A COUPLE OF GENERAL THINGS BEFORE YOU READ THROUGH

First, the number of various legal issues that are slowing down certain things within the game are amazing. I didn't know the full extent of it until I started discussing these things in detail with Brad and Sharon (Sharon's MxO's head of Customer Service) 

Apart from that, do read on!

QUESTIONS ABOUT SOE RUNNING THE GAME

• More active advertising ~ there's been some little bits recently, for example 06/19/07 All Games Interactive Radio interview with MxO dev - Rarebit. Oh and trying the Algorithm:Black stuff to raise interest are all good steps to a wider recognition.

1. Can anything be done to up promotion and advertising for our game? There's been a few largely successful promotions, but upgrading the official website, or cross-developing the features of the game and promoting them... would be astounding. SWG has promotions that give special in-game items. We should have the same.

REPLY

Ok, first thing that was first with this is that increased game advertising through using things like player videos, artwork etc etc is something that Virrago can actually setup as a thing between us (the community), him and our marketing team. That includes setting things up like and MxO myspace and youtube page (rawr!)

In terms of website adjustments, that is all on the top of Virrago's list of things to do and is already becoming self evident of him trying to get things sorted.

It is perfectly possible for us to start doing promotional competitions for the players to get some in-game item or even potentially have a new item designed off their idea. This would have to be set up by Virrago, who would run all aspects of it, starting with the initial concept being planned out between himself, the players and developers. This would then have to be checked for approval as even when something like this is setup there are legal issues that need to be covered and placed in clear view at the start of a competition of this type.

• What has SOE contributed to The Matrix Online in the past 3 months that the community ought to know about?

1. I guess the blunt question here....is SOE going to commit it's resources to maintaining this game and take steps for increased player subscriptions? Or are plans in effect to shelve this game?

2. What i ask is, will anything ever be done to rectify the development spiral the game has been falling down ever since the acquisition?

REPLY

This one was quite hard for them to respond to as it's not really possible for them to discuss specifics of a lot of this (mainly funding based) with a player. At this time there are no plans to shelve the game though as it's consistently maintaining its targets.

The second question is based on your own opinion on other answered questions so I'll leave this be

• The Matrix Online needs some sort of better mention on the Podcasts, not simply brushed over. 

REPLY

The SOE podcast is totally run by Brenlo and Ashlanne. If you want something mentioned in it (like a player event) you'd need to contact Virrago to pass the details of this onto Brenlo. Equally, MxO news needs to be handled by Virrago passing details over to Brenlo, go it's going to be a case of asking him specifically about it now he's in charge of community relations.

QUESTIONS ABOUT FORUM ISSUES

• Issues with over-Moderated forums

1. As far as everyone is aware of, there are Matrix Online players who have been abusing their moderating power, essentially censoring whatever legitimate complaints there are. Are there going to be actions carried out against such moderators?

REPLY

Again, this is an issue that they're letting Virrago deal with behind the scenes. The last thing that was wanted was to have players silenced who had genuine concerns about the game.

• About our new CRM - Now that we have Virrago as our new CRM, is there any guarantee that he'll be working specifically with the MxO community for a long period? He's promising, and I would hate for him to end up being split with other games five months from now.

REPLY

Virrago is now our fixed CRM. The issue previously was that Raijinn was trying to cover 6 (yes 6) games and he had only come in to cover Walrus to start with when he stepped down.

• What really interests me is the possibility of putting in place a system (and legalities) by which players can submit content for the game. Many of us are talented in webwork, graphics, coding, etc and are more than happy to submit elements for future use by the Development team. This could range from something as simple as another billboard run to something as involved as new clothing designs or even outsourcing animation tasks.

REPLY

(As was stated above) this is something that Virrago can start to setup for us in terms of submitting concepts. In terms of physical coding and webwork etc that needs to be covered by various aspects of the SOE team.

• Issues with the website

REPLY

As there were a lot of issues on the website specifically, I'm not going to go into them all as a lot of them get the same answer.

All content for uploading onto the main page of the site has to be sent off by Virrago to the web development team. This includes news, guides and any number of missing things. You'll notice that Virrago has already got the ball rolling on player guides.

Put simply, yes they know that there are a lot of issues surrounding the condition of the site and they're working on how the community can now work with Virrago to get all the best stuff up onto there.

TECHNICAL GAME ISSUES

• Another pressing issue is MxO's constant database problems. This manifests itself in problems like the recurring 'Faction Bug' and the limited capacity of our clothing database. An extension of this is improvements to our in-game email and marketplace functions.

REPLY

Although primarily a developer question and not 100% in their area of knowledge, they did explain that they're having a similar issue with SWG right now too. From how they explained it, one part of this is how things like clothes are physically coded into the database with the games coding system, which takes up a lot of space.

Equally, things like the email system and marketplace functions would probably need to go through player testing which is an issue right now (see reply below on test server). They do work with the Matrix Online QA and dev team though closely to work through as much as possible. 

• MxO and the Nvidia graphic cards, and Windows Vista. Currently no-one in the team has any experience dealing with things of this nature.

REPLY

Ok, firstly this (various issues with Vista) again is an issue that SOE is experiencing with all it's games. This is down to how the graphics work differently under vista producing undesired effects. Their tester team is working on trying to get issues with vista fixed but unfortunately going is slow on this right now and not for lack of trying.

In terms of the Nvidia graphics cards - this is something that the test team at SOE are starting to work specifically on now. As to how long the issues get fixed they honestly couldn't give me an answer as they simply don't know what's causing the problem until it's tested a lot more.

• Test server question

REPLY

I do thank Sharon for giving me an honest answer on this one. To her credit she said she honestly didn't know the logic of why we do not have a test server right now. This is (however) something they're working on solving though as there are two main groups of things that would need extensive player beta testing before being put into the game (the words martial arts and faction abilities were thrown around)

CURRENT LESIG ISSUES AND POTENTIAL LIVE EVENTS

• LESIG Issues including:

1. The content wasn't designed (or meant, or advertised) to be static. It was meant to be story-driven, and a full Live Events Team made that happen... it was the selling point of the game for a lot of players. How can we go about getting another Live Events Team?

REPLY

This is essentially a budget question and it was answered honestly in that MxO simply doesn't have it available for a LET.

2. Irregular logins of liaisons some almost non-existant

REPLY

This is again an issue as there's no overly defining obligation for a liaison to be in 24/7 as they are just players. LESIG is run totally under Ben Chamberlain's (Rarebit) supervision and it's up to him to decide on the active liaisons.

3. drop-off in liaison numbers resulting in gaps for some groups on some servers.

REPLY

Again, they couldn't give me an honest answer on this as they'd need to go away and discuss this in detail with Rarebit. The thing that they understand better now is the number of liaisons groups are meant to have on each server and how some groups are struggling with low numbers of liaisons which results in little/no interaction depending on timezone differences.

Sharon said that both herself and Brewko are actively trying to get onto MxO more now, especially are earlier times now to include more fun trivia things and such for the Europeans too.

4. No open advertising showing who liaisons are in the game on servers for new/returning players (unless they happen to know of the link in-game to get the liaison list)

REPLY

This is something that they've passed onto Virrago to see if either he (or through the forums, include the community) in creating something more visable on the forum at the least

5. Responses to the Live Events Special Interest Group has been ridiculously slow for the past half-year. As it stands, Live Events on certain organizations for certain servers have been sporadic (examples being Machine players on Recursion, Cypherites on Vector, etc.), with some organizations not receiving any events at all due to lack of officers, and Ben "Rarebit" Chamberlain is evidently burned out on the subject admitting that the program isn't perfect and that there's no way he can actually monitor the LESIG players due to time constraints. Is it possible to give Rarebit two more assistants or so with the LESIG program? As it is, Live Events are available to players that don't have lives and are lucky enough to have liaison officers.

To quote on Rarebit regarding such things:

Yes. The reason for having three liaisons per org per server was to ensure that if one or even two were out of action for a bit, there'd be backup there to cover for them. Admittedly that system breaks down when separate tornados or the equivalent end up striking all three at once. I would have thought that the odds of that were astronomically low, but hey, live and learn.

a) There's no way for you to know if there are legitimate reasons or not; I can't always say if there are due to the possibility of such information giving hints to their main's identity
b) There is no set timeframe

REPLY

Again a matter of funding to get extra people to assist Rarebit with the LESIG program. They did say however that it might be an idea to set up something more formal on the forum through Rarebit and Virrago so they know the timezones of the liaisons and times when they'd normally jack-in and also some way to get information across about live events differently (not sure on specifics as of yet)

6. What kind of subscription or funding increase would it take for 1 or more extra Rarebit-types to be hired who could take event pitches from the players and, if approved, help out with those events? Could funding from sources like extra advertising help with this or would more Station passes/Matrix Online subscriptions be necessary. If it is subscriptions, how many more are we looking at before extra funding can be put in place for an extra event handler?

This would enable us to have an actual Live Events Team of some form again, for the player events (which are usually better than the stuff LESIG can do) to get more support, and we wouldn't have to waste our time talking to other players with "semi-official" status just to be put on a list to be included in a weekly show-and-tell with a story character.

REPLY

There isn't one (legally not allowed to discuss)

• Judging by the positive feedback of player events such as Algorithm Black, is there any plans down the line to have MXO conduct similar type if events of that caliber?

REPLY

Nothing specific as of yet, however they're thinking of ways of increasing the scope of the stories and naturally getting our players involved in them.

THE MXO TEAM

• The exact size of the MxO team ~ I say this as we know that we're a small game but we're never going to get ANYWHERE with a stupidly small team working SPECIFICALLY on this game. The game has so much un-tapped potential if it was given the chance to be worked on. Dare I say, some form of expansion worked on to add additional content...?

1. What are the chances of additional staff being hired for Community Relations, Live Events, Development?

2. Is there a possibility for budget increase for MXO? We are in dire need of someone who understands the programming language of this game and also who is is an animator and I think the engine is Maya or somesuch.

3. Any plans to expand the MXO universe ie. New areas, abilities...

GENERIC REPLY FOR THESE 3 QUESTIONS

Not at this time. This is down to a combination of reasons already stated above. (Example: No test server)

5. We have no animator (confirmed several times by current staff members), no modeller, no texturer. And although never confirmed, the fact all content received in patchs has been discussed as direct work resulting from the one designer we do have contact with, i can surmise we have but one designer. This severe lack of development support has left the game in a terrible place for well over a year now. No new entirely art content can be added. What little development that can be done is largely accomplished by one man (who might i add, operates the game's storyline and daily live events nigh single handed). What many of us seem to lack understanding on is how SOE were prepared to take on those 30 people at the time of the acquisition yet let the game decay into nothingness over time. It cats seriously doubts over the future of the game, among all the players.

REPLY

Interestingly enough, they seemed a bit surprised when I brought this up. This will, however, be something that they'll ask the developers about what is specifically needed to see what can be sorted out.

THAT'S IT!!!

Although I thanked them in person over the phone I'm going to leave a point of thanks here to both Brad and Sharon for taking their time out of their day and talking to me about these issues.