In any game, pRO in particular, players may be seen ranting against game moderators (GMs). These are the people who are directly in the line of fire when things go wrong in a game just because they are the ones directly in contact with the players. The rants range from light taunts to outright jeers and even lowblow attacks. If so, what line is crossed between professional and personal? Does such a line exist? Read on for my opinions…..

To a gamer, the one major thing of concern is the game. GMs are there to assist the players and make sure that a modicum of order is present in any game-related situation. Gamers rant at GMs during the times when their game is compromised or disturbed; or when the implementation of rules get in the way of their gameplay.

Think of it as an enraged customer calling the hotline and shouting at the customer service representative (CSR). The irate person knows that the CSR is not the one directly responsible for the glitch in service but he “blames” the reps because they are there to provide a portal for his concerns. However, as soon as the concern is dealt with, and the customer can enjoy the service again, the reps or even the hotline number itself take a backseat in the customer’s memory.

GMs are faceless to players, they are merely the representatives of the game provider that can be talked to when things are chaotic. In this light, it is safe to assume that a love-hate relationship exists between the player and the company, and not between the player and the reps themselves. So to answer the question posed in the title: NO, it’s not personal.

GMs risk their anonymity and facelessness only under the following conditions:

• when the GMs reach out a friendly hand to the community by introducing himself to several cliques inside the game.
• and, when the GM decides to take the lowblow rants to heart and decides to take matters in his own hands i.e. confront the person ranting and express his own personal frustrations by saying “what the hell is your problem with me?!?”

The second clause is more dangerous than the first because the gamer, who wants nothing more than to continue his fun, will stop, look at the GM in the face for the first time and ask “and, who are you again?”.

I understand that GMs are humans who also reach a breaking point, and that they themselves need a venue for their own rants when the pressure from the gamer mobs becomes too much to handle. However, as long as they maintain the “I’m-a-GM-and-you’re-a-player” stance, they are relatively safe from personal attacks.

Every gamer knows the rules, even that one who acts like he can bend them. A GM is the faceless sentinel of the gaming company who call out the rules over and over, and herd everyone to the right direction. Fairness in rule implementation will keep things normal (regardless of the general outcry from those rebels who don’t want to follow).

A blogging meme that has been circulating in my circle is interviewing gamers and other people who the readers might want to read about. This was started by Waukeen and we followed suit. Diwa will soon interview Goenitz, a game master (GM) in Ragnarok Online. This guy is also infamously known by some RO players as killprobots, the yahoo id he uses to entertain bot reports from concerned players.

He has always been there since the beginning; hunting bots and propagating the bot-free game that we would all like to have. Sadly, his quest was not successful in commercial server, where the financial returns from Ragnarok Online soon depended on the third party program culture. More and more addicted pRO gamers have resorted to botting than leave the game for real life activities. In this light, Levelup games (pRO’s merchant) could do nothing to stop the influx of bot users, for fear that if they do block the entry of these bot users in the game, they will lose a hefty portion of their profit.

The same thing happened to Thor, the commercial (paid game time) server initially pitched as the “bot-free” server. Bothunting activities have been encouraged and technical measures have also been taken to prevent bot entries, but with the constant upgrade of opensource bot software, people using third party programs have still been able to infiltrate the server.

With the advent of Valkyrie, killprobots’ role in the bothunting scene is magnified a thousand fold. Valkyrie, the free-to-play server, is the latest addition to pRO. There is no charge for game time, but Levelup profits from the players’ purchase of ingame item using real money (Philippine Peso). There is no doubt that bots are not allowed in this server, where honest players have a choice of manually harvesting for long hours to obtain the basic items, or simply buying those items in the item shop to concentrate on the gameplay. Bot-driven harvesters are a big no-no.

Let’s all head on over to the Master’s Den on 24 October to read what killprobots has to say on myriad topics, particularly the bot culture in pRO.