Friday, October 24, 2008

CCP Zulupark - A Good move forward... finally!

What does 5 Dev Blogs, New Expansion, a Nerf, and a Dev Chat have in common?  Well, and the answer is: CCP Zulupark

By the way, I have found the reason why I got banned from the forums, I shall discuss that later. What is imperative right now is to do the right thing and encourage CCP on the road to redemption. We have all heard already about the infamous thread (participation in which had caused my ignoble downfall from the forums) or, the new Live Dev Blog: Introducing CCP T0rfifrans - well what do you know it did not go so well.  But, I am not gleeful, I am actually quite impressed with how CCP Zulupark handled the disaffected masses.  

Since everyone was already upset about the upcoming nerfs, and combine it with the recent nerf to the "Unsubscribed Training" aka "Ghost Training, tensions were running high, and the community was getting really angry about the uninformative blog. Following that, CCP Zulupark announced that he will answer every single question from the EVE community, asked on forums between Friday the 24th of October, and Midnight, Sunday the 26th of October. The announcement by CCP Wrangler can be found here, and the actual "answers" thread can be found here.  By the way, I did get a chance to ask my questions, with my trusted sikrit [sic] ALT - and no, you can't know who it is, the character is in case I get banned forever, and actually need to ask a question! 

This is what I call courage, and dedication. This is what reminds me of what this game was like 5, nay, 3 years ago! This is how CCP used to handle things. They would go out of their way to answer player questions - they would never insulate themselves from the community, well in the past anyway. 

Now, I am very much impressed, and I think that it might actually start healing up allot of wounds within the community which were caused by years of neglect, and half-truths, and outright and deliberate misinformation. 

Question is, will this practice continue? Will the people who are in charge of CCP realize that it might be the greatest opportunity they have ever had to win their community back, and over again. Will the developers, who would come following in CCP Zulupark's footsteps find themselves bored, inattentive, and bothered by the questions? Will they find strength to answer them honestly? Only time will tell. 

Until then, I want to congratulate CCP Zulupark on finding courage, and showing dedication I have not seen in many years.  Thus far CCP Zulupark has made a personal decision to do this, and I encourage CCP, if any CCP Member ever reads this, to take his example, and turn it into a monthly or bi-weekly practice. All cutsie wootsie "Live" and mostly uninformative dev blogs aside, this is how things should be done. Q & A Session for 48 Hours, we ask questions, then a Developer comes back and answers them. 

Perhaps CCP Wrangler should take up that responsibility, he is the community manager, he should take the questions and forward them to the appropriate people, and then post the answers, if the other guys are too busy. This is what Kieron used to do. 

Developers need to come to the forums, and answer questions, allot of questions, alway answer questions. Do not hide behind a paragraph in a blog that tells us nothing, be open, be accessible, be approachable, come down from the Hig-Tech Ivory Tower and talk to us.  

A good start CCP, or rather CCP Zulupark, my hat is off to you sir. 

1 comment:

Jaggins said...

Transparency is always a plus for the consumer. I'm glad you are hitting CCP with your insights, and sorry it got you temp-banned!