Volunteer Program

Some of my fondest memories from Ultima Online was from my time as a Counselor on the Napa Valley shard. For those not in the know, Counselors where players who were given an account(after going through what I remember was a pretty rigorous vetting and training process) that had access to some commands that lay in between the Player level, and the GameMaster level. They could spawn certain items (custom named wedding rings come to mind), jail individuals who are caught in the act of legitimate griefing or unattended macroing, or disrupting of official RP events, things like that.

Being able to help players (either via advice, giving them directions, or showing them how something is done) and fielding and elevating their problems (recovering lost items was occasionally a thing as items sometimes fell through the floor of the house) was very fulfilling, and I felt like I was a member of the UO family. I did not develop, and I did not have the more mighty powers of the GM, but I could do my part in making Britannia a better place.

Unfortunately, some unscrupulous volunteers felt that their time and effort was unrewarded and filed a class action suit against Origin and EA seeking pay for the time they put into it (specifically 3x minimum wage). With some legal counsel, I see no reason that the Volunteer program could be done again without the threat of a few bad apples trying to extort money from the company. After the volunteers were shut down (this happened while I was deployed to a training exercise with the Army; also, my house fell...) the fiction of the game dried up, and GM wait times went from 10 minutes to hours.

Let the community of responsible players help! We will supply the motivation and the willingness to help guide and maintain the game, but we may need some tools.

Tigey

 

You don't need special powers to help out noobs. Answer the question "how do i run instead of walk" for the thousand time in stead of making fun of someone who just started playing the game. Give noobs some gear you have no use for. When you see someone doing a quest nearbie, help them.

Oh... and i doubt items will fall throught the floor.

 

Why do you assume that "items won't fall through the floor"? That was an example of a bug that actually happened that was unforeseen in Ultima Online. Assumptions like "I doubt items wiill fall through the floor" are just naive. All software has bugs, and nearly all of those bugs are unforeseen. Generally the fixing of those bugs are prioritized and so a bug like items falling through the floor of a house may not get fixed before the next 100 people drop a stack of 60,000 gold on their floor with the intent to lock it down, and it falls through the floor onto the ground under the house and in then inaccessible to regular players.

Additionally, yes, giving directions does not need special powers, but part of the powers that were granted to volunteers (who were not getting these powers on their player accounts but on a special account that did not have a bank or inventory) was the ability to see the GM call queue, and teleport to a player who had initiated a call. Additionally if the counselor needed the person alone or wanted to get them to a less busy area, they could teleport them to jail where they could speak privately.

Please do not dismiss someones concerns out of hand. Bugs happen, and I would bet that after the first few months, many will have been found and fixed, but every patch can contain more bugs. Will Partalarium have the GM capacity to stem the flow of GM calls? I haven't played a multiplayer game in recent memory (that had more than a thousand players) that did not have a problem with GM wait times.

When players find bugs that make problems for them, they call a GM. When players find bugs that benefit them, they often exploit them (some good apples report them). Counselors were there to both field questions, fix minor problems, and elevate GM calls if necessary, and occasionally we would catch someone in the act of using an exploit. not often, but every now and then.

 

I loved the volunteer program as well. My older brother, who was a counsellor and elder and became arch companion on Sonoma and initial shard lead counsellor for Oceania, would sometimes let me have a go at his volunteering role as a companion and I remember it was great.

Though, I do remember the law suit (brought by only a few people out of thousands) when it came up and UO scrapped its volunteer program for good in the end. Due to the legal issues faced by UO every other MMO game (in terms of the games I've played), have not dared a implement volunteering program since.

I am not a legal expert... but if there was somehow a way to implement a volunteering system but limiting it to say the equivalent of the low level companions in UO, but keep it at minimal hours of volunteering per player in their "official volunteering role", I think that would be fantastic.

 

Actually... I just had a brainwave... since games these days obviously don't face the same sort of bugs that they used to upon release... I would assume that the most sort of player assistance required would be more like advice about game play technique/skills etc. Real players can assist each other with this anyway regardless of an actual volunteering program... some players may just need an incentive to do so (for example a reward within the virtue system etc).

In terms of getting more experienced players to newer players who would like some help there could be a fair few ways to facilite this. For example: there could just be some sort of "help" chat forum within game. Or maybe have a help request icon appear where the requesting are on the online game map so that other players can find them... kind of like the idea discussed in dev chats about the camp fires.

This way the developers don't have any need to set up an "official volunteering program" with all the less desireable aspects that come attached to it.

 

Unfortunately, past volunteers for AOL ruined this for everyone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Community_Leader_Program

This lawsuit basically made it impossible for a For-Profit company to have volunteers. It even changed the way Interns are handled. Basically, the line is very grey and you open yourself up to liability when you have volunteers. You have to make sure there are clear definition between the Volunteers and Employees and you cannot give them anything special. Even granting them special access to system could be bad. For example, the Mods volunteering here should have an access level only available to volunteers and employees should all have more access.

In the end it comes down to whether the people that volunteer decide to sue. I do not believe UO volunteers sued, but at the time any company that had volunteers dropped them after this lawsuit was filed. Only non-profits use volunteers in any meaningful way now, and even then there are still risks.

This is actually commonplace. There was also a big lawsuit against Microsoft were contractors sued them for employee benefits:

http://corporate.findlaw.com/human-resources/vizcaino-v-microsoft-raises-the-stakes-on-worker-classification.html

Today, companies go to extreme methods to make sure there is a clear separation between temporary workers and full time workers. When this first happen my company actually would not allow contractors and full timers sit on the same floors or in groups together at all. Today they have bright red badges and are not allowed to go to any team building activities or company functions.

As such, I imagine any SOTA volunteer programs will probably be highly scrutinized by Portalarium.

 

I was a volunteer in another game. As I recall, in the case you mention, the court said three things made us employees, whether we were paid or not. We had specific training we were required to take, we had a scheduled number of hours each week, and the company benefitted from having us, or would have had to hire paid employees to perform our function, had we not been there. Something like that anyway.

So we were employees, and they were required to give us benefits, so we all got fired.

I would not expect an official volunteer program to exist in any game in the future. Informal volunteers, or real employees only.

Still, if SotA instituted a way to tell a trustworthy player from one that might be trying to gank you, that would be cool. If the lady in the (special blue robe, or with the glowing shield or whatever) tells me I've wandered out of the starting area, and town is through those trees over there, I could believe her and get back on track. Rather than getting ganked by a band of hooligans.

 

I'm sure there's a legal way to implement such a program, though I'm not a lawyer, so someone would have to investigate further. The first way I could see it working would be volunteers training volunteers. If its not a employee or contractor of Portalarium doing most of the training, then it basically appears to be more of "free will" and nothing under contract. Another way would be if it is part of the game some how. If you get to a certain level or complete a certain quest, then your reward could be these "new found powers" that allow you to help people in certain cases. The third way would be if a contract was written in a certain way so that the volunteer does receive something back for their work. Of course, this could create an area of concern as what they receive could seem unfair to other non-volunteers. Yes, I'm talking about in-game items. Perhaps awards of recognition to be placed in their home...or perhaps more useful rewards that could be used in single player mode (perhaps even QUESTS...now I'm getting a little crazy...). I supposed the 3rd way is also problematic as I'm reading in the case of the AOL volunteer program, that they were given AOL service in exchange for their work. I think the AOL case was a little extreme though... for example "The plaintiffs specifically demonstrated how Community Leaders had to undergo a thorough, 3-month training program and were required to file timecards for shifts, work at least four hours per week, and submit detailed reports outlining their work activity during each shift". That definitely does sound like an employee.

 

Oh, another thing to take into account is the number of employees and the amount of revenue a company receives. This helps dictate whether or not the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) applies. Also depends upon the states in which the company operates.

 

I'm glad the discussion of a volunteer program has come up. I do hope the company can find the intermediary level between straight playing for the sake of the game and the company. As Ianica points out, there is a level of trust that can be achieved as well as lowering a barrier of a newbie who might not want to ask for help from someone just trying to play but eagerly contacts someone specially flagged/adorned they know is there to help.

The role this volunteer organisation (theoretically) would play would be dependant on how the company felt about a specific risks. Lord British has show great vision in past programs and games. I hope his creative mind will find a role for volunteers which meet the needs of the business and enhances gameplay for the volunteer and the general playerbase at large.

 

I wonder how the aspects of crowdfunding/crowdsourcing will affect this sort of thing.

Also, given Frank's experience, I wonder if simply not having a set schedule/required number of hours would make it acceptable. In other games I have helped to run, we simply looked for players who were active primarily during times we tended to be light on help, and let 'scheduling' tend to itself.

I am/would be delighted to volunteer my time in any way that I am capable of, and very much hope Portalarium can find a way to navigate this sticky issue to make it possible for people to volunteer their time.

 

Seems like most places, including SoTA are able to still use volunteer forum moderators without issues. Don't know where it crosses the line.

I'm wondering how having "instances" will make the experience different. For example, since the number of people in an instance will be limited, it's less likely that a player inside the instance will be of the type willing to help out a new player. Will players be grouped by the system into lower level instances? Don't know yet. But it makes it harder helping people out in game with advice if you want to do so. You can't just say - hey, go talk to NirAntae in Fire Lotus Tavern....

 

I participated in a similar volunteer program for another game. I enjoyed doing that and even when I became bored with the game, I still volunteered because I found that a lot more rewarding. That company was able to run a solid volunteer program without paying the volunteers. They had similar requirements outlined in the lawsuit mentioned above but it all works out. Now that I am back in the game, I decided to help out people on my own server (sometimes I help out the volunteers, too if everyone is ignoring them.)

I would like to see the community take over the role that the volunteers would have but I am not so sure people would want to roleplay with me or ask me directions when I might have PK'd them for "being wrong on the internet" last week. Maybe there's something we could work out.

 

I would do it for free for sure, I'm sure most people would, like you say a few bad apples spoiled everything, I used to love chatting to the volunteers.

 

It would be interesting to see a volunteer program if the legal issue could be worked out. I mean, the more people that can help the better the game experience for people will be (at least I believe so).

 

Did they actually win and get money out of EA? Although I dont have much sympathy for EA what a terribly litigious society we live in.

I thought counsellors in UO were very decent people. I can only remember being jailed 2 or 3 times for my misdeeds.

Volunteer counsellors for Shroud are a great idea if you can accomplish it without a lawsuit.

 

They should get some volunteers to try and fix all the problems with the floors, walls, and objects that we can walk through.

 

What about the current UO_EM program (Event Moderator)? I didn't think they were paid, but they might be. there is two for each shard (one works under the other one) and they just create and run events. I remember the whole collapse in UO around 2000ish when they scrapped the counselor program. I never put thought into how they run the UO_EM program until now, hrrrm.

 

Amazing how GREED always ruins a good thing.

I volunteer my testing and knowledge willingly free-of-charge. The only ways I've ever been paid in the 23 years of testing games: a t-shirt from 2 projects, 1 invite to a VIP party at a nearby Gaming Club, 2 invites to help test in-house (focus testing), and 1 invite to E3 2010 as a 4-day guest(!!!!). I count myself being very lucky to obtain these things!

Anytime you give users extra powers, regardless how little, and prop them up to be officially superior to the average player...there will always be those who will be corrupted by that power and greed...and will seek to subject the game company to their now-warped-sense-of-entitlement.

TQQdles™

 

I was volunteer in Korea working for kids... I will be happy if I can be a volunteer here for the big "kids".