A Christmas Gift

[bf649ztp]

The CSRs have, as far as I know, always been volunteers.

Yeah think you're right will edit my post.

[great83]

The CSRs have, as far as I know, always been volunteers.

I believe some of the CSRs from the jolt era were paid for indirectly. It was part of the cost of the servers, but i could be wrong.

[philu]

Nah, you got it. I know it sounds strange, and no, I don't really have money to burn, especially at this time of year.

However, that being said, these guys don't exactly scream "We're Loaded!" either(With all of these volunteer programs and what not). So it seems to me the sooner they start taking our dappers the longer Ryzom will stick around this time 'round. I mean, these servers can't be running on thin air, and if they are, they can spend the cash on some freaking content.

Ok fair point.

[daggor]

Thank you for the gift - it is much appeciated. Our server need events so will be looking forward to them i am sure

[hijati]

Definately paid for when Jolt was running the show...but the CSR's then were also alot better then the volunteers now...coruption *cough* hope to see you all out there for some christmas events.

[ajsuk]

Most were volunteer during the Jolt era.

Definately paid for when Jolt was running the show...but the CSR's then were also alot better then the volunteers now...coruption *cough* hope to see you all out there for some christmas events.

The above^^ post is very disrespectful of the people that give up their free time to help out the community, especially as we've already had investigations held to indulge the whines of you conspiracy theorist types. Also, some of the current were under Jolt, so lets get it right in future.

[iphdrunk]

Definately paid for when Jolt was running the show...but the CSR's then were also alot better then the volunteers now...coruption *cough* hope to see you all out there for some christmas events.

Since the early days (Themis, Jolt, MDO Entertainment) CSRs is a broad term that includes both Community Managers, GMs, (Senior) Guides / Event Guides and "Community Guides". As far as I know and, until recently, only the former two were paid. Since the beginning, customer service has relied heavily on players (*mostly* unpaid) both for cover (assuring 24/7 cover when possible) and live events. Each community had a handful of (sometimes very dedicated) volunteers, not only helping Nevrax to provide a better player experience but also tasks such taking care of writing the event scripts, "playing them", collecting information and so on. In my humble opinion, that is something that deserves respect. While having paid for CSRs guarantees some level of service (and upon them relies the main duty) do not neglect or dismiss the work done by volunteers.

The main difference, in my view (although this comes at a cost) is that having a dedicated paid-for CSR team provides a "framework" on top of which volunteers may work. A well defined hiearchy, with scalation in responsabilities. In other words, "professional" CSRs (other than their own duties such per-shard report, coverage, etc) were the "shoulders" on top of which volunteers excelled : training programs, well defined procedures, web interfaces, irc-channels, etc. It is in Spiderweb best interest to reproduce such an "environment".

I had stopped playing by the time the supposedly "misbehavior" of the CSRs took place, but I've heard of it several times. Unless you have formal proof of that (that you should send upstream) you should refrain from propagating that kind of (unfounded) information.

I have not witnessed (yet?) any event of the Gameforge or Spiderweb event team, although I can more or less say that, within what's reasonable, current CSRs are satisfactory.

On the other hand, I will refrain from commenting on the topic here *ummmph* tries hard not to bite...

[vonzuben]

The most recent thing the Event Team did was visit Land of Lick (ring) during the Lag Monster right before the world ended. That was most unexpected and fun!

[kalindra]

If you are not satisfied of the current CSR team work and think you could do better, feel free to send in you application, as they are currently recruiting. If you wouldn't do better, I really don't see what makes you think you can complain. They aren't getting paid, yet they are still doing the best they can.

Not many people are masochistic... err... devoted enough to Atys and its community to be able to fill in for that kind of functions. And to be honest, that kind of comment wouldn't encourage many new people to dedicate themselves to it either.

Think about it, would you give up your playtime on Atys to help people if you were to be treated like that by the community you are serving ? From a former experience elsewhere, it does require iron nerves, really. The Ryzom community is much more mature though, I must admit, but sometimes I wonder if it isn't harder to deal with "adults" than with kids.

[inguumryzom]

Expecting that people "are still doing the best they can" isn't going to earn you any kind of credibility.