In all games, there is a need for the company to obtain information from the playerbase. Some game companies rely on their official forums, fan-sites and comments on review sites. For the most part, this seems to be sufficient for a game company to monitor what’s going well and what’s lacking in the game. Massively Multiplayer Online games, because of their persistent nature, because of the desire for regularly updated content need more current feedback on how the game is. They know that there will be some unbalance and some issues that they will need to fix. However, one of the issues is prioritization of those issues. There are several ways to gain valuable information. One of the more creative ways to obtain feedback to the developers is to have a player correspondent position, however, this system has some unique challenges, advantages and responsibilities. As we all know, The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar is in the beta process, where there are closed forums and player feedback is essential to develop the game into a final polished product. Would the player correspondent system be advantageous to LotRO’s community, or would the challenges of that position create a larger problem for the community at large?




The Player Correspondent:

Some games, like Star Wars Galaxies had a player correspondent position to get that feedback. Other games, like Dungeons and Dragons Online, choose not to have an official player correspondent system. The first thing we need to look at is what is the player correspondent position? What are the responsibilities, the obligations and benefits? A little over a year ago, I was the player correspondent for the Ranger profession for Star Wars Galaxies. I had first hand experience in monitoring the Ranger forums for ideas, feedback, bugs and issues. My responsibilities were to report to the developers the feedback from the ranger community, which numbered over 10,000 people. I would dedicate a few hours a day to helping people with ranger related issues, commenting on threads and at the same time, gathering information from players about how the ranger profession could be improved. Often times, the developers would ask me to post questions to the ranger community for their response. In a nutshell, those were my duties. The qualities that all of the Ranger Correspondents had to have were a love and deep knowledge of the profession, they had to be organized, literate and mature. Beyond that, all of the Ranger correspondents had to have a unique voice, we had to have earned the respect, for the most part, of the ranger community at large. We had to gain the trust of the community by being an active and helpful participant. We were mature and balanced, we would chide some of the childish members and praise the helpful members. Most of all, we had the feeling (whether it was true or not) that we were helping improve a game that we enjoyed and helping a profession that we loved.




What are the Benefits of the Player Corr System?

When the player correspondent system works, it’s an amazing tool for the developers. They have talented and enthusiastic people who are already working to make their chosen profession accessible to the new players, richer to the experienced players and often times, contributing to the overall image of the profession. The devs in SWG took some of those people and made them into correspondents. While it was a completely volunteer position, we never got paid… we never got to play for free… we didn’t even get any company or game swag, we did it anyway because we loved the profession and the game. In return, the developers would gain, for the most part, unbiased state of the profession reports, bugs and other issues, reports on what the profession community wanted for future upgrades or enhancements and of course, players who added a little bit of personality to the forums. We got a little bit of recognition, ideally, we would get our profession information a little bit early, we would get into the expansion betas, and we got to control the overall “feel” of our forums. It was a “win-win” situation. The correspondents would have their own community, and would often visit the rival correspondents’ forums and start a little bit of friendly trouble. In fact, there was (and still is) an ongoing war between the former rangers and former tailors over the issue of hawtpants, eventually, the rangers won that battle and hawtpants were deemed evil garments. (Consider yourself pwned Mira and N’Jessi). Overall, it was a good system, but like most ideas, it had its flaws as well.

The Problems with the Player Corr System:

Like any good relationship, the lines of communication have to go two ways. All too often, because the correspondents don’t have any real power or influence, their input can get ignored or pushed to the back of the line. We rarely had any direct impact on the direction of the game. This would foster a sort of distrust of the effectiveness of the correspondent system as a whole. Some professions would seem to get more attention, and the less popular professions would get little to no attention. While it’s understandable that the companies have their own priorities and schedules, when the company stops listening to the player base, they end up creating an ineffective body of input. The correspondents could provide as much information as possible, they could create amazing documents and recommendations based upon the community goals, but if those goals didn’t mesh with the company’s goals, then they were tabled, and the correspondents were told, “We love what you did, thank you, everyone’s seen it, and we all like the ideas…” and then the conversation would end in a sort of nebulous “we’ll get back to you later” situation. That was the key failure of the player correspondent position. In the end, there was no real communication and the company was going to do what it had planned to do all along, and the correspondents ended up being glorified forum babysitters. When it works, it’s an amazing tool, when it fails, it’s miserable.




Would LotRO Benefit from a Player Corr System?

While I might sound like I’m pandering to Turbine, I have to admit that of all the other MMO’s I’ve ever played, I am the most impressed with Turbine’s commitment to the community. I’ve never seen an MMO company so concerned and dedicated to gaining the input of its community. The community staff at Turbine has never failed to impress me with its level of communication, humor and honesty to the player base. Assuming that they keep that level of connection to the player base, would they benefit from implementing a player correspondent for Lord of the Rings Online?




There is no shortage of players with an encyclopedic knowledge of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work who also are experienced and mature gamers. They’re obvious on the forums, they are active and passionate. They rise above the sometimes petty arguments and try to infuse a level of civil discourse. One of the things I like about the Lord of the Rings franchise is that it attracts a diverse group of people, there are no age, gender, race or geographic barriers that would prevent a person from loving Tolkien’s work. If Turbine were to include a correspondent position, they would have an amazing pool of people to chose from. The problem is not the willingness of the players, but the number of professions. In Lord of the Rings Online, there are seven classes and four races. If each profession and race had a player correspondent, that one person would have an immense job in front of them to gauge the attitudes, ideas, critiques and priorities of the entire LOTRO community. With other games that had over 30 different professions, that number was cut down to a more manageable size. I would feel sorry for the person who had to be the correspondent for the elves, or the hunter. The sheer volume of input would be an immense barrier to have an effective correspondent. Would multiple correspondents help? Potentially, but multiple correspondents would have to coordinate with each other to collect and disseminate information.




How could Turbine involve the player community into its feedback and development cycle? One of the ways to do this is to continue what the staff at Turbine is already doing. Sites like LotroSource and Ten Ton Hammer have already done an amazing job in keeping the player base informed and entertained. They already have a group of people whose job it is to scour the official forums for news and interesting tidbits of information. On the official forums, there wouldn’t be a player correspondent, that would be an immense job for anyone… especially if it’s only a volunteer position. Turbine should continue to build the relationships with sites like Ten Ton Hammer and regularly chat with them to find out what people are saying. The communities won’t be as large as Turbine’s official site, but sites like TTH or Warcry have a staff that’s already writing content, analysis, guides, walkthroughs and, of course, discussing bugs and broken issues. Turbine could leverage that existing talent and time for its own benefits. On the official forums, there could be links to the fan-site communities, where players would go to find official and player generated content. When Turbine finds a post, an article or a guide that is particularly good, they could add that to the appropriate forum. While this may be a little more work on the staff at Turbine, and a little more work for the fan-sites, this completely avoids the “puppet staff” problem that other companies have had. With fan-sites providing information to Turbine, the expectation for the correspondent to affect change is minimized.




While I like the idea of the player correspondent position, in reality, it’s a frustrating and thankless position. It’s long hours, lots of reading, lots of complaining people and there’s often no direct link to your efforts and the improvement of the game. I doubt Turbine will ever implement a player correspondent position for Lord of the Rings Online, but as long as they realize that there are other avenues for them to get their vital player feedback information in a condensed form, the effect is not lost.




How can Turbine learn from the mistakes of other games who have had player correspondents? How can they elegantly go around some of the pitfalls and detractions of the player correspondent position?