Dungeons And Dragons Online: In Other News: BioWare's Richard Vogel on MMO Betas

An interesting look at the other side of beta testing MMOs has found it's way on to MMORPG.com. The article gives us a look from a developer's viewpoint on the beta process for our favorite pastime, the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game. Snippet time:

So, back to our topic. "Who", Richard asked his audience rhetorically, "runs betas?" The answer: a politician: someone who can talk to and handle an excitable and infant community. Community managers need to have thick skins and good attitudes, said Vogel, especially for games based off of IPs (i.e. Star Wars Galaxies) that have rabid, eager fans.

These community managers have tough jobs, and must perform many tasks to keep both development and customers happy. The community manager is one of the most important communication lines between the aforementioned parties, and needs to make sure that everyone is as happy as possible. Vogel mentioned one cardinal rule of this: Never, ever promise something that is not there. "Don't talk to your audience like a PR guy; they're not stupid."

The wonders of hypertext markup will take you to the rest of the article by clicking here. Pretty interesting read.