New Manager
 

I think it really has been too long.

I'm certain there is a current staff member on Classic who could do a vastly better job as manager.

If we didn't have to pay to play this server, I might see things a bit differently, but when the majority of the players want a change, I don't see the point in not giving it to them unless it's an impossibility.

I approve of this thread, and nominate myself or thor for a new manager.
Someone who can listen and act on the players behalf.
This game is about the players, and listening to what they want and more importantly, acting on that.

Storm does the listening part, but is unable to act.

i laura agree with kevin.

and i think DC would fit the job

Zippy blew his chance at that option.

ok well dc for manager then

Can I show you my ninja info cards?

In for /roast -ing, see Luda for details.

Yeah, I agree with all above.

I'm not entirely sure on which way I should vote. The server hasn't changed much over the 4-5 years has it? There is a number of people who should be taking responsibility for the server's failure, but one constant has been Storm through it all. Maybe the server's failure has been entirely his fault, or maybe not. I am like most players; uninformed. It is impossible for us to have any insight in the going-ons of the upper Classic 'management'.

I'm sure everyone who has posted in this thread for the most part was pressured into making the post through one person or another, and for the most part the people who will post have no understanding of whats going on, just their feelings on the matter, based hearsay from a select few developers who are running on their own personal agendas. It is impossible for the 'average player' to make an informed decision on this matter, so I call on division leads and developers like Thor to give some actual insight.

If it turns out Storm is the main cause for all this, then what? The PWA has shown with Era that they have no ability to manage a server directly, or atleast no better than Storm has. We can't select anyone from our player pool because it is incredibly shallow. Putting someone like DC in would be exactly like put Kevin or myself in charge (don't even suggest Rufus, he has a list of failures as long as my leg). The only real alternative I see is giving the LAT division control, and having the PWA ensure the server is moving forward (but no direct interference).

What happened to Thor for Manager? You guys are really wishy washy.

k
I don't think there was really any pressure to post here, especially one direction or another. The most said about this thread was a link.

I'm the sure the players are indeed posting their feelings, and their feelings are the figurehead of Classic has remained veiled/hidden/inactive, and the server has suffered accordingly. Is that really the cause? Who knows. I'd say it probably is.
I don't think the player pool has any effect on whether or not their is a qualified player.

Someone told you to make this thread, and that person is more than likely going to use the thread for a platform to run for Manager. You do notice how it instantly became "NAME for manager" thread? These people were coerced in some way. How could a player know that X would be better than Y?

I only mean that if we're deciding on Manager internally (from Classic), we don't have many people to choose from, nor do any of them actually fit the 'qualifications' of Manager. We have three types of people who play the server right now; active staff, ex-staff, and people with no staff experience at all. All the ex-staff have been fired for corruption at some point, and the same could be said for most of the active staff members as well. Hiring someone with no staff experience would be stupid.

Can't there be like...
 

Two people who are manager, for example DC and Thor, this way they can look over one another's shoulder, I don't know though that's just my input! :cool:

I honestly don't see how I'm destructive to the server compared to max or kevin.
Sure, I've had my fun, but with classic's well being in mind.
I've been trying to do whats right for classic for the past 3 years, both in GC Dev and Dev positions, but I'm only one person. Usually all the things I do that get praise have been me overstepping the bounds of my position to get something done that needs to be done.

What do you guys think a manager does?

I don't see where people come off calling me destructive.

"OHMYGOD HE RESET EVERYBODY'S ACCOUNT"

yea, I did, but Thor had backups of everybody's account from a few days before because of what happened with floydian or whatever. I knew that. He knew that. All the staff knew that.

"oh man he put bell in jail that one time"

yea I'm sure as she laughed as it took her 2 minutes to rectify the situation and remove my RC she thought it was truly destructive.


It would be really quite easy to do something extremely malicious but it's never happened.

wtf ?

He's more of a dictator than a manager.

So what does a manager do? How does he dictate?

Please, if a new manager is chosen don't make another mistake.
Thor can not be manager, everyone knows how closed minded he is with his projects and his views towards graal.

how can you be a dictator if you do nothing?
hes like the opposite of a dictator.
thats the problem.

Sadly I don't think we'll have a meaningful debate on Storm's position because the thread instantly became a campaign for Manager.

No offence to this but this was a pretty stupid thing to say. Storm does absolutely nothing, and makes no major decisions/changes.
Dictators make HUGE changes and have people put in a lot of work. Which storm doesn't.

Well, you naturally need a replacement if someone should be removed,

Thats basically what it is now. Masterstorm and Thor. Thor handles development, Storm watches over the admins and listens to players complaints. In addition when time permits he helps out Night with some GC stuff or Thor if Thor asks.

did i read the word help? masterstorm and the word help do not belong in the same sentence

when do all those NPCs in limbo get released as GC prizes?

It's a possibility for a few of them.

Reality is that not much can even be done with Storm out of the way because of this preservation for Classic. But Storm does a lot less than what the normal manager does. He should dictate how development goes all in all. Thor is there to watch over the dev staff and lead projects (as well as other things). Storm just shouldn't "help", he should be the one casting the show here.

He claims that he is always responding to players which gets in the way of his work time, but that is doubtful with Classic's playercount. I remember Subzero and Crowfeather, former managers of UN, being able to answer my PM's and several other peoples and get **** done as well as act on player inputs.

Aside from what is mentioned in what I've quoted below, what does "the normal manager" do?

This may be the staff hierarchy of many servers, but it is not what happens on Classic and I'm not sure it ever has. The person in charge of the development leads the direction of the server development, not the manager. It is true that the manager should be discussing the direction of the server, but in the times that I've spoken to Storm about the server direction he seems to be aware of what the development teams have wanted to go in, which suggests he does do this.

By Dictator, I meant he wants to be in charge, and is stubborn like one and won't step down.

Wow, well said. :)

For starters, be active. Direction control of development. Handling input. Coming up with innovative content Watching over the Staff team. Storm may do that all from time to time, but if he isn't going to step down, then he should be active at the least.

2 UN Manager's have been removed in past 1-1 1/2 years for inactivity/lack of updating(One manager twice), though not as worse as Storm's case. It's only time before Storm faces the same treatment.

Being aware isn't enough. I have doubts he even suggested any new development ideas at all. Anyone can approve an idea. Storm needs to be the person giving the ideas and assignments to the Dev Team where they handle it from then on. Not have the Dev team come up with ideas and have Storm give a nod. On top of all that, he doesn't even log on as often as a manager should. If he gets too busy that he can't even log on once a day (he logs on once or twice every few days), then It's clearly his time to go, and anyone will agree on that. Classic shouldn't be any different when other server managers have been removed for being exactly like how Storm has been.

@Ben: I don't know if he just wants to be in charge. If he did, he would of been doing what we have urged him to do. Maybe he just likes his tag and RC. Or maybe that's what just what wanting to be in charge is :redface:.

wow i so agree

The problem with firing a current manager is that you need to have someone better ready AND willing to step in immediately. Do we have someone who wants to be manager of classic ready to step in if a move does occur? I don't know. I also don't know what the exact definition of a "manager" is, especially one on graal. What exactly does a manager do? Does he help with dev stuff by being hands-on and actually produce stuff himself? Does he talk to all the players and get their opinion in order to find the direction for the server? Does he make sure all the staff positions are doing their jobs appropriately and actively?

Obviously many of you might have an idea what a manager might/should do based on managers from other servers. But what does a Classic manager do exactly? I don't know if many of us can speak since all we've known is storm over the last 4 years. Perhaps a few of you were here before that.

Point is, what do we need our manager to do? If we need a hands-on manager who makes stuff himself, then yes DC or Thor would be a good choice. If we need a manager who constantly gets the opinion of the people and tries to accommodate them...well I really don't know exactly is friendly with the majority so I don't know who to list here. If we need a manager who just makes sure all the admins are in line, then perhaps a more active storm would be good enough.

Has storm done a great job moving the server forward in the last four years? No, not really. Could he be good enough if he was more active? Perhaps. It depends what you think classic's manager should do.

With all of that said, personally I think that a manager needs to commune with the players and get their opinions and wants. Then he/she needs to get together with the GC admin + Dev admin and talk about if/how they can implement those ideas. If they are acceptable, then a release should be made within a month (depends on scale of project). If not, then the manager needs to explain why not to the people and then try to find another solution.

Thats how I feel a classic manager should operate. Can a more active master storm do that? Possibly. Is he on good terms with enough of the players to get the majority's opinions/thoughts? Who knows. All I know is that if thor/DC get promoted, we'd have to find someone to replace their old spots, which won't be easy to do. Perhaps they can keep deving while getting the opinions of classicians. Who knows.

Wow, Gladius. You sure like to type A LOT of novels.

That being said, the debate here is whether Storm is doing his job right or not. Not what constitutes a manager since we all have the general idea by now.Storm has the politeness of a manager, and the integrity to respond to every player PM, but he doesn't offer much more then that. At least not decision wise/idea wise, which a manager should be the proprietor of usually. That is the concern. Storm can't even log on properly. That being said, he knows he's reaching his limit.

DC is the best candidate so far for manager me thinks. He's usually pretty rational in regards to player input and gets things done gc-wise. Thor would be too but I heard something as if he did not want the position, but correct me if I'm wrong.

The ultimate purpose of this thread isn't 'who would be a better manager' nor is it really about 'is Storm qualified for the job'. We should be discussing what is best for Classic, and if a change in Manager really accomplishes anything. We all have varying definitions of what a Manager's job entails, we can't even agree on what Storm should be doing, let alone who could replace him.

Lets get our priorities in order before we go out trying to shoot anyone down, starting with a clearly defined definition and duties that the current Manager should be performing.

listening to the players
having a clear idea of what will be made in the future
manage the DEV and support them
help at making classic a better place
having a good relation with the players
and being active (in my opinion this is what a manager need the most after doing something for the server)

In my opinion, a manager should not directly interfere with any departments unless intervention is necessary.

A manager should simply hire and keep track of the proper department heads that can help him achieve his view for the server.

There should also be regular meetings with all the department heads to always make sure the departments are working with each other to achieve that same view.



I believe Storm is only doing the "staying out of the way of the innards of the departments", but not really helping them coordinate or dictating any policy that they should all follow.


At least this is how the hierarchal structure should work if we want to keep a manager and the department heads, otherwise everything will get messy if the manager tries to do GP duties, hire FAQ, and develop random weapons, because by "law" he would technically have the jurisdiction to do that, so none of the department heads could do anything about it even if he was actually interfering.

If this thread had been made a year ago, I would have full agreed with a lot of the things being said. I wasn't around enough, and I wasn't trying hard enough to get Classic out of the situation it was in. Recently however, I've had much more time to do things. I'm logging on for an hour or two most days, and that's slowly increasing. I try to average at least 14 hours a week (2 hours a day), double what the old staff rules expected. I'm also always contactable by forum PM if you do not catch me on player.

Logging on alone isn't enough though; it's pretty pointless logging on if I'm just sat there being idle. Firstly I've been making steps towards soring certain staff teams out, and have already seen an improvement here. Things are still far from perfect, but we're getting there. I also have a number of ideas for the server in the pipeline, some of which I've briefly run past people and others which are pretty new and still need a bit of thrashing out. There's a lot of things I dislike about Classic at the moment, and I'm trying to put together plans that will steer us back in the right direction.

Some of you have questioned what I actually spend my time doing whilst logged on to Classic. Firstly, my job is not a development one: that's what Thor and the team are there for, and I'm generally happy with the work they are doing. That said, I do help out both with bug fixing and as an advisory on things where needed. I will always get my hands dirty when there's a critical problem. As my free time has been increasing I've also been doing some new development stuff; one of my current projects is to vastly improve the base events system to bring some fresh team events to Classic. The vast majority of my time is spent resolving player complaints, and collating views and ideas for the server. Recently there have been a number of major complaints, particularly regarding the hit detection, and trying to address everyone's issues can take a lot of time. It's very easy to listen to a single player, determine their problem and fix it; taking all the problems from every player and trying to match these against each other and work out exactly what will be the best solution for the player base as a whole is a lot more tricky.

Some of you have also questioned why I have not been replying to the threads here on the Classic forums. I actually read the threads several times a day, and not responding has been intentional. The way the threads currently are has allowed a lot of discussion into the problems we have at Classic, and this has given me a lot of information on how we should move forwards. I'm pretty sure that if I'd started replying in the threads I would have quickly just become the target of conversation, and this would have derailed the thread from being useful.

I want, just as much as the rest of you, to get Classic back where it belongs. There's a pretty big mountain to climb before we can reach that point, but I'm confident that we can achieve it. I expect most people to read this post and simply think 'meh', and that's wholly understandable. I don't expect to change your opinions using words, I expect to climb a mountain with my actions. ^^

FOUR MORE YEARS!!!!

Rofl.

Seriously though, good post.

was that supposed to be a joke?

by the way storm , i know that wasnt your idea but having serverside hd back is just like flying back in the past. nothing changed and got the old same hd. why not move it back in the us where everyone liked it. cant you do anything to fix that?