Long time World of Warcraft forums favorite and CM, Tseric, has officially left his position (according to WoW Insider) and the vacancy is being felt. Things looked like they were going south a few days ago on the 13th of May when he posted an eloquent, but heated, message onto the forums about the plight of many a CM:
When you can understand how a group of beligerent and angry posters can drive away people from this game with an uncrafted and improvisational campaign of misery and spin-doctoring, then perhaps, you can understand the decisions I make. Until you face mobs of psychology, you will not see my side.
Until you see some bright-eyed player coming onto the forums wanting to know what they should spec as this class, and see them shat on and driven away by petty and selfish people who are simply leveraging for game buffs, you will not understand.
You will not understand until you have to see it daily, for years…
Until you understand that many people will trod over you to get where they’re going, or to get what they want.
Until you understand that so many people will agree, completely, 100% with a loud, vulgar and assertive individual, not because he is right, but because he is making a stand against “the Man”; to take no critical thought in what they say, but simply to hop on board.
Until you actually try to acknowledge those who do not speak on the forums, for whatever reason they have, you will not understand.
If you think an archaic business formula like “the customer is always right” works, you fail to understand customers, not a customer. It is a collective. No one person, even myself, is truly above the whole.
I simply have the unfortunate quality of being easily singled out.
WoW Insider has also published a follow-up piece on this whole debacle today called Reflections on Tseric. Whereas most CMs only last about eight months before burning out, Tseric stayed his post for two years wading through the ascidic environmental waters that are the World of Warcraft forums—an experience that we voces ourselves have had the bad experience of dealing with before.
This post, rather poeticly, comes right on the heels of commentary on the article about Cleaning up Thunder Bluff, but unlike game players who could simply turn off their computers, walk away, or ignore the infantile behavior around them. He had to work in it.
Fare thee well, Tseric, from all of us voces, especially the sanguine. Illegitimi non carborundum.
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