Tseric No More

[Toolio]

http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/05/17/reflections-on-tseric/

I'm sure a bunch of the core WoW posters would like to believe they were the cause of his departure, but something tells me it was under a different premise.

Regardless, a good number of people on that forum are heartless.

[earindur]

please post the exact content, websense blocks us.

[Clavina]

Reflections on Tseric

Posted May 17th 2007 10:45PM by Amanda Rivera
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, News items
Tseric has left Blizzard. While we don't know officially why he is gone, we can make a pretty strong guess. We do know that he was under a huge amount of stress, and even at one point argued with a forum poster with what I consider to be completely eloquent language. The last time we see him on the forums was that very same day. In the last post he left on the forums, posters were mercilessly taunting him. His reply that Sunday morning was simple, short, and more than slightly bitter:

I'm sure you all think you're hilarious in your own space/mind.

Get off my internet.

Kthx.

I have worked as a customer service rep before, and it was the worst time of my life. I cannot fathom why people consider CMs worthy of the kind of horrendous diatribes they receive. It's as if as soon as you try to serve the customers they stop seeing you as a person yourself. I lasted eight months, Tseric was at it for over two years. In my case, I was a faceless phone rep, but he didn't have the benefit of that anonymity. Still, he had more strength of character, more resolve, more actual patience than people will ever give him credit for.

We forget that the moderators of the forums have blood and bones and hearts just like we do. We forget that they started working for Blizzard because of their love of the game, and they became CMs for the love of the players. The unending waves of insults and taunting wore at Tseric, until his humanity outweighed his patience. I hope that whoever steps into his shoes is half the man he is.

Thank you, Tseric, your voice on the forums will be greatly missed.

Rushter also posted on this here.. (http://forums.worldofwar.net/showthread.php?t=396130)

[Baal]

Good. I didn't see his little fight, nor do I care to read it, but from what I've seen him post he was an absolute ass. Too bad he wasn't fired, though, and left on his own accord.

[MadVlad]

You must not have read any of the other posters if you consider him an ass.

I doubt more than a scant few of us could do near as well.

[Fursphere]

Indeed. The amount of vile filth that is spewed on teh official forums (just about every post is flame bait, and every CM post is disected down to a molecure level).

IMO - Blizzard should just shut the forum system down. It other gives a place for whiners to whine. Have a webpage with updates, and an mailbox for suggested to made.

Maybe when a good suggestion it made, and it is getting looked at, post it on that webpage, for all to see. Forget the comments, their a waste of time.

[meikyo]

I rather enjoyed reading Tseric's replies, and for that matter the rest of the cm's. This is what you get when you try to get blizzard staff involved with their "customers", a bunch of snot nosed kids who want to push their buttons and try to break them. While I hardly doubt they broke him, they are definately part of the problem. All these whiny people throwing "the customer is always right" BS at cm's are more than likely using their parents credit cards for their account. I worked customer service for many years, at the end I too finally dished out some hard truths to customers, I feel like it was the best thing I've done for them in all those years.

[Silverhand]

IMO - Blizzard should just shut the forum system down. It other gives a place for whiners to whine. Have a webpage with updates, and an mailbox for suggested to made.

Not so sure about that - where would all the problem children go?

Cheers,

Silverhand

[bhroam]

I really don't understand how the CMs can come into work and put up with all of that... day in and day out.

The posts which get me are the ones where the CM pops up in a frivolous and posts about it. Some asshat will post some snide remark 'all these real threads get no response, but a blue posts HERE?'.

The last one I read was someone asking where the water for the waterfalls on the floating islands came from in Nagrand. Neth posted a funny response about it. I chuckled and then went on to see her being yelled at.

I'm sure they're not paid NEARLY enough for that kind of abuse.

[Stigg]

I only go to the official forums to read their posts anymore. Quite funny. They have to realize 90% of their customer base are immature jackasses. If they don't...then they are in for a sore career.

[Fursphere]

Not so sure about that - where would all the problem children go?

Cheers,

Silverhand

Do you honestly care?

[Beruen]

Do you honestly care?

Only if they come here faster than they get banned.

[poopsmcgee]

i have only read that board a few times and didn't find what i was looking for which is why i wound up on boards like this which are much more useful. but why is there such a problem there? can they not just ban the jackasses? i remember back with swg your forum account was tied to your swg account and if they banned you from the boards, which i was, you couldn't get anohter account without starting up another one with a fresh cdkey. btw i was banned there for my name, poops mcgee. i had played for about a year and a half when i finally got in contact with a gm over an issue with my av-21 vehicle. they basically ignored my problem but were very prompt in telling me that i had to change my name cuz poops mcgee was indecent. i proceeded to cancel my account when a bud told me that there was a thread about me on the boards so i went to check it out. i just made one post there saying goodbye and thanks for the good times and was banned from there for my name.

i would like to take this moment to thank the worldofwar.net staff and members for tolerating my vile and offensive name and not banning me from the site.

[BlackLeaf]

Tseric as an interesting fellow. I either loved or hated some of his posts, but he sure had a way with phrasing them. Hope he enjoys his next job.

Also, does this make Eyonix the longest reining, active public CM on the official forums? Caydiem got promoted, Ordinn apparently works in the "back scenes" now, Fangtooth supposedly got fired, I'm not sure what happened to Tyren, Coriel aka Feathers is a mod so she never has a reason to post, ditto with Drokthul, Drysc and Neth haven't been around publicly nearly as long as Eyonix has, and then there's a whole host of other Blizzard employees who only post about once a year (like Block). Otherwise they're in more specialized parts of the forums (like tech support). Eyonix is a champ if I covered all that I think I did!

[Kyusoath]

i never really hated Tseric, or any other CM, but what i hate is the people that kiss the asses of CM's and blizzard in general , maybe hoping to get MVP status , as they only give people MVP status that never challenge or say anything critical about blizzard. the CMs just pass on information (both ways) no real reason to hate them. i hate the devs most of the time, they are the ones most deserving of the hate .

[dgrampa]

i never really hated Tseric, or any other CM, but what i hate is the people that kiss the asses of CM's and blizzard in general , maybe hoping to get MVP status , as they only give people MVP status that never challenge or say anything critical about blizzard. the CMs just pass on information (both ways) no real reason to hate them. i hate the devs most of the time, they are the ones most deserving of the hate .



No one at Blizzard deserves ANY hate. Are you going to tell me you hate the devs that made the game you've been playing for at least 16 months?

It's a game. It is rediculous that people throw around the word hate about a game.

[Silverhand]

Only if they come here faster than they get banned.

This was my point.

Cheers,

Silverhand

[Wiired]

No, no! Tseric was awesome..

I saw his little fight, and it was one of the times I was glad I couldn't p[ost in those forums.

Long live Tseric!

"IM IN UR ACKOUNT
SHARDIN UR PURPLEZ"

[Baal]

You must not have read any of the other posters if you consider him an ass.

I doubt more than a scant few of us could do near as well.

I'm not sure what you mean... But I read all around the official forums with people loving and worshiping him, and I certainly do think he's still an ass. He was extremely rude to people who even made polite posts about concerns. He was nothing short of a smartass and nothing else. I'm quite glad he's gone. Blizzard can do a lot better.

[Skahr]

You are all kidding yourself if you call being Internet Bullied abuse.

[poopsmcgee]

i hate the devs most of the time, they are the ones most deserving of the hate .

wow man you are absolutely clueless.

[Kyusoath]

wow man you are absolutely clueless.

give me a clue then ?

maybe i should elaborate, when the devs do things like test TBC for ages then release it , then later nerf things (bear mangle, fear nerf, pally healing nerf , ) and leave things broken for ages (cat range bug, rogue sword spec, shaman enhance viability, ) what about the shamfully untested raid content, what about that nightmare vine thats floating in the sky in shadowmoon, what about ill thought out class buffing followed by bigger nerfs ? what about alchemy ? what about leatherworkers having nothing compared to the stuff tailors get from a vendor ? what about how bad engineering is right now, and thier solution, some crap epic helms ?

i don't hate the devs for making this game, i don't hate them for keeping it going for 2+ years, i don't hate TBC , I hate it when they do such a poor job its laughable, i hate that they get a fortune from the playerbase and i can see now its gone mostly on starcrap 2 (well it may have , or maybe in their pockets) because if 10% of what they make from this game was spent on developing it then they really need to start monitoring what their employees are doing. 1 easy example , rogue sword spec has been broken for so long that it was just generally accepted that its 'ment to be broken' , and now months later we get a fix in 2.1 , oh thanks blizz , did it really take that long to fix or did it take so long cos you were planning more ultra high end bugged raid content for 5% of the player base while figuring out new ways to force all 'hybrids' to spec healing to be viable?

[Mythor]

Too bad he wasn't fired, though, and left on his own accord.If he hadn't left of his own accord he would've been fired. Blizzard couldn't let someone behave as Tseric did on his last day and allow him to continue working there. They would've been - quite rightly - pilloried for allowing such a person to remain on staff.
I'm not at all saying I blame him for his outburst, but as a representative of the company you can't post things like that and expect to still have a job the next day. No matter how much **** you cop on the job, professionalism requires a higher standard than that.

The official forums are really only worth visiting if you badly need information and what you can find elsewhere isn't up to scratch. Plenty of good people persevere with them, but unless Blizzard starts taking the forums seriously the problems there are only going to get worse. Tseric is unlikely to be the last to quit/get-fired if Blizzard don't do something.

[Stigg]

If he hadn't left of his own accord he would've been fired. Blizzard couldn't let someone behave as Tseric did on his last day and allow him to continue working there. They would've been - quite rightly - pilloried for allowing such a person to remain on staff.
I'm not at all saying I blame him for his outburst, but as a representative of the company you can't post things like that and expect to still have a job the next day. No matter how much **** you cop on the job, professionalism requires a higher standard than that.


Are you referring to his final post "get of my internetz kthnx"?

I browsed through some of his recent posts and it didn't seem as if he did anything wrong.

People jabbing him in an apparently trolling forum, so he replies with a funny comment, then closes the thread.

I don't know too much about how the Official Forums work, but with the amount of littered junk there, I have seen worse comments by Blue.

Or did he do something else?

[NOYB]

The customer is not always right.

[Zuline]

The customer is not always right.

True, in fact, the customer is Rarely right.

[Toolio]

I'm sure most of the obtuse posters of the forum would like to think that they were the reason Tseric left. But I'm convinced that the man had something else lined up and when his time to depart arrived he opted to make a statement. He wasn't mean and didn't call anyone names. But he made a ripple and hopefully brought a few people to the realization of how forum trolls can change the experience.
I'd be willing to bet he's still with Blizz, perhaps he's moved on to SCII?

[owlx]

I have been working in customer service in some shape or form for the past 14 years. While the customer may not be right, they deserve the opportunity to be heard, no matter how immature, ignorant, or otherwise rude they behave. Tseric simply doesn't need to stoop to their level.

I personally don't like the guy. On several occasions he has been caught trying to talk out his backside and instead of acknowloging his mistake.........or better yet getting his facts straight before responding, he plays it off he was just misunderstood and still right

He's the reason I can't stomach the official forums. I expect immatures idiodic behavior from posters, but, not from the CM.


If there is a job opening and they can pay me properly, I'll take that job.

[Nysard]

If there is a job opening and they can pay me properly, I'll take that job.

Good luck (http://www.blizzard.com/jobopp/pr-online-community-rep.shtml) :)

[owlx]

is that a link to the job listing? i can't access it from here, but, I'll read more about this when I get home.

[Nysard]

is that a link to the job listing? i can't access it from here, but, I'll read more about this when I get home.

It is indeed, here you go:



Online Community Representative

Blizzard Entertainment is seeking an outgoing individual to provide assistance to our customers via the World of Warcraft forums. This is a position for an avid massively multiplayer online gamer with a strong background in providing top-notch customer service.


An ideal candidate would be creative, self-motivated, conscientious, and detail-oriented, with excellent spoken and written communication skills. This person would be able to offer consistently attentive, high-quality customer service in a fast-paced environment. He or she also would be very familiar with game forum dynamics and the massively multiplayer online game genre.


Responsibilities:
Consistently read and respond to postings in the World of Warcraft forums
Investigate open subjects with other teams at Blizzard
Provide regular forum-feedback reports
Participate in fairs and events
Other responsibilities as assignedRequirements:
Strong written and spoken communication skills
A passion for gaming
Strong customer-service skills and a professional attitude
Diligence to consistently follow up on open subjects in the forums
Willingness to work long hours, nights, weekends, and holidays, and be available on call
Proficiency with Microsoft OfficePluses:
Previous community management and/or forum moderation experience
Previous public relations and/or customer service experience
Membership in a World of Warcraft fan sitePlease send a cover letter, resume, and salary history to resumes@blizzard.com.

Basic Tips for Resume/Demo Submission (http://www.blizzard.com/jobopp/tips-basic.shtml)

No calls or follow-up emails, please. This is a full-time position in Irvine, California.

[mesonm]

He's the reason I can't stomach the official forums.

Well, now that he is gone, your problem is solved....

You can have the official forums....They are totally out of control, IMO.

[moopy]

The official forums are badly-run, but if they were to be controlled properly, the playerbase of the game would atrophy, Sturgeon's law FTW.

Tseric was an ass though, fanbois aside. Set a thief of catch a thief and all that. Occasionally amusing, but not someone you'd want to take at their word.

- Grumpy sometime shammy.

[Xaintrix]

yes he didn't exactly endear himself to the shaman community...

the problem is perception is reality many a time, especially in the customer service field

even if concerns were being properly relayed per procedure, it didn't seem that way

and then rather terse responses are flipped back in their faces and you got even the normally well reasoned debaters up in arms for really no good reason other than the CM made things difficult

eh... it's done now though, time to move on already

[OneMadOgre]

Good luck with the pay. I remember getting loosely around what the first community manager got. It didn't strike me as being a job you'd retired from, that's for certain.