An Interview With a GM

**Odd** · 05-05-2008

The Game Masters of World of Warcraft are a curious bunch. They exist in video game limbo, hovering between reality and fantasy, seeing the game in its true way. There is no suspension of reality for these inhabitants. They see behind the curtain. They know the actors, the scripts, and props. For them, the mystical world of Azeroth holds no surprises.

Many people know very little about Game Masters. Some believe them to be mystical demigods; able to create and destroy with the flick of a finger. Others imagine them as ruthless little trolls, malicious creatures with little power and large egos.

Although in the end, they are no different than you or me. They put on ties and work in offices. They share inside jokes, complain about customers, and go home to participate in activities that have nothing to do with work.

A former Game Master recently started a Q&A thread on Somethingawful.com to set the record straight about what it is to be a WoW GM. What follows is a cleaned up version of the nine page thread originally posted on Somethingawful.

Shoelessone: How many offensive names do you deal with daily?

GM: Offensive names, I'd say about 30-50 tickets a day that I would personally answer. Over all the GMs on a shift -- loads.

Cubiks: Do you get many stupid tickets?

GM: Stupid tickets, yep. As with pretty much every customer service related job, stupid people are to be expected -- especially with the main wow age bracket. Everything from, "Rojer called my character fat" to big flaming guild fights, its all there.

Cubiks: Do you get any special perks for being a GM? Can you have a character on the same server as your GM?

GM: GMs don't have one specific server, work is done over a set list of servers, so we work on all of them. Special perks... well, there's the 25 year game cards and -- of course -- lots of blizzard schwag.

LordOfThePants: Are you actually in the game, or is there a custom software interface to deal with tickets?

GM: We have our own software for general chatting and looking up players details, such as finding what quests they are on, etc. but we have our GM characters in game too, Horde and Alliance on every server.

LordOfThePants: Do you have any downtime, or are you constantly bombarded with tickets?

GM: Not really much in the way of downtime, answering tickets pretty much solidly but we do get time to run around the world, invisibility is almost always on however, so players don't see GMs about.

Shoelessone: Are there secrets in the game that players haven't figured out yet?

GM: There are loads of secret stuff in the game. There is a particular mining camp which I dont believe many people have ever seen. It is a bit of a mission to get to, but basically looking at the map of Gadgetzan you will see there is a circular map symbol just off the coast in the south. Swim there and go straight down. Doing this will lead you to the camp (you will need a potion of underwater breathing or a friendly neighborhood warlock) My favorite is all the different NPC's the subtle names and references, there's a great thread on the US forums pointing many of them out.

http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/k...50i/Gadget.jpg

Spilrod: Are your actions monitored by another GM?

GM: Yes there is a definite structure to keep GMs in check. We work in smaller teams, with a Senior GM keeping checks. Then there's the AA (Accounts Administration) team whose job is banning accounts and dealing with players who cheat/hack/repeat offend, etc. They also keep tabs and run checks on each and every GM periodically to make sure nothing bad is happening. Everything a GM does is logged in some way.

HangRoose: Do you spend a lot of time dealing with player misconduct tickets? Are there any kind of tickets that you would throw out?

GM: There are loads of tickets which in my opinion don't warrant a response, but every ticket does get answered. As I said before, insults between players, people laughing at others loosing fights, loads and loads of a warrior in our group rolled on this item, a hunter stole that etc, so yes lots of these petty arguments, its all pretty annoying.

LordOfThePants: What happens when you get a ticket about a suspected goldfarmer? Do you actually do anything, or is it just the canned "We'll look into it" response and nothing is ever done?

GM: I won't give out info that might help Gold-Farmers, but yes all tickets sent to us are investigated and we do whatever we can to get rid of them. WoW is one of the few MMOs where farmers are actively tracked and banned every single day.

Maelkann: How much power do you have as a GM, and how limited are you in what you can do when responding to tickets?

GM: GM Powers... well, in game if you want to do something you can, most of the GM flaming is from people unhappy at a decision that has been made and they're usually not looking at the bigger picture. Yes, mistakes are made and when they do, each one will be on the forums in minutes. It's a job where your actions are watched like a hawk. Players cannot wait to take a screenshot of a GM making a mistake.

Arteryman: Is Ashbringer in the game?

GM: No

Arteryman: Are there any GM only weapons?

GM: Well, not really. GMs have access to test weapons which are not meant for players. Although, being a GM allows you to create weapons; there are quite a few listed on Thottbot if you look around. Things like Ring of Critical Testing (50% chance to spell crit) are always popular.

Vaccine: Can GMs permanently ban gold farmer accounts outright?

GM: Short answer: no. I'll try run down how these hunter Dire Maul-type things are handled. A GM who sees it happen ports to the player, then verifies that the player is hacking somehow (teleport or whatever). At this point the GM can use his ban powers to lock him out for 3 hours. Once this is done he forwards the details to a Senior who will lock the account and pass to an Account Administrator. AAs are the only people who can permanently ban.

This seems a bit slow but there are also the scans. Auto scans are regularly done and anyone making illegal movements (from port/speed/climb hacks) are auto banned. This happens pretty often and is, from my experience, 100% accurate.

Vaccine: How many auto reply macros do GMs really have? I always get the same wording on similar request from different GMs.

GM: Lots of stuff is macroed, the big problem is a lot of new GMs will borrow macros from older GMs, hence you have a hundred GMs all saying the same thing. I had most general greetings/goodbyes macroed in a few different ways to sound a bit more original, it's really a speed thing. All the actual helping bits in the middle I type because I can type pretty quick and it's more personal.

Snuffman: What situations warrant the GM actually appearing in the game world?

GM: General rules for GMs is to never appear in the game world. I would reveal myself if I was kicking someone off the roof for a roof camping issue, or to receive a party to invitation if I was trying to fix an instance, or something like that. Remember, GMs have a command to reveal specifically to one player or a group. So you might see the GM but your raid would not see him at all.

Someone: Why are they so many people that appear to be violating the character naming guidelines?

GM: You can only filter out X amount of names, so people can always get stupid sounding names. Again personally I don’t care if you call yourself Taurenshaman, I wont group with you, but hey whatever floats your boat. Also as I said above, GM's don’t go through lists and change names, nothing is done actively unless its really offensive. If someone reported the name Taurenshaman with a ticket it would be changed, if it violates the policies and is reported its changed.

Slave: Are the official forum scandals (gays/disabled people/caydiem) a big deal over there?

GM: The big scandals are always the fun LOOK WHAT A GM DID threads. Most people who read the forums will recall a certain player who got stuck in game, a GM replied with "You still suck?", it was too funny, we mocked the poor guy for months. Our European CM's (like what caydiem does in the US) are Thundgot and Aeus, both really good guys and very nice people.

SmokerKat: Do the RP servers get their own special RP GMs?

GM: Short answer is no, you won't get special individual treatment for RP servers. GMs are learning more about RP as time goes on. I can't say that I "get RP" but I can understand what people are trying to archive. Without question, RP servers are the hardest/most painful to work on. The main thing that bugs me is the name reporting. They will report names that don't violate the policy in any way and in amazing quantities. It's as if they are not there to Play/RP at all but just run around to be name police, writing down 50 names and then sending a ticket in with them all included, it's a GM nightmare. RP realms are always going to be hard to "police" as there are loads of passers by, ie: "my server is down for maintenance, ooo look let's pester the RP realm" You can't preempt most of it, you can only react.

Demonhalo: Can you give us any insight on how thorough internal testing is on new content?

GM: Internal content testing is always going to be murky water. 40 man content must be the hardest thing to test. The tactic (IMO) that's used is bosses are unkillable when added; set to be too hard. Early guilds fights are gauged to see how they do, they wait until they think a guild has lasted long enough to be worthy of the kill then set him to die at that point, patch the servers and its job done. I don't know how it actually happens, but that's the impression that I get. Fights are also tweaked as time goes on, as new stuff gets added old stuff gets nerfed. An onyxia fight from first kill to now is a totally different thing.

I didnt write this just copied from some forums... Wanet to share it owns ^^
Rly some nice info