Warrior General Games

http://goallineblitz.com/game/forum_thread.pl?thread_id=5022645&page=2

Seeing Pallow's response here was great and informative. You dont feel like you just got spit on by a quickly locked thread with no rhyme or reason. Sorry but I believe when individuals spend tons of money with many spending over 500 to 1k a year should be treated to more respectful responses like his in this thread and another one I had.

It looks more professional and you dont want to thrown your monitor after you read it.

All I know is by someone taking 2 minutes to post a real response it makes you feel better about blowing a lot of money on a game.

Common sense would dictate which threads are jokes and not. I wouldnt even post the occasional joke thread if the real ones got a bit more attention.









AFTER LOCK EDIT: Thanks for the low down on how admins work. Now I know. I also feel that while you cant respond to every post or acknowledge everyone it is appreciated and I will try to help by not making anymore bullshit joke theads or complain in the suggestions forum.

I didnt really mean this as a complaint thread, I TRULY 100% meant it to be about seeing actual employees post more. It sounds stupid but Im sure other people will agree its nice to see when you pay alot of money to play a game.

No u, seriuosly i would rather see them impliment the good suggestions than post in the thread

Mods act as a filter for the admins. I don't care to have admins wasting their time looking through a bunch of really bad suggestions. The way it is now is much more efficient.

-1 Admins have a job to do why add more stupid stuff to them such as posting in suggestions forums.

Get more Admins. I dont understand, this is a business. To us its a game, to the owner and its staff its a job. Why stick up for someone whos making money off of us?

Its like if you went into Walmart and the person at the customer service counter was a volunteer. That wouldnt work or go over well. The same thing applies here. You would never in any business want a volunteer dealing directly with your paying customers. Why should it be different in the online world? Who knows how many people left because of an overzealous mod? When people leave profits go down. Thats the bottom line.


I have no clue if admins are paid employees or glorified volunteers so if someone lets me know this I may change my mind.

Bad analogy.

You repeatedly posting this stuff rather than contacting support is more like standing outside a Walmart and approaching the first random person you see and rattling off a list of complaints.

Originally posted by Alky
Get more Admins. I dont understand, this is a business. To us its a game, to the owner and its staff its a job. Why stick up for someone whos making money off of us?

Its like if you went into Walmart and the person at the customer service counter was a volunteer. That wouldnt work or go over well. The same thing applies here. You would never in any business want a volunteer dealing directly with your paying customers. Why should it be different in the online world? Who knows how many people left because of an overzealous mod? When people leave profits go down. Thats the bottom line.


I have no clue if admins are paid employees or glorified volunteers so if someone lets me know this I may change my mind.

well at the end of the day this like most other suggestions are based off of your opinions. and as always you are entitled to your opinion just as is everyone else. I just don't get that if you and so many other people on this game feel that it is so bad. and that the Mods are not up to standards then why do you stay and play the game? seriously why waste time and money just to get all bent out of shape and then rant about stuff like having Admins post in the suggestions forum? also why do you always try to back up your arguments with a business model? yes this is a business to bort and Co. but in reality they have moved onto other endeavors so your argument is more than likely falling on deaf ears here.

Originally posted by Dub J
Bad analogy.

You repeatedly posting this stuff rather than contacting support is more like standing outside a Walmart and approaching the first random person you see and rattling off a list of complaints.

very well put

I agree with Alky, though I see Dub J's point.

I don't want the Admins spending TOO much time in the forums, but they could certainly spend more time than they do now.

It feels like there's a bit of an "us versus them" mentality between the customers of this game and the mods and admins sometimes, and that's just silly. Without "them," we wouldn't have this entertaining game to play or this fun community to participate in. Without "us," they wouldn't be making any money. There's nothing to be gained by keeping each other at arm's length.

Getting the admins to interact with us a bit more in the forums will help break that mentality down, and quite frankly I think it would lead to a bit less "misbehavior" by the customers than what we see now. I can think of quite a few times where legitimate, serious problems in the game went ignored by the admins despite multiple and reasonable complaints -- until somebody (in a couple of cases, ME) went ape-shit about it in the forums. Things should never have to get to that point. And if the Admins spent more time interacting with us, it wouldn't ever have to get to that point.

Originally posted by Novus
I agree with Alky, though I see Dub J's point.

I don't want the Admins spending TOO much time in the forums, but they could certainly spend more time than they do now.

It feels like there's a bit of an "us versus them" mentality between the customers of this game and the mods and admins sometimes, and that's just silly. Without "them," we wouldn't have this entertaining game to play or this fun community to participate in. Without "us," they wouldn't be making any money. There's nothing to be gained by keeping each other at arm's length.

Getting the admins to interact with us a bit more in the forums will help break that mentality down, and quite frankly I think it would lead to a bit less "misbehavior" by the customers than what we see now. I can think of quite a few times where legitimate, serious problems in the game went ignored by the admins despite multiple and reasonable complaints -- until somebody (in a couple of cases, ME) went ape-shit about it in the forums. Things should never have to get to that point. And if the Admins spent more time interacting with us, it wouldn't ever have to get to that point.

have you ever tried PMing a admin with a problem? I have and have never had to go ape-shit as you say to get a problem looked at or corrected. and you analogy of if the admins spent more time in the forums that the user base and the admins wouldn't be kept at arms length is wrong in my opinion. we all see everyday how the Mods get hammered by the userbase. and most of the userbase that hammers the Mods are the ones that troll and get banned regularly. so if the admins spent more time in the forums they would in turn start getting blasted by the trolls as well.

Originally posted by hatchman
have you ever tried PMing a admin with a problem? I have and have never had to go ape-shit as you say to get a problem looked at or corrected. and you analogy of if the admins spent more time in the forums that the user base and the admins wouldn't be kept at arms length is wrong in my opinion. we all see everyday how the Mods get hammered by the userbase. and most of the userbase that hammers the Mods are the ones that troll and get banned regularly. so if the admins spent more time in the forums they would in turn start getting blasted by the trolls as well.

Yep... and quite frankly, admins never paid much attention to my PMs until AFTER the times I went ape-shit.

Going ape-shit is what got their attention. It also got them to realize that I'm not just your average whiner or troll.

And that right there is the problem. That's a TERRIBLE message to send to the user-base. Ignoring people until they go ape-shit just encourages more people to go ape-shit.

I would like to see the admins post more in general but I have come to the realization this isn't going to happen. Having them thoroughly discuss suggestions on a daily basis with everyone that makes a suggestion is unreasonable imo. If the admins did this every Tom, Dick, and Harry would be creating 10 threads a day just to have audience with the admins.

Incoming massive post:

All admins are Portland based employees. We do receive paychecks but we are still a very small company. Hiring more administrators isn't going to happen any time soon.

The difference between us and other online games is we actually do implement user suggestions into the game and have a place for these discussions to take place. It's a community feature we are proud of and the amount of user suggestions we have actually implemented is staggering. This almost never happens in an online business.

The one things we do have common with almost all online communities is "overzealous moderator complaints." Users don't like being punished and they are not afraid to share that opinion with others. This gives others the impression things are much worse then they actually are. "I heard so and so was suspended for something or other, how unfair is that!" You are only hearing one side of the argument and it generally has been blown out of proportion.


I'm dedicated in taking moderator complaints and punishing moderators abusing their powers. The last thing I would want to encourage is a moderator suspending users for absolutely no reason. That is bad business but as I just mentioned the complaints are usually spread by word of mouth and the amount of evidence provided to me is very minimal, when it is provided.

If you want change in the moderator team, provide SOMETHING to support. Complaining about it on the forums isn't a solution I will ever listen to. To me it is straight up online drama that all companies have to deal with.

We give you guys far more wiggle room than most companies would. I have a friend who use to post on the Diablo 3 forums and all he did was post "Jay Wilson(game developer) has a fat neck" and he has been banned from the forums for 5 months for this comment.

The lowered user-base, from my point of view, is just due to the life-span of any game. How many years can someone play a dot-ball game before becoming bored and choose to move on? This game has been very successful but without a new release or massive advertising campaigns, we will continue to lose members. That isn't to say any of the admins are tossing up their arms and saying "screw it", let's just let the game die and wait for something new. This is Borts first child and he will continue to give it attention, as long as their are members and we all enjoy our jobs immensely.

The only users that I know who have "left" the game because of the moderators are users who eventually got banned from the game for non-stop inappropriate behaviors. We are talking 20-30 suspensions before this happens. Not 4 or 5.

I do agree the moderator team needs better guidelines on how to handle situations on the forums constantly.

As to the original suggestion asks, Have the administrators post more often, I have changed my stance on how often I post in the forums dramatically in the last month. I will be far more active now and I will weight in on topics like this when I can but as Dub J mentioned, the moderators are my eyes and ears. If they see a major situation brewing, they let me know and then I can get involved. This is why you see them far more often then you see us.

Catch22 is the game expert. I'm the forum guy. So don't expect me commenting on anything outside of that.

TL;DR Version:

1.) Administrators are staff members of Warrior General Games.

2.) Moderators will always receive complaints no matter how perfect the setup is. They are always doing too much or always doing too little.

3.) I will always investigate complaints if they are set to support with evidence. Send them to support. They will contact me.

4.) Moderators will always post more often then administrators due to their responsibilities and understanding of game functions but they will get Catch or I involved when necessary.

5.) As many have noticed, I have been far more active in public forum posts and I will continue to try to do so.

6.) This still isn't a game suggestion. It's a complaint.