Dear players, many of you have ever asked such questions as "what does gm do?", "Who's helper?", "How to become a moderator? ','I wrote administrator, but it turned out that I needed the other one. How to distinguish between them?», «How does the career development happen at the project? ". In today's article I will try to answer these questions and show you everything from the administration side. I hope that you will find the answers to most of your questions.
In general, the administration can be subdivided into the senior administration, the administration of realms, members of the Department of Entertainment, testers and developers. The first group is the bosses of the entire project, but in every particular direction the second group manages and develops its game world. The third group is engaged in entertaining the players with all kinds of game and forum events. And the last group is engaged in finding and correcting of bugs and implementing of new content. I’ll start with the groups that are familiar to me, namely, with the participants of the realm administration.
Let's start with the "first step" administration staff, namely with moderators and helpers. . Positions differ only in the involving in work: moderator mostly monitors chat and helper usually responds to the players’ questions received via the special request system, but in general they are very similar, so we unite them into one group. This is the starting "stage" at our project and it was created to test whether newcomers cope with their responsibilities or not. In order to get to this position, you need to write as much correct, precise and interesting CV in the proper topic as possible, rather than try to get this vacancy via the in-game request system, as is often done by some players. For this reason, this position doesn’t provide you some special advantages both in game and on the forum. As a rule, the moderator has only «mute» command and an ability to check/close in-game requests (tickets), and responsibility is to respond these very tickets and monitor LFG. Since this position usually doesn’t even have a command to switch on the GM mode, it is strongly not recommended to disturb the player of 85/90 lvl from the guild "Server Administration", who is at the "GM Island", with the questions "How did you get there?" as it is a moderator of the first access level.
On condition of successful completion of the probationary period moderator and helper are promoted senior moderator and helper (but the 2nd level) respectively. There are no strong differences in responsibilities between the first and the second levels of access, since moderators still continue to focus on LFG and helpers on the tickets and both of them check the forum and answer the questions. But the number of commands is increased, so the second-level administrators can already trace the bug / cheater / problem in the open world thanks to the "Stealth" ability, and it significantly expands the range of their capabilities in the solutions of problems without anyone’s help. This and higher positions have a distinctive prefix and Blizz icon in the chat.
Hierarchically, the next post is GM, who is actually the curator deputy (about it later). His responsibilities include banning, the lower posts controlling, solving of all the doubtful problems and also all kinds of manifestations of activity in the improvement of realm, whether it is management of the game world, entertainment of players or active tracking of cheaters. Unlike previous posts, GM, as a rule, no longer have to stick to 90 hours plan, which makes his or her work easier. However, this is a very relative relief, as the volume of work, duties and responsibilities is increased.
The last hierarchical position in the management of separate realm - is curator. The person in this position is the chief and manager within its game world. It is curator who is looking for staff on its realm, control all the subordinates including GMs, writes reports to the superior administration on the work of its realm. This is the person who is responsible for the direction of the realm development. Curator decides which innovations to introduce, what should be changed and how to try to please the majority of players within this realm
Now let us turn to testers and developers.
The firsts are, so to say, the eyes and the ears of the latter. It is because of the testers’ duty to find problems, malfunctions and bugs, check the players found bugs and their detailed description, developers make fixes and improvements. Testers’ job is not as simple as it might seem at first glance. Since it is one thing to find a bug, and quite another - to understand the cause, give accurate information with the corresponding ID and descriptions, so that developers can accurately and clearly understand what is required from them, which is a very difficult task. Well, and the developers’ job is the thing which doesn’t require any commentaries, since it’s obvious that it’s a very and very difficult post for which extensive knowledge base is required. In this direction there is a "senior", or rather a senior tester Keisi. In fact, this position does not give him some kind of "leadership", except for the possibility to recruit new people. This is, so to say, a distinctive feature of the "old man", as well as his experience and skills. For this reason, he stands between simple testers and developers as a "guiding bridge" between them and as a "mechanism in the Swiss watch" of the balanced system. This part of the administration is the key to success in the quality and efficiency of our project.
Another "global" and an independent branch of Administration – Department of Entertainment. It includes the Event Managers, the task of which is to entertain players in all possible ways and to provide an interesting and often useful leisure. Game events held by event-makers can be of various types, ranging from simple "hide and seek" and ending with huge tournaments, races or events that require almost a month of preparing, which in the end produce a sensation among the players. There is a "senior" in this branch as well, namely, Senior Event-Manager Elodevlir. But unlike Keisi who doesn’t have such great differences, Elodevlir is a full deputy head of DoE (about it later) and in every way helps his boss by performing a significant part of his duties, helping with the selection of candidates, checking the work of subordinates, thus making a large contribution to the work of the Department. Undoubtedly this branch of the administration is also very important, as DoE allows players not to get bored, gives the opportunity to have fun and to spend time with pleasure, diversify the gameplay, and get good prizes as a result for "active time spending".
Now we move on to the most important part of the administration, namely, to the senior administration. It is subdivided into: Senior GMs and Administrators. A distinctive feature of this group is that each member of the "department" fulfills its unique duty and heads some definite direction of our project. Let's start with the Administrators:
Blackmanos is the head of the project and main developer of uwow.biz. Any important decision won’t be taken and any change at the server won’t be made without his consent. It is to him we should be thankful for the creation of this server and for its prosperity and success as well. Entire technical part of the project lies on his strong shoulders completely and totally.
Agis and Devillish - two main administrators of the project. They refused to describe their duties, but it can be said definitely that without their work it would be difficult to imagine project stability.
Everything that is connected with the forum, site and personal account lies on Armadon. Being the main project web-programmer he keeps the online component of the project in a great form. It is thanks to him that our server got the opportunity of the characters transfer from other servers. Now, he is continuing to improve this system, as well as preparing a variety of other interesting and 'tasty' innovations for the personal account.
That's it about Administrators and now let's make a step below to the senior GMs. These people are also divided according to the duties and directions:
Grimm – head of the Department of Entertainment. He manages this department and all the innovations and changes that take place within this Department depend on him. He decides weather one or another person will work as an event-manager or not and endorses ongoing events and prizes.
Marishka – everything that is connected with the transfer, but is not associated with the development of this system, which, as I wrote above, is depend on Armadon, lies on her. She examines all incoming requests, answers the questions, and conducts various actions associated with the transfer of the characters.
Topotopo – she is responsible for the part of the administration which is connected with testers and also she is responsible for the arena. In other words, she monitors the work of testers, checks the quality and efficiency, also she ensures that there are no unfair players in the arena, and finding them, punishes them. At the same time she spends / closes arena seasons, rewarding the most deserving and strong team with good prizes.
Perhaps, this is all that you should know about the administration of the uwow.biz project. I hope that now you won’t address Armadon in personal account if you find some bugs and address the head of the Department of Entertainment, Grimm if you find some unfair players in the arena.
Related Links:
The Unique Realm Fatality. Interview with Desed
Interview with Marishka about the Transfer System
Department of Intertainment. Interview with Grimm
