about Ex-GM-Graf
Von: HT-Tjecken
An: Alle 5821529.1
02.05.2006 um 14:48
There’s been a lot of rumours around why he left the game, which is kind of natural when famous user leave the game quite suddenly. However, this was no usual case at all and I feel it’s time to clear the shadows somewhat.
Let me just first tell you why I’ve taken the decision to inform you about this case, cause as you know this is not standard procedure (and this will not become standard procedure in the future either), and why I choose to do it now (quite long time after this happened). The reason behind my decision to inform you isn’t that obvious either, because as you don’t know that much about this case you can’t really see the problem.
The reason behind my decision to inform you is because there’s been a lot of twisting the truth lately which could lead you to think that the German speaking GMs are to blame for this whole case. Truth is that the GMs were cheated in the first place and it’s absolutely not right to make them feel cheated once again. And it really doesn’t matter if you have been thinking along these lines or not, just because it looks like the GMs were to blame have affected their motivation in a very bad way.
Ok, I think I can imagine what you’re thinking right now – the GMs motivation, que?
But it’s not that strange really, this game is depending on the work our voluntary staff is doing. In fact, your game experience is depending on how well our voluntary staff is doing their job. I don’t think you spend a lot of time thinking about how your game experience would have been if you had to wait for weeks before you received an answer to your questions or problems – because you don’t have to. Today you’ll receive an answer within a day more or less and often within just a few hours, which is really fantastic imho. That’s much better than most companies’ customer services, at least that’s my experience.
Anyway, if our staff is motivated they’ll do a better job, which in the end will make your game experience better. So, staff’s motivation is very important.
So, staff should never be criticized then as they will lose some their motivation? No, not all – they should of course be criticized when they deserve to be criticized just as they should get credit when they deserve that. But they shouldn’t be blamed intentionally for things they’re not responsible for and they shouldn’t be forced to accept to be the bad guys just because the real truth hurts.
Enough said about the reasons and over to what happened.
Truth is, Graf didn’t choose to leave the game himself. I know he talked about leaving the game and maybe he would have done so later on, I don’t know. But the reason of his sudden disappearance was because he had violated his GM powers which forced me to lock his account.
In what way did he violate his powers you might ask? I’m sorry, but I can’t go into details in what way he violated his power, but we found out he used his powers for his own benefit. As you understand this was not only a violation of the GMs’ code of conduct, it was also a violation of the game rules.
We’ve of course also made sure that this isn’t possible in the future. The GMs haven’t been able to deal with their own teams nor the teams in their own series for quite sometime (years) now. Further more, we also log GM activities to be able to spot if someone is abusing his/her power – and that’s how we found this out. Now we’ve extended our safety net even further to make sure this will not happen again. So even though we all got cheated in this case, I still have the highest confidence in our GMs and I’m not at all worried for the present nor the future.
Von: HT-Tjecken
An: Alle 5821529.2 als Antwort auf 5821529.1
02.05.2006 um 14:48
What about the case with his girlfriend then, is that just made up? No, not really. As I said earlier, he was talking about leaving the game as he and his girlfriend had a rough time in this game because of some people. It’s really sad story if you ask me, but that wasn’t really why he left the game when he did.
Anyway, Graf and the rest of the GMs didn’t agree on how to treat that case and as Graf was personally involved he got disappointed. I was also asked to share my view on this and I agreed with the ‘rest of the GMs’ for your information.
One last thing: Saying all this, you should know that I’ve got nothing negative to say about his GM work. Quite the opposite in fact, but I guess that don’t matter that much now.