Are admins just using the title for bragging rights?
 

If you don't want to read this massive wall of text, scroll down the the bottom of the post.

Well, I'm not much of a Classic player. On Era, none of the staff members (I think) are allowed to set the "friends can only PM" option. Well, on Classic, let's say I needs staff members help. On Era, I PMed Tricxta asking, "Where is the Halloween shop?" and he gave a response immediately. But if I try to PM a staff member on Classic, oh looky! Friends can only PM! Thats great right? What I'm trying to say is, help the players! If Era staff members can endure the spam, I'm sure you guys could to! If a player has a question, answer it! Don't set Friends can only PM! That pisses the s**t out of me and it makes me want to smash the staff member in the face with a metal baseball bat. A lot of staff take this tag for granted and use it to give their friends special privileges. If staff members are supposed to be helpful and friendly, why do they block out any normal player's mean of communicating them? Thanks for reading, and I hope you'll heed my advice.

If you scrolled down, here: disable "PM from friends only". It pisses me off to no end and it makes the staff members look unhelpful.

Well Era has considerably less players, and PR's are "Player Relations" meaning they're supposed to interact with players, while GP's are just supposed to moderate the community.

I dont think they use it for bragging rights

But I agree with youre text...Matt in that staff application thread said that GP's are also player relations, yet I dont see how because they always have friends only pm on..
I understand admins get a ton of pm's but they should be open to questions and help..if someone becomes problematic they can just block the person.

it comes off as them expressing their superiority like they dont have time to waste on you, more than it is bragging or arrogance.

You do realize their job is not to PM players with help right?
If you ever need help with anything, its best to contact them through email instead of begging them to take that off (Due to the constant spam of useless questions/suggestions everyday). And don't give me some bs reason like "Not much players know whats email" because i can guarantee you that everyone in Graal classic has an email!

Wow then http://statistics.graal.us/server/ranking been lieing to me all along :(

False

Taken from the GP hiring on iClassic by Matt.

You don't understand though. They have to deal with tons of reports and patrolling and the people that pm them can ask stupid questions just to talk to them. If the player has a problem with another player, report them. If a player has a question for an admin, contact them by email or take a chance of getting a reply from [email protected]. I honestly haven't seen admins abusing their power except the one who used to work for Graal, Ed.

Oh were back on topic. Well i love to see you reply to 100+ players at a time and most are just.

Player: Hello
Admin: Hi
Player: I need help please
Admin: Ok sure i'll help you
Player: Can you warp to me
Admin: Ok in a sec
Player: Omg thanks for coming
Admin: NP
Player: Can you drag me in top of the building with you please so i can get a picture and show my friends.

Sadly, Warrlord is right. A lot of players just want stupid things, and how do the staff know if the majority of players will ask something reasonable or not? I know that sometimes Staff turn friends only off, and put it in their status so that if players need something, they can ask. Maybe there should be something like showguild, except for showing staff with "friends only" pm off. But I know that it would probably be extremely hard or impossible to do, although I'm not a scripter, so I'm guessing. But if it was possibly, it could be put into the top of the news or the feedback blurb.

^This.

I have never set my PM status to friends only. If you ever need help in game, PM me (Prince Charming).

Also, including your question in the first pm along with your greeting speeds up the process much faster.

Cheers,
The Prince.

if there was such a command that would mean it would have to show which admins are online which would defeat the purpose of them having removed showadmin because hackers were checking when it was safe to hack..

Believe it or not but using feedback/reports will get you a much quicker respond instead of personal pm. Some admins will be busy handling one issue while another admin can act to the feedback/reports.
It's there for a reason use it.
We like to deal with issues not become friends or chit chat.
Honestly players believe that chit chatting with a admin means it's doing something for the community it's not, they didn't hire admins for that.

Some admins are really helpful. I PMed WarrLordd yesterdayand he replied a few seconds later.

there is an ignore option for a reason , if a player is really bugging the staff they can ignore that one person but its not right to be unreachable cause there may be a serious issue . 9 out of 10 there isn't a lot of staff on at the same time . i get irritated when i go on and get hit over and over with selling this or buying this , so i just ignore the whole damn player list .

I'm just throwing out suggestions. I, being clueless about scripting, hope nobody thinks I'm an idiot for this comment, but could they make it show any admins that have "Friends only" pm off, even if the admin is offline?

Why yes. Yes we are.

Right...

Only like 200 less nowadays, Classic is dieing and Era is growing.

im sure you can ask another player were the halloween shop is :3. why do you need to ask a admin that anyways?

I dont know but I think the staff is getting worse. I used to be able to feedback and get answers from staff within seconds, now answers are less common.

I know what you mean but that would just be an invitation for spam.

If I were an admin I'd skip greetings like "hi" "hey whats up"

if someone seriously needs help they would get to the point in their first message, not try to have a conversation

lol

Nobody says they HAVE to warp. They can just ask through PM.

It was new at that time, and nobody knew where it was.

Exploring and finding out where areas are for starters is a must.. Eventually people know where stuff are after they explore it. So if a staff didn't answer your question as to where halloween shop was maybe they was letting you challenge yourself? In the process of finding that halloween store i bet you would of found other things along your way :)

Well that's one part what about the excessive spam you get when someone stupidity make them loose there account they figure it's right to bother a staff member? Don't think we don't want to help new players but some just won't stop, the more you explain to some users it's more hard for them to understand.

Especially when players share their Udid with other device users if it clearly states that staff would never ask you for your Udid in News Info or other menus. So why suffer the constant spamming afterwards? If players don't follow the rules should anyone feel sorry for them? I mean this is just one issue which you get almost every 5 min.

We don't need faqs cause most time i login i see 2-3 people standing in Graal Main City telling players if they have any questions pm them. Graal would be boring if you have faqs to answer everything just take a litle time to explore.

Yes, they are. No they aren't. Yes, they are! No, they aren't!

Oh, yeah, sorry about that, I'm torn between the truth and the nagging instinct to complain about every damn thing.

This sums up everyone on Graal pretty much.

BTW Nice Bear ;)

Wanted to re-edit my sheet a bit and resize to fit classic but fp might kill me :-p

Thanks :D

How much do polar bear mounts go for now days, I got 3

Don't know, last I knew they were 300-500k

3 o.O are they common now? When me and josh first added them to zodiac on christmas it was hard to get. I still have the brown and black war bear version but i never uploaded them after i left.

are admins allowed to block people?

If a admin uses the Pms from friends option only i see no issue. But if they personally use the "IGNORE" feature then you can contact [email protected] and complain.
Some admins just use the Pms From Friends Option to deal with reports and such and rather not be disturb eventually they will remove it when they feel it's needed.
Why is it an issue to personally pm a single staff member with your problem when in-fact the feedback/reports goes to everyone.
This isn't about personal get to know you slap on the back buddies!

If you need help use the feedback/reports if you somehow have a admin added on your friends list who's ignoring pms from everyone.
Cause honestly i'm not even a GP and yet i handle questions like i am.

You can always ask your friendly fellow graalians for help!

I would love to see a list of things people need help with? That is so urgent is needed to be pm and not use feedback/reports

*cough* excuse me .. don't bother posting i won't reply.

But so far the only actual people i seen needed help so far is some people having trouble with there I-Device and Graal which is on my general topic as to actual help.

- So far such as heads upload question is already stated on the upload url.
- U-Did scams is handle by [email protected]
- Account transfer also used by the email/feedback.
- Hacks/Reports is used by the system
- Missing items is handle by email

Just a little few to get started.

I'm not sure since I don't pm them but I thought all GP's had their "pm's from friends only" off so players could contact them for minor help 0:.

I have my pms from friends only on because all I get is hundreds of players asking to see my house, do an interview etc. No one really NEEDS staff to help them out so much... Seriously we have an email that is checked every day. Anything that they can't figure out on their own can be answered at www.tinyurl.com/graalfaq.

Personally, I have never had Pms from friends only on...
BUT I usually only reply when the question is stated in the pm.

Most of the time I get PMs that say "hi" or "Lykke" and then obviously I don't answer.
If said player was to say "hi I am having a problem with _____." I would answer right away, but sadly that happens only about 1/100 Pms.

My least favorite pm: "Can I ask you a question?"
Response: "You already did."

I was just about this say this! Sometimes I feel like replying, "Yes. You have used your question quota for this week :)"

GP is actually a division of "Player Relations;"

The main point of a Graal Police Staff Team Member is to moderate and handle player's status; such as bans and jails.

The main position of a Player Services Staff Team Member (Player Relations) is to host events, answer questions, handle bans and jails, and all other things really dealing with non-development staff-related items on the server.

Player Relations also has been called the following: Public Relations, Public Services, Player Services and also much more.

iClassic uses the GP position as an overall PR position, from what I've heard from Matt and such.

You guys need to go play some MUD games and experience what a true player and admin relationship should be like.

admins are admins

Yeah, I mean, I understand the concept of all the staff acting as anonymous and avoiding, "bragging rights" or something, (because that would fix your problem of too many pms) but... people need to remember that the staff don't get paid. They are all volunteers. So naturally keeping their identity and enjoying a little fame, along with access to some free items, kind of in a sense is their pay on this server. So this, 'probelm' (its not a problem, its just the way its designed) that people have will never be fixed until the staff starts actually getting paid. But that doesn't really need to happen given the nature of the server. So, like warlord said, the vast majority of pms are unneeded messages that materialize mainly because they want to just talk to the 'famous' staff members. Because of this, truly important things like account transfers should be sent through other ways than pming. So there really isn't a problem here when it comes to setting messages to friends only.

As far as I know, staff get paid in gelats... which for most of them is probably as good as money.

All ready done my good friend, the wonderfully text-based adventures in amitoune.

Gelats do not equate to money in any sense, what-so-ever.

I don't think the government would take kindly to them trying to pay their bills with gelats.

No, the email is clearly not checked every day. There's also no evidence that it gets checked every month either.

It's a lot of money for gold and this covers it.

it covers gold, but i mean they cant live off it, they are going to choose real jobs and spend more time doing that than they will do the game, because they are just volunteers,

you cant live off gelats,
you cant buy food, pay the morgage/rent, pay bills, pay your student loans, pay off your car, nor buy new clothes or items with gelats.

why do you think Xor works so hard? he actually gets a small share of the profit from gralat pack purchases. I doubt he would do everything he does if he didnt get any real cash, he has to take care of his kids, and as it is im sure the monthly check from unixmad isnt enough, he probably has a real job too,

you think WoW would have been this big if Blizzard didnt pay staff? Runescape might have never made it past lumbridge if Jagex never paid their workers.

this game will go no where in the future if Stefan and Unixmad keep being greedy, look how long it takes to get stuff done.

I don't think anyone ever took a job on Graal expecting to pay bills with it. It doesn't matter if you can pay bills with gelats, it's still an incentive to work because to these players gelats are a currency worth having.