I didn’t have some expectation of reliability and professionalism.

Cue in Runescape, where I’ve always said Jagex reads their community about as well as I can read a book sitting in a chair sculpted out of lava. Jagex has taken the laid back approach of “well you are just players so if you don’t want to help others, you don’t have to.” As expected, this has simply lead to a large number of moderators who accept the position just for the fancy crown next to their name in chat, or simply to mute people they don’t like (I should note that the latter generally do not last long as moderators).

While Jagex does a decent job of culling corrupt moderators, what they should be focusing on is the indifference aspect. If a moderator is present when a player is breaking the rules, and does not report them, they should be removed. Moderators who are inactive for a period of time should also be removed. I specifically left out answering questions because with how many players are on at any given time, getting an answer from players should not be difficult.

I am not suggesting that player moderators should be forced to go hunting for rule breakers, but rather just deal with them as they appear. I agree with the sentiment that player moderators are just players, but not to the extent that they can just ignore a problem as a normal player might. And if you don’t want to enforce the rules when you see them being broken, there is also a simple answer: Don’t accept the invitation when you receive it.

It’s really not that difficult.

A Live Community Is A Happy Community


Han Solo works Black Fridays in the electronics section of Best Buy.

Massively has an excellent interview with Lydia Pope, community manager at Sony Online Entertainment overlooking Star Wars Galaxies. Despite all of the rage one might find toward the aging Star Wars MMO, those who do play the game are just as involved as those who played in years past. So much so, in fact, that Lydia feels strongly enough to say that Star Wars Galaxies has one of the most active communities on Sony Online Entertainment’s list of MMOs. With the GM-run events, players are still coming out in droves to run their own events.

But why does Star Wars Galaxies have such an active community? Lydia believes it is partially due to the game’s built-in social aspects. Player owned houses, hubs, emotes, the Galactic Senate, etc, allow a level of interactivity between players and between GM’s that other games just don’t offer. In fact, Lydia explains that community leaders are not an appropriate answer to better feedback.

“[In] our other games, where we have community leaders, we don’t get that in-depth with the feedback.”

An active community is a happy community, and can really boost morale to a game. Back in the times of Ultima Online, players may remember Richard Garriot running around as Lord British (alongside Lord Blackthorn), and then years later as General British during Tabula Rasa’s short reign. Say what you want about the guy, but it is nice to be able to post on the Alganon forums and get a response from CEO Derek Smart and other devs. Some of you who played The Matrix Online will remember the events that took place in that game as well.

Of course, if you hadn’t noticed from my listing of Tabula Rasa and The Matrix Online, an active community does not a healthy game make alone. It does, however, increase the odds of someone sticking around who may have become bored and quit early on.