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Game Masters Today
NorseGod
Member EpicPosts: 2,654
Anyone else remember when GMs were more than just in-game customer service?
What happened to GMs being in-game 24/7 spawning unannounced random waves of mobs, bosses, events that they manually controlled?
I can only name one game that still does this (AO). SWG use to do it too.
What happened? And do you miss those days?
To talk about games without the censorship, check out https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/
Comments
In CoH, devs would show up as their in-game avatars. I believe Ghost Widow used to roleplay and even attended a wedding.
I think AC had some GM events.
Didn't Lord British (Garriott) get killed by the players in UO?
I question the games you're playing too. What are you playing that still does what I have described?
Same here.
While the 24/7 claim in the OP is complete horseshit, GM events are still common in MMOs now, more commonly in F2P than subscription, though.
On thing that devs have learned over the years is how to do live events, and they've learned it from the mistakes of the past. Favoritism concerns, international play times, proper staffing, logging/monitoring... there are a lot of reasons why live events are less frequent now but they're still around... just a lot less half-assed than they were in 2000.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
24/7 "claim" is not horseshit. GMs were always present in-game. Now you have to submit a ticket and wait hours upon hours.
There was a time when one could simply ask in OOC chat "Any GMs here?" and a GM would send a tell.
most newer games do not do the gm spawning do to players being ovely whiny if they dont get their way, or they get killed by it and lose xp. while knowing full well thats one of the risks of joining it.
while there are a few F2P titles that have 24/7 gms (gms tend to work tandum shifts of 4-8hrs each with 6 gms a day roughly from what i saw)
alot of newer games dont bother. they regulate gms to just CSR roles instead of community support ingame. more of the kidsy style anime games some times run the gm spawn events but most of the time its holiday based kinda deal ( i recall UWO running a pirate spawn event for 1 holiday years ago.. though people QQed about their ships getting totalled by OP boss fleets)
In my dream game, a Sandbox on steroids, GMs would have multiple characters with predetermined goals that they'd play live. And they'd be limited to playable powers, and ie permanently if killed (not including special resurrections and such by "quest". They'd be the big evil entities behind the scenes, mostly, and hire/recruit regular players as part of their "storyline" that they act out in live game play. They might be gods, high priests, master thieves, deamons, a variety of things. With secrets that players might or might not discover over time.
I don't like the idea of GMs building personal relationships with gamers. I think there needs to be lines they should not cross, lines built on roleplay roles and nothing more.
But it's always been funny to the point of craziness how some GMs need to feed their egos with player groupies.
Once upon a time....
Hmmm....
I loved my time being GM in Nevrax's "Saga of Ryzom" as we are supposed to be in the Game and talk to pplz, do some fun with them. Even when it was just sitting arund a Fire and discuss, in a friendly way, the Game and so forth. It was jus nice.
Later on, as GM for GW1 or City of Heroes/Villains it was just not wanted by NCsoft/Anet that we are "visible" ingame. So we where there, but well hidden, looked over a Group doing a Dungeon or just hovering in a Zone(CoX), looking around.
But nowadays, it cost just to much Money to do that. You have other things to do; Translations, Tickets (a Shitload of them!!) and so on.
Old GM Days are just dead. Working for Games nowadays is just being like a Customer Support Guy from a Hotline. Just with Games. Nothing more, nothing less. Sadly.
Aerowyn's Video Compilation of ALL things Guild Wars 2
GMs in the early days of EQ still had qeues to get thru to them (sometimes quite long) but they did sweet stuff like drag corpses out of the bottom of the Ocean of Tears.
24/7 helping players, yes. That's still common in most MMOs. 24/7 dropping spawns and running events, no. Not common now and never was in the past.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Its cheaper for game companies to pay shills to maintain the product hype and slaugther everyone at the forums that complain about the product than to pay to good GM´s.
If companies start to use the shills money to pay for some good GM´s it would be a good improvement.
Leonard: Penny, you are on fire.
Penny: Yes, so is Sheldon.
[laughs]
Sheldon: Okay, that's it. I don't know how, but she is cheating. No-one can be that attractive and this skilled at a video game.
[walks away]
Penny: Wait, wait. Sheldon. Come back, you forgot something.
Sheldon: What?
Penny: This plasma grenade.
[explosion]
Penny: [laughs] Look! It's raining you.
Sheldon: You laugh now. You just wait until you need tech support. (Big Bang Theory)
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Player:GM ratios exceeded 50000:1. And nearly constant brushfires between staff and players, companies (and lawyers) stopped allowing GMs to make public statements.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.