The fact that he did take vacation around the time of a major expansion expected to be rife with bugs (most MMO expansions and major updates are, that's not yet another shot across their bow, it's the nature of the beast) made me seriously raise an eyebrow.
I'm hoping it IS an actual vacation, though, and not some sort of family emergency or something bad.
I believe Bluegeek mentioned prior to the release of DR that he will be taking a leave of absence from the forum due to personal matters involving his family that takes precedence over a game.
It doesn't really matter if the forums are up or not. If they took the forums down, then players would make their own fan forums and go ***** there. That's what we used to do in ye olde days. Square Enix didn't even bother giving us forums or community mods for FFXI back in the day, so we made a handful of fan sites and did all the ******** there. Although I guess nowadays people can just go ***** on twitters and facespaces and whatnot. It's all the same really.
Edit: Hah. This post can totally be taken out of context with the censoring. I like it, I think I'll keep it like that.
The forum Mod is Blue Geek (although I think his official title is 'Community Moderator')
And last I recall, you are allowed to complain all you want as long you don't break the forum rules
I'm sure he is watching all the time, its just no one is breaking any rules...yet
start a petition or make a 'I quit' thread. I guarantee he will show up
As it was stated before, most of the poor behavior is in General Discussion. The rest of the forums are fairly civil.
There were three "I quit" threads up and going strong yesterday for hours.
There were at least a dozen duplicate "I lost spec points" threads.
The only time they popped in was when an exploit was being discussed. That was twice that I saw.
The forum moderation seriously needs to be reworked. The protocols are sporadically enforced and they are turning what should be a great positive for the game and the company into a virulent negative.
As far as Bluegeek goes, I sincerely wish the family matter is like going to Cabo for grandma's 99th birthday or something. *sends good things happening vibes*
As far as Bluegeek goes, I sincerely wish the family matter is like going to Cabo for grandma's 99th birthday or something. *sends good things happening vibes*
It's not but for the life of me I can't remember what it was. I think it was a family health issue
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
Haters would congregate SOMEWHERE, if not here then some other place.
But here, Cryptic controls whatever they want to control.
Not to mention, it's pretty well-known that the very-vocal few are who posts here. Supposedly the player base numbers in the thousands? And there are what... maybe 100 people who post here? A lot of the crying I see is coming from the same group of people posting over and over in multiple threads.
Basically, when someone wants to be 'noticed', they jump in the forums and make that wheel squeak.
If this place were shut off, everyone would just migrate to the Reddit page probably. Which funnily enough is nowhere near as negative as the forums most of the time, so it'd probably do STO a favour.
Besides this will all blow over soon enough, it always does.
The protocols are sporadically enforced and they are turning what should be a great positive for the game and the company into a virulent negative.
I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement.
Clearly, you must be what people refer to as a "fanboy." I will not call you that, but you are definitely wearing some rose colored glasses.
The forums should reflect what the community is feeling at the time. It should be genuine, authentic. There's little point in trying to hide the bad when people will discover it on their own either way, and either here or somewhere else.
Forums are not strictly a marketing tool; they are a place for customers/players to interact with one another and the developers and managers of their product. I find your entire premise and ideology to be very unnerving and disingenuous.
We are not automatons who can be controlled and told to tow the company line. We are the customers, not the employees.
Clearly, you must be what people refer to as a "fanboy." I will not call you that, but you are definitely wearing some rose colored glasses.
The forums should reflect what the community is feeling at the time. It should be genuine, authentic. There's little point in trying to hide the bad when people will discover it on their own either way, and either here or somewhere else.
Forums are not strictly a marketing tool; they are a place for customers/players to interact with one another and the developers and managers of their product. I find your entire premise and ideology to be very unnerving and disingenuous.
We are not automatons who can be controlled and told to tow the company line. We are the customers, not the employees.
What are you on about? I'll ignore your stupid insults for the time being.
It's because "they are a place for customers/players to interact with one another and the developers and managers of their product" it's a marketing tool. Customer service is part of their marketing. That's basic.
If a player goes to a forum with a problem in the game, and has a positive experience on a well-moderated forum with interactive moderators, productive threads, and relevant news and information, that player will come away with a positive image of the game and the company as a whole. That's good business. That player is more likely to continue playing the game and spend money doing it, because they feel they are contributing to a worthwhile enterprise.
If a player goes to a forum with terrible moderation and sees trolling threads, no input from moderators, trash threads, and no communication, they will have a negative image of the game and company as a whole. That player, at the least, will play less frequently, reducing the odds of revenue. If it's a new player, they're likely to abandon the entire thing and find a different product (game).
I'm not sure why you are so up in arms about this. The community is something that is very important for many reasons, the biggest one being interaction. It needs to be used correctly in order to make it pay off.
Because the impression I am getting from you is you want to stop all the criticism...but it's deserved and we are entitled to our feelings and should be allowed to express them.
If you're suggesting they should moderate better while acknowledging the criticism, that is a different story and I apologize.
If you are suggesting this place should be full of prose, then I'mma rage some more.
Because the impression I am getting from you is you want to stop all the criticism...but it's deserved and we are entitled to our feelings and should be allowed to express them.
If you're suggesting they should moderate better while acknowledging the criticism, that is a different story and I apologize.
If you are suggesting this place should be full of prose, then I'mma rage some more.
Oh good God, my own communication skills are lacking then. My apologies.
My intention was to say that Cryptic/PWE are totally farking up the opportunity to at least mitigate the ENORMOUS PR black hole they have created for themselves by at least paying attention to the basics of basics on community management.
I assume the moderators are following some sort of ruleset saying they can't post or do any of the standard forum moderating duties most everywhere else, otherwise they are all absolutely terrible at their jobs, volunteers or not. There's a way to deal with people in the forums when you don't know anything official, it's not hard. Be honest. "Hey guys, we don't know anything as we're just volunteers, but we do know that the company is aware of all these issues and they are working on them!" should be sprinkled liberally through these threads.
The forums are how they should gauge the mood of the player base. The lack of interaction after a major expansion just leaves me gobsmacked. This whole thing is a goatscrew that could have so easily been mitigated, just by doing what they're supposed to be doing.
Yesterday we had a whopping 5 posts from one community manager and 0 from the other. Surely, during the standard 8 hour workday, there is time to actually liaise with the community a little more, no? So, pray tell, why even bother having community managers if they either won't or aren't allowed to interact with the community?
I assume the moderators are following some sort of ruleset saying they can't post or do any of the standard forum moderating duties most everywhere else, otherwise they are all absolutely terrible at their jobs, volunteers or not. There's a way to deal with people in the forums when you don't know anything official, it's not hard. Be honest. "Hey guys, we don't know anything as we're just volunteers, but we do know that the company is aware of all these issues and they are working on them!" should be sprinkled liberally through these threads.
Most of the mods got fired recently. Those remaining have personal issues going on, and are unable to moderate right now.
As a former mod, I can tell you that they're absolutely allowed to post however much they like. They're also players, and don't necessarily agree with everything PWE/Cryptic choose to do in the game. Generally they're not people who react to that by setting the place on fire, though; that's why they were picked as mods in the first place.
Generally, coming in and saying "everything's fine, they're working on it" is counter-productive, it just makes you the target of the ire. And, nothing secret is shared with the moderators. Seriously; I had WAY more info from the devs before I became a moderator. A lot of it dried up as soon as I was semi-official, because their communication with me became the subject of scrutiny.
100% of the "secrets" shared with us were the stuff necessary for moderating; timing of information releases, changes in moderation policy, contact information for community staff, etc.
They don't know any more than you do about the status of fixes, tweaks, changes, etc.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
Percentage wise the number of people, either current or potentially new players, that come to the forums is very small.
And as others have mentioned, negative posts always outweigh the positive. This is true of customer responses in general, not just gaming forums. People don't seek out forums, answer surveys, call customer service, etc. when they're satisfied, they do it when they have a problem or they're mad about something and want to vent. So what seems on forums like this as the majority are in fact just a vocal minority.
Yeah, I completely feel the same way. Sorry for getting irate with you. I just did not get that impression at all. It's not necessarily you; it could just as easily be me. But yeah, when it comes to communication, they are absolutely terrible at it. It was like this since the very beginning. I simply don't understand it.
This disconnect they have between the devs/reps and players is a very big reason why so much animosity is thrown at them. There are other communities who go to great lengths to interact with their players and the forums (while still filled with some negativity) are generally very positive and productive.
Percentage wise the number of people, either current or potentially new players, that come to the forums is very small.
And as others have mentioned, negative posts always outweigh the positive. This is true of customer responses in general, not just gaming forums. People don't seek out forums, answer surveys, call customer service, etc. when they're satisfied, they do it when they have a problem or they're mad about something and want to vent. So what seems on forums like this as the majority are in fact just a vocal minority.
Something like 1% to 2%, yep. And you're spot on about the rage; happy people play the game, because they're happy. People who aren't having fun in the game go do something else, sometimes including the forums.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
So what seems on forums like this as the majority are in fact just a vocal minority.
Many people do not speak up, even when dissatisfied. The vocal minority are just the ones you see, but there are many others behind them that feel the same way and say nothing. This is a very old truth in marketing.
Did you by chance look at twitter? Or Facebook? Youtube?
Theres more to the community than just the forums, you know that right?
There were a whopping two tweets yeterday. And three Facebook posts regurgitating news from the forums about server downtime and the dilithium weekend.
No acknowledgement of the lost specialization points.
No acknowledgement of the fact that the Mac client is broken.
No acknowledgement of the broken dilithium exchange.
No acknowledgement of the huge XP nerf.
No acknowledgement of the fact that the Talaxian duty officer is *still* broken.
They just follow orders.. I mean, the problem is the devs or the guys in charge that dont tell them what to said, or they told them to hide.. or what ever.
I've got no problem with a guy being on vacation - he's a person just like anybody else, he needs to relax - but that's still a big oversight not to have somebody filling in for him. I mean, community manager isn't even a technical position, you could literally hire a temporary fill-in off the street and it would have made a pretty huge difference as far as having somebody around to close duplicate threads, etc.
I'm also receptive to the idea that forum denizens are by far the most negative of the players (I even made that point in the original post!) but this goes beyond that. It's not just the sky is falling players who threaten to leave every time anything changes that are blowing their tops, a lot of the positive players who are usually talking down and/or mocking the former have been walking away or considering it. It's just bumming me out, I haven't actually lost anything (I was only 54, I mostly level with DOFFing) and have been enjoying the game but I'm seeing a lot of really respected community members taking this pretty hard. I snicker like anybody else when I see the 14-year-olds with the "I WILL SUE YOU" nonsense but when I see people who've written a dozen ship build guides who seem genuinely saddened, not angry but saddened as the game pushes them away, that tells me it's a pretty big deal.
Unless Geko and/or D'Angelo on vacation too.
They might have put in requests months ago. They may have said, at the end of last week, "The server's not on fire. We've got design issues with skillpoints we can tinker with and fix with a patch sometime around early November. We're out of here."
In which case, even if Smirk WERE here, there'd be nobody running the ship he could get a statement from and all this stuff that happened might have been junior staff rushing a fix live after calling Geko for five minutes and saying, "Hey, Geko! We've got twenty guys who are at level 60 plus 5000 here. And average players who are at 60 plus 15." And Geko's like, "I can't deal with this right now. Shut down what you can and contain what you can. Just make sure it doesn't get worse by Monday."
And then the junior staff deploys a patch with some misplaced numbers that buff enemies and take skillpoints from the wrong people and they call Geko and he's like, "Don't touch or say anything until I get back."
And Geko calls up Jack Emmert:
Geko: "Hey! Do I need to come back from vacation early?"
Jack: "Will it fix things before Tuesday if you come back early?"
Geko: "Probably not."
Jack: "I've been on the phone with Stephen. I have Matt Miller and Dan Stahl here at lunch with me. We're trying to get you some options to have on hand come Monday so we can rush a fix for Tuesday. Go try to enjoy your weekend, call me when you get back Sunday night, and I'll see you Monday at 7:00 AM."
And meanwhile, Trendy may be trying to get an answer but was told, "Our position is no position until Monday." Then they started seeing some of the issues and feedback and called Trendy up with a few details on how to revise her post. But they're trying to make it until, say, Monday afternoon before they respond.
Coincidence? Family illness? Birth? Death in the family? Anymore worthy reasons i'm missing?
If not, draw your own conclusions as to why he isn't here during a major update.
Dude, he announced his pre-launch vacation during the last Twitch video before Delta started. Which BTW was a scam in it's own right because it was mentioned that FOUR Delta packs were to be given away during that stream, but he only gave out only ONE because of some BS excuse that the number of viewers was only a few hundred people less than expected.
And also to note, for a Dev, Smirk is embarrassingly terribad at playing STO. I mean really, really terribad.
Coincidence? Family illness? Birth? Death in the family? Anymore worthy reasons i'm missing?
If not, draw your own conclusions as to why he isn't here during a major update.
He mentioned months ago he was taking a vacation...it's not some grand conspiracy
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
Most of the mods got fired recently. Those remaining have personal issues going on, and are unable to moderate right now.
Wow, that sucks. And yeah, I heard about Bluegeek (again, hope his kid's okay) and Smirk being on vacation.
As a former mod, I can tell you that they're absolutely allowed to post however much they like. They're also players, and don't necessarily agree with everything PWE/Cryptic choose to do in the game. Generally they're not people who react to that by setting the place on fire, though; that's why they were picked as mods in the first place.
Generally, coming in and saying "everything's fine, they're working on it" is counter-productive, it just makes you the target of the ire. And, nothing secret is shared with the moderators. Seriously; I had WAY more info from the devs before I became a moderator. A lot of it dried up as soon as I was semi-official, because their communication with me became the subject of scrutiny.
100% of the "secrets" shared with us were the stuff necessary for moderating; timing of information releases, changes in moderation policy, contact information for community staff, etc.
They don't know any more than you do about the status of fixes, tweaks, changes, etc.
I am also a former mod (from other several game-related and non-game related sites), and I know the rules differ from organization to organization, so your input is nice, thank you.
But, I didn't say to say everything's fine, I said to be honest. Say that you don't know the status of whatever it was, say that the devs have been informed and know about it and are working on it. And yeah, you as a moderator are going to catch heat. You're going to get screamed at and yelled at and all capsed at and set on fire. That's part of the job. That's why you're there. You have to extinguish it.
And when they get too out of line you get to edit their posts. "YOU @)$#%&ING PIECE OF @)#$&ING )@#$*&!!!" becomes "I like ducks." Best part of the job.
Most gamers know that volunteer mods can't say what they don't know. They aren't looking for secrets 90% of the time, or even detailed dev logs of what's being worked on. They just want to know that someone is listening and gives a damn. Someone who is in a position to learn stuff and disseminate it relevantly.
They want someone to be sympathetic, keep control of the forums, and to let them know that yeah, the nameless, faceless corporate entity does actually have folks who are listening to them.
Cryptic/PWE just doesn't seem to understand that.
Edit - When I say "you" I don't mean YOU you, just writing in 2nd person.
Comments
I believe Bluegeek mentioned prior to the release of DR that he will be taking a leave of absence from the forum due to personal matters involving his family that takes precedence over a game.
Edit: Hah. This post can totally be taken out of context with the censoring. I like it, I think I'll keep it like that.
Mine Trap Supporter
There were three "I quit" threads up and going strong yesterday for hours.
There were at least a dozen duplicate "I lost spec points" threads.
The only time they popped in was when an exploit was being discussed. That was twice that I saw.
The forum moderation seriously needs to be reworked. The protocols are sporadically enforced and they are turning what should be a great positive for the game and the company into a virulent negative.
As far as Bluegeek goes, I sincerely wish the family matter is like going to Cabo for grandma's 99th birthday or something. *sends good things happening vibes*
It's not but for the life of me I can't remember what it was. I think it was a family health issue
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
Yeah, unfortunately it was this:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1238221
I figured it's alright to link it since he made a public post on it. If not he can delete it if he likes.
Mine Trap Supporter
I do hope that his son is all right now! That sucks.
Haters would congregate SOMEWHERE, if not here then some other place.
But here, Cryptic controls whatever they want to control.
Not to mention, it's pretty well-known that the very-vocal few are who posts here. Supposedly the player base numbers in the thousands? And there are what... maybe 100 people who post here? A lot of the crying I see is coming from the same group of people posting over and over in multiple threads.
Basically, when someone wants to be 'noticed', they jump in the forums and make that wheel squeak.
Besides this will all blow over soon enough, it always does.
I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement.
Clearly, you must be what people refer to as a "fanboy." I will not call you that, but you are definitely wearing some rose colored glasses.
The forums should reflect what the community is feeling at the time. It should be genuine, authentic. There's little point in trying to hide the bad when people will discover it on their own either way, and either here or somewhere else.
Forums are not strictly a marketing tool; they are a place for customers/players to interact with one another and the developers and managers of their product. I find your entire premise and ideology to be very unnerving and disingenuous.
We are not automatons who can be controlled and told to tow the company line. We are the customers, not the employees.
Firesworn Nation (@rswfire) - https://www.firesworn.com
What are you on about? I'll ignore your stupid insults for the time being.
It's because "they are a place for customers/players to interact with one another and the developers and managers of their product" it's a marketing tool. Customer service is part of their marketing. That's basic.
If a player goes to a forum with a problem in the game, and has a positive experience on a well-moderated forum with interactive moderators, productive threads, and relevant news and information, that player will come away with a positive image of the game and the company as a whole. That's good business. That player is more likely to continue playing the game and spend money doing it, because they feel they are contributing to a worthwhile enterprise.
If a player goes to a forum with terrible moderation and sees trolling threads, no input from moderators, trash threads, and no communication, they will have a negative image of the game and company as a whole. That player, at the least, will play less frequently, reducing the odds of revenue. If it's a new player, they're likely to abandon the entire thing and find a different product (game).
I'm not sure why you are so up in arms about this. The community is something that is very important for many reasons, the biggest one being interaction. It needs to be used correctly in order to make it pay off.
Why are you raging?
Because the impression I am getting from you is you want to stop all the criticism...but it's deserved and we are entitled to our feelings and should be allowed to express them.
If you're suggesting they should moderate better while acknowledging the criticism, that is a different story and I apologize.
If you are suggesting this place should be full of prose, then I'mma rage some more.
Firesworn Nation (@rswfire) - https://www.firesworn.com
Oh good God, my own communication skills are lacking then. My apologies.
My intention was to say that Cryptic/PWE are totally farking up the opportunity to at least mitigate the ENORMOUS PR black hole they have created for themselves by at least paying attention to the basics of basics on community management.
I assume the moderators are following some sort of ruleset saying they can't post or do any of the standard forum moderating duties most everywhere else, otherwise they are all absolutely terrible at their jobs, volunteers or not. There's a way to deal with people in the forums when you don't know anything official, it's not hard. Be honest. "Hey guys, we don't know anything as we're just volunteers, but we do know that the company is aware of all these issues and they are working on them!" should be sprinkled liberally through these threads.
The forums are how they should gauge the mood of the player base. The lack of interaction after a major expansion just leaves me gobsmacked. This whole thing is a goatscrew that could have so easily been mitigated, just by doing what they're supposed to be doing.
And folks wonder why no one wants to deal with them.
Sarah Knightly - Co-leader; Frontier Explorers - U.S.S. Witchblade
Rias Gremory - Leader; Frontier Marauders - I.K.S. B'ullwinkle
Theres more to the community than just the forums, you know that right?
Most of the mods got fired recently. Those remaining have personal issues going on, and are unable to moderate right now.
As a former mod, I can tell you that they're absolutely allowed to post however much they like. They're also players, and don't necessarily agree with everything PWE/Cryptic choose to do in the game. Generally they're not people who react to that by setting the place on fire, though; that's why they were picked as mods in the first place.
Generally, coming in and saying "everything's fine, they're working on it" is counter-productive, it just makes you the target of the ire. And, nothing secret is shared with the moderators. Seriously; I had WAY more info from the devs before I became a moderator. A lot of it dried up as soon as I was semi-official, because their communication with me became the subject of scrutiny.
100% of the "secrets" shared with us were the stuff necessary for moderating; timing of information releases, changes in moderation policy, contact information for community staff, etc.
They don't know any more than you do about the status of fixes, tweaks, changes, etc.
And as others have mentioned, negative posts always outweigh the positive. This is true of customer responses in general, not just gaming forums. People don't seek out forums, answer surveys, call customer service, etc. when they're satisfied, they do it when they have a problem or they're mad about something and want to vent. So what seems on forums like this as the majority are in fact just a vocal minority.
This disconnect they have between the devs/reps and players is a very big reason why so much animosity is thrown at them. There are other communities who go to great lengths to interact with their players and the forums (while still filled with some negativity) are generally very positive and productive.
Firesworn Nation (@rswfire) - https://www.firesworn.com
Something like 1% to 2%, yep. And you're spot on about the rage; happy people play the game, because they're happy. People who aren't having fun in the game go do something else, sometimes including the forums.
Many people do not speak up, even when dissatisfied. The vocal minority are just the ones you see, but there are many others behind them that feel the same way and say nothing. This is a very old truth in marketing.
Firesworn Nation (@rswfire) - https://www.firesworn.com
There were a whopping two tweets yeterday. And three Facebook posts regurgitating news from the forums about server downtime and the dilithium weekend.
No acknowledgement of the lost specialization points.
No acknowledgement of the fact that the Mac client is broken.
No acknowledgement of the broken dilithium exchange.
No acknowledgement of the huge XP nerf.
No acknowledgement of the fact that the Talaxian duty officer is *still* broken.
Division Hispana
www.divisionhispana.com
Coincidence?
If not, draw your own conclusions as to why he isn't here during a major update.
Unless Geko and/or D'Angelo on vacation too.
They might have put in requests months ago. They may have said, at the end of last week, "The server's not on fire. We've got design issues with skillpoints we can tinker with and fix with a patch sometime around early November. We're out of here."
In which case, even if Smirk WERE here, there'd be nobody running the ship he could get a statement from and all this stuff that happened might have been junior staff rushing a fix live after calling Geko for five minutes and saying, "Hey, Geko! We've got twenty guys who are at level 60 plus 5000 here. And average players who are at 60 plus 15." And Geko's like, "I can't deal with this right now. Shut down what you can and contain what you can. Just make sure it doesn't get worse by Monday."
And then the junior staff deploys a patch with some misplaced numbers that buff enemies and take skillpoints from the wrong people and they call Geko and he's like, "Don't touch or say anything until I get back."
And Geko calls up Jack Emmert:
Geko: "Hey! Do I need to come back from vacation early?"
Jack: "Will it fix things before Tuesday if you come back early?"
Geko: "Probably not."
Jack: "I've been on the phone with Stephen. I have Matt Miller and Dan Stahl here at lunch with me. We're trying to get you some options to have on hand come Monday so we can rush a fix for Tuesday. Go try to enjoy your weekend, call me when you get back Sunday night, and I'll see you Monday at 7:00 AM."
And meanwhile, Trendy may be trying to get an answer but was told, "Our position is no position until Monday." Then they started seeing some of the issues and feedback and called Trendy up with a few details on how to revise her post. But they're trying to make it until, say, Monday afternoon before they respond.
That's my guess.
This is Management.
THIS!
We'll still be here and still be pissed by the time he gets back. He's only delaying the inevitable.
Dude, he announced his pre-launch vacation during the last Twitch video before Delta started. Which BTW was a scam in it's own right because it was mentioned that FOUR Delta packs were to be given away during that stream, but he only gave out only ONE because of some BS excuse that the number of viewers was only a few hundred people less than expected.
And also to note, for a Dev, Smirk is embarrassingly terribad at playing STO. I mean really, really terribad.
He mentioned months ago he was taking a vacation...it's not some grand conspiracy
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
Wow, that sucks. And yeah, I heard about Bluegeek (again, hope his kid's okay) and Smirk being on vacation.
I am also a former mod (from other several game-related and non-game related sites), and I know the rules differ from organization to organization, so your input is nice, thank you.
But, I didn't say to say everything's fine, I said to be honest. Say that you don't know the status of whatever it was, say that the devs have been informed and know about it and are working on it. And yeah, you as a moderator are going to catch heat. You're going to get screamed at and yelled at and all capsed at and set on fire. That's part of the job. That's why you're there. You have to extinguish it.
And when they get too out of line you get to edit their posts. "YOU @)$#%&ING PIECE OF @)#$&ING )@#$*&!!!" becomes "I like ducks." Best part of the job.
Most gamers know that volunteer mods can't say what they don't know. They aren't looking for secrets 90% of the time, or even detailed dev logs of what's being worked on. They just want to know that someone is listening and gives a damn. Someone who is in a position to learn stuff and disseminate it relevantly.
They want someone to be sympathetic, keep control of the forums, and to let them know that yeah, the nameless, faceless corporate entity does actually have folks who are listening to them.
Cryptic/PWE just doesn't seem to understand that.
Edit - When I say "you" I don't mean YOU you, just writing in 2nd person.