[Nobody]

When AionSource sent over your questions for Gameforge, we split the interviews into two parts:

• The questions about Aion's schedule and future, which went to Volker Boenigk, whom is the Executive Product Director of AION Europe
  
• The community and customer service questions, which went to Black Velvet, community manager for AION Europe

The first article ran in April and I'm happy to be able to share the second interview with you today. For those interested in the Weekly Community Reports mentioned below, you can get to them on the Gameforge forums here.



We really haven't been introduced to the team behind EU Aion, so can you say a bit about yourself and what's involved in your job?

Answer:
I am BlackVelvet, Community Manager for Aion UK.

It is pretty hard to keep my task and job description short without starting a novel, but I will try! To put it into easy words: I am the voice of the community and the voice of the company at the same time. A mediator. I collect feedback from the community and forward it to appropriate people on the AION staff. In return, I receive feedback from them to inform the community.

Running between departments and collecting suitable info is only one part of my job (and the most exhausting part). Being annoying is basically part of our contract for this matter.

The CMs also manage the Social Media channels (Twitter, Facebook, maybe G+ in the near future when stress has settled), parts of the frontpage news, events in cooperation with our game designers, real life events in cooperation with our GF event management (gamescom and RPC to name a few). We are trying to keep contact with fansites and exchange information with each other (such as Aionsource for example). We are direct contact persons for fansite administrators in general.

We work together with Customer Support as both departments are close to the player base. We do not directly reply to player issues as those are their tasks, but we are in contact concerning general issues, info flow and more.

And to make the CM job a wonderful potpourri of tasks, we are also close to the marketing and PR departement.

A CM job varies from company to company, so don't apply these tasks and this short description to other CMs :). They might have a completely different task list.

On what servers can we use which Veteran rewards or will they be for all characters? Is there a timeline for the implementation of Vet rewards and what is it?

Answer:
The Vet rewards will be fully available for all servers.

There is still no fix ETA for the implementation, but we are halfway done with the technical part. You might have read it in our forums already that there are some changes for the Vet rewards.

We will give access to all players for a month who received their rewards back in the days of NCSoft. The reason for this is the fact that the Veteran rewards do not fit into our free-to-play model. We noticed pretty late that the changes need to be done. After this timeframe, the Vet rewards will not exist anymore (but we are working on a AION club improvement which might work in a similar manner).

It is possible to claim your rewards for a desired month during this time. Let's say you are in month 22 and want the Lucky wings (24th month) badly. You can purchase two gold packs in this time frame (they need to be activated) and you will receive your rewards for the 23rd and the 24th month.

It is planned to make this work retrospectively (if nothing goes wrong). After all, your gold packs you have already bought should not be wasted.

Would you ever consider organising PvP orientated events like NA Aion has been doing recently where they port people to an empty field below the capital city and allow for player run tournaments?


Answer:
The current Rift Buff change announced few weeks ago is a slight change in PvP. It is a mere trial time to see if this works out better than the current Rift buff change.
We are thinking about PvP oriented in game events, but the concept creation requires time and manpower is lacking as well.

A PvP oriented event like during our Beta with CMs being Generals to be defended/attacked will be hard for the large amount of servers and the short time frame and the amount of CMs we have. We are currently planning events ahead for the next few months. But this might take some time. We also need to consider 3.0 as being part of the event plannings.

When will the forum work better?

Answer:
The forums are quite bugged I must admit. The reason for this is our Gameconnect. A simple application that communicates between the website and forum so you are able to login. It was planned to have a similar system like NC used with the display of character and server. This won't be worked on so fast in the ext few months. And since we cannot wait until the issues have been fixed, we have considered removing Gameconnect as soon as possible and enabling the usual "Login to forums, be happy" function again. We are working on a solution for the "[nick] placeholders" as those originally should be replaced with the planned character/server display.

After removing the application, we hopefully will have less problems with errors and "logged out while being logged in in certain sections" issues.

Any there going to be planned "giveaway" events? manastones, enchantment stones, etc.

Answer:
There will be some surveys in the future and that are part of the event pool we are creating, but those need their final decisions to be made by our Product Director and Game designer. We want to avoid "AFK events".

Where is news being posted? It doesn't seem to be on the website or forums.

Answer:
News on the front page of our website is mostly general news related to PR publications.
We are about to change this process. We thought about a blog with an RSS feed implementation on the main page to keep everything important at one spot and only refer people to the full article on a separate page.

There has been a huge information gap in the last few weeks. What I am now trying to do is to write a Weekly Community Report, which can be found in the forum news section. A more nifty solution for this report would be on the front page but we are working on it.


What's your favorite thing from the 3.0 patch?



Answer:
This cute little mount. Totally feels like a Dragonball!
I am not happy about the new dungeons as I will be getting poked to heal them *sob*.
And I like housing. But I will probably not be able to afford a bigger house and will stay in my starter apartment forever!

[Tirinium]

In the previous, Weekly Community Report it was mentioned 3.0 is postponed ill summer 2012, and the status of the translations aswell, as any follow up actions they are considering. Might want to post that on the frontpage here aswell, since there are still so many problems with the freetoplay forums. So people can get their updates here.

[Nobody]

Tirinium, on 29 May 2012 - 01:37 PM, said:

In the previous, Weekly Community Report it was mentioned 3.0 is postponed ill summer 2012, and the status of the translations aswell, as any follow up actions they are considering. Might want to post that on the frontpage here aswell, since there are still so many problems with the freetoplay forums. So people can get their updates here.

Summer is actually a few days away. Internally, Gameforge does have 3.0 up on their own test server. It's just unclear when they will be able to properly release it.

But yeah, I will try to be better about posting news up when it happens - the last few weeks I've been in something of a crunch mode for my real job and so haven't been very good about it. I expect to have time to breathe for a while now though, so things should be better.

[.Rast]

So, absolutely nothing to wait for.

No eta on vet rewards
No eta on 3.0
No eta on Forum fix

And this game has been f2p for what, 4 months now?

Happy I uninstalled this game.

This post has been edited by Rastekkel: 29 May 2012 - 02:26 PM

[Milliardo]

Even private servers have 3.0 already and most of them only have 2~3 Devs and a couple of GMs.

How hard is it to make a forum work?

Is there any news about Live status?

[BlackOrchid]

Quote

It's just unclear when they will be able to properly release it.

What I read actualy was: "It's just unclear as to when Game Forge will be able to manage Aion"

Its unfortunate that Game Forge hasn't actualy achieved anything since the game went free to play, more unfotunate even that they didn t learn a single thing from the past mistakes. What actualy amazed me was the fact that not even a simple forum they are currently able to handle, and this coming from a company that started it's life in BROWSER GAMES !

I see in your words Blackvelvet that the tremendous optimism you had when coming in to these forums to present yourself as the new CoMa has actualy been turned into a faded shame. An apologie to the playerbase, would probably be a move in the right direction. Gameforge went in over they're head and jumped into a game that they thought they could handle ... seems they bit alot more than they can chew, and the end result is that the company that sold the publication rights and that had it's name draged arround in shame for how bad they handled the Game is now actualy looking like a great publisher and developer. Tsk Tsk Tsk...

[CMBlackVelvet]

To be honest, I am not satisfied myself BlackOrchid :). I would lie if I am overly happy with all the problems, delays and more occuring.
And since you know the silly world of "CoMas" here at Gameforge with the previous conversations we had via PM, an apology can be given but the CMs are mere messengers and nothing else. That you should know by now.
The promises made back then were promises granted to us even though we asked several times how sure and fix the statements are (and if things get implemented that way). The statements given by us were valid back at that time therefore.
You might want to tear me apart now.
Yes, I apologize for all the promises not being fulfilled (yet partially).

[BlackOrchid]

Quote

And since you know the silly world of "CoMas" here at Gameforge with the previous conversations we had via PM, an apology can be given but the CMs are mere messengers and nothing else

The CoMas are not only that but also the company's face when it comes to the players, unlike the messenger that shouldn't be beat up because he is just the carrier of the message the CoMa's are the interface with the company the link between the playerbase and the diferent structures of the company. If anyone has the power to shift or influence the way a game is heading is the CoMa.

From begining my rage hasn't been directed at you (what was said in PM will remain in PM) it's directed at the company you represent. A company that trys to play big but doen't know any beter than doing it small, and that is the problem here. It's not me you should be apologising to Blackvelvet, it's the comunity, I am just another player a small representation of the comunity you have here. The apology should have been given in you're interview .... maybe if you told the players what is the real source of the delays, maybe if you didn t say you had a developer team working (yes the players are wondering WTF they are developing) maybe if the 36 GM's would actually get in game every now and then and do so promo action like banning hackers or killing spam bots with huge hammers ... public execution style...

On a last note, I liked the way you stormed in to these forums and took them as your playground, maybe if you had kept a litle corner here instead of simply neglecting them, maybe you would have more simpathy.

[Nobody]

BTW - I'd just like to bring this up now. Users on this site are not allowed to harm, personally insult, tar and feather, or tickle the messenger. Especially the last one.

You can say whatever you want about the company though. Just don't use bad words.

BTW - BlackOrchid, the original problem with NCsoft West wasn't that they didn't have good CMs, it's that they didn't listen to what their CMs were always telling them. So the CMs are only as powerful as the organization allows them to be.

[BlackOrchid]

This post has been edited by BlackOrchid: 30 May 2012 - 04:59 AM

[.Rast]

I think Gameforge missed alot of opportunities, they had such great momentum, loads of players returned just because we got rid of NCsoft.

Blackvelvet did a great job the weeks leading to the launch, great communication with the community, loads of info was given. But it seems that the company itself is lacking manpower and will to make a great game of aion.

Because when you look at the facts, the only thing they worked hard on the past 4 months is filling up the cash shop with loads of items, and the wrong supplements nobody asked for.

[BlackOrchid]

Quote

BTW - BlackOrchid, the original problem with NCsoft West wasn't that they didn't have good CMs, it's that they didn't listen to what their CMs were always telling them. So the CMs are only as powerful as the organization allows them to be.

And that is were you are wrong Nobody. A CoMa is as powerfull as he wants to be otherwise he is just there to fill in the spot and that doesnt require an experienced professional, anyone can do that.

Quote

Blackvelvet did a great job the weeks leading to the launch, great communication with the community, loads of info was given. But it seems that the company itself is lacking manpower and will to make a great game of aion.

I do agree with you up to a point there rastekkel, however, given the initial hype over the company change and given the fact that the bridge to the players had already been established only proffit would come in keeping that bridge working instead of leting it slowly crumble and fall. And that has nothing to do with Game Forge.

[Mihomine]

Quote

And that is were you are wrong Nobody. A CoMa is as powerfull as he wants to be otherwise he is just there to fill in the spot and that doesnt require an experienced professional, anyone can do that.

Try to be as powerful as you want as employee, you'll end up homeless.

[SpiritOfChaos]

major problemns atm apart 3.0 , apart forum bugs apart vet awards is :

Server unbalance and gold sellers

thanks to tranfer policy bad planned from ncsoft now we had a huge unbalance.

don´t come tell its untrue, from spartalos i see many times asmos get pwned duo double number elyos at the sieges. from perento side i see elyos getting roflpwned hard by like 300 asmos. thats happened on the free transfers and thats going ruin 3.0 pvp , figure the 3 hours sieges 150 elyos vs 300 asmos yes yes going be sooo fun...

gold sellers we need gm´s online at last 1 time per day , banning at spartan style the bots , coming close them and banning. even on Private servers gm´s do that whit hackers and harmful players. a example have one bot on perento that i see him on-line now have 3 or 4 days , are you sure you banning bots dialy ? d´ont looks like

[.Rast]

On Nexus half the population is using aionscript to solo instances.

Absolutely nobody get's banned for it.

If I was going to play Aion, I'd rather buy that script to avoid the retarded RNG then to buy 300 supplements for a tenner then increase my chance by 0.00000001%.

This post has been edited by Rastekkel: 31 May 2012 - 03:17 PM