Return of Weekly Q&A and UO Community Liaison

I decided to break yesterday’s article that was posted on the UO Herald into two parts, one mentioning the history of Stratics and UO, the other dealing with something very important, something that I and many others have been pushing for over a year now. That something is a return to weekly Q&A sessions. Many of you remember the older Five on Friday where questions were asked by the community and then displayed on the UO website soon to be UO.com! Here’s the official announcement, and then I’ll follow up it up with a few comments.

Now, in a move to strengthen this already long established bond, Petra Fyde, Managing Editor of uo.stratics, senior administrator of stratics.com/community and avid UO player, takes the title ‘UO Community Liaison’. In this role she, ably supported by a select group of uo.stratics staff and Airmid Cecht,TGN community manager, will form a conduit between the UO team, led by Mesanna, and the player base.

All UO Fan sites will be invited to feed into this conduit to communicate their user’s questions and concerns. These questions will be compiled by Petra and sent to Mesanna to be answered on a weekly basis. Fansites should appoint one person to be a contact person for that site and introduce yourself to Mesanna.

A Word about the UO Community Liaison
I wanted to take this moment and shed some light on something. A lot of people read the announcement by the UO Producer that EA was promoting Petra to UO Community Liaison, and they took that to mean that Petra is joining the UO team or is a UO volunteer or will be “filtering” things sent to the UO team. That is not the case.

It is a title that recognizes Petra’s many years of hard work for the UO community, but understand that Petra is not taking over any duties handled by the UO team or by BioWare Mythic’s Community Relations and Management team, headed up by Rowland Cox and Kai Schober.

Petra’s responsibilities as UO Community Liaison are clearly spelled out by the UO Herald. She is going to coordinate the compilation of questions and concerns that people would like to see answered in the weekly Q&A sessions. Other fansites can forward the questions and concerns that their users want to see mentioned in the weekly Q&A to Petra where she will forward them on to Bonnie Armstrong and the rest of the UO team.

I want to clear up some misconceptions floating around:

• Petra is not an EA employee or member of the UO team or even a volunteer. Remember, UO is not allowed to have volunteers.
• Petra does not decide what questions Bonnie and the UO team will answer, she puts them in a weekly email and sends them on to Bonnie (Mesanna). Petra herself stated that she works with the UO team, not for the UO team. If she started deciding what questions would be asked, then she would be acting as a UO volunteer and that would get into complicated legal issues. Petra and Bonnie do not want that.
• Petra is not the gatekeeper for the UO team. If a player or a fansite has a concern or request that falls outside of something that would be asked and answered in a weekly Q&A, they will still need to go to the appropriate UO team member or through the appropriate EA help and support channels.
• If you contact Petra with something that falls outside of the weekly Q&A sessions, Petra, being the kind and friendly person that she is, will most likely help you find the appropriate UO team member to contact or the appropriate EA help or support channel, but please try to avoid bogging her down with things that fall outside of the weekly Q&As. She is busy enough as it is!
• Example questions you might pass on to Petra: Will there be more hues added to the Clean-Up Britannia campaign, will there be more anniversary wallpapers, will this pet have this ability changed.
• Example questions or issues where you need to contact the UO team directly or use the appropriate support or help channels for: My account age is wrong. I run a fansite and would like to interview somebody on the UO team. What do I do if my account was hacked? What if I see a player using an exploit? What if a part of the map causes me to crash?

I can’t state this enough: Petra is there to collect questions and pass them on to the UO team for the weekly Question and Answer sessions (Five on Fridays if you will). There are 24 hours in a day, and she gives about 16 of them to UO. Don’t waste her time with issues that you should be taking up directly with EA or the UO team through the appropriate channels.

One other thing for those of you who work on fansites, since Petra’s duties were restricted to compiling and passing on questions and concerns for the weekly Q&A sessions, I believe this leaves the door open for additional UO Community Liaisons who cover other areas outside of weekly Q&A sessions. I can think of a few areas and I’m already in talks with some of you about them.

Moving on, the format to the previous Five-on-Friday/Q&A sessiones should be similar, and since this represents a move to increase the communication between players and the UO team, they will be listed on UO.com for the players to read and the fansites to follow. For those of you who have questions, remember, we have the UO Development Tracker which should help you keep track of them (and I’ll be updating it this weekend) and keep you from bogging the UO team down with redundant questions.

For those of you in the States, have a fun 3-day weekend!