Would you pay for GM support to support community on phinny?

Having an active GM or two could really create a server with solid community and provide a lot of what made/makes EQ so great. I am wondering if any of the players would pay to have full time GM support? Figure $1 per month per account would be more than enough and it would likely alleviate a lot of the problems that will arise come launch, do you think this is a possibility?

No cause 90% of their time would likely be spent handling all the stupid /petitions of people reporting boxes on their "no box server omgz!" or other "rule violations" that aren't actually against any current rules.

Unless the GM(s) were given the same sorta powers they used to have where they could schedule cool zone events like the Werewolves in commons, the Orc army invasion of Freeport, skellies in Rathe, etc. I don't think it'd be worth it.

No.

$1 per month would not even come close to covering full time GM support. To have 24/7 GM coverage you would need at least 4, and probably 5 full time employees (168 hours in a week / 40 hours worked = around 4, plus a supervisor to cover for vacation/sick time etc.) I don't know how many players you think the server will have, but even if you are wildly optimistic at 5000 players, you are not going to hire 5 full time staff members (or even 1 full time staff member) for $5000/month. Keep in mind that you'd have to cover more than just salary with that money. Benefits, equipment, training, office space, etc.

GMs don't "create" community. They don't play the game. They are there to make sure the operations of the game run smoothly and that the game's rules aren't being violated in egregious ways. The GM of EQ is not the DM (dungeon master) of D&D. The encounters are already encoded and scripted.

In EQ, GMs generally interfere with the player-made community. The only way to build community is for players and guilds to naturally interact. Having a big brother to monitor a play nice policy has always led to problems in the past for both the players and the company. Back on Fippy we had GMs arbitrarily deciding which guild would get raid encounters in Velious based on dice rolls, trivia tests, and pvp duels, to name a few. Unacceptable, unacceptable, unacceptable. This server allows for GMs to stop interfering in open-world content. If you lose in open-world competitions your guild still has instanced raids, and you can still go to other instances of zones, or you can attempt to create alliances, rotations, or whatnot with other guilds. May the days of GMs deciding open-world content finally be done with! For the players that want to compete in open-world, they cannot take content away from the other guilds now! I'm not even sure what it is you still think a GM should be arbitrating on Phini. Daybreak is correct to instance open-world raid content, because it allows the competitive spirit of the game to thrive now without depriving the less hardcore players of the content. Bravo and brilliant!

Yes

You also don't need a bunch of full time employees to have increased GM support.
You could make a big difference with far less than 24/7 coverage.

Well stated response, maybe I was wrong.

To address the other responses I was referring more to a customer server presence that is a link between the players and Rosen/devs. Regarding the post about salary, that is far more than would be necessary and wouldn't need a 24/7 365 GM. This was just an idea I was seeking opinions on and I appreciate Serakan's counter-point.

I agree with MBear.

DBG Gm's make much less than 5000/Month...actually, the starting salary of a graveyard shift GM at SoE is only 10 bucks an hour.

DBG starting developer salary at DBG is 55,000 a year (less than 5000 a month).


So, 1 dollar might not be enough, but 2 dollars would.

No. Paying a sub fee already. Take it out of that.

The real question is why aren't there GMs? We are paying for this. Not, may I pay more for GMs?

Thought I already was...

Again, you are not factoring the total cost of having an employee. When you add in health care, benefits, office space, equipment, training, vacation/sick time, supervisory needs, add up everything that goes into a full time position... You have to budget a lot more than $10/hr for that $10/hr employee.

Exactly what I was gonna say. We're already paying a sub, sounds like a DBG problem.

While i agree, it's clearly working out alright for them.

You realize that it's Guides who put on most of the events that you're talking about don't you?

No, I would not pay extra for GM support.

I call BS on these figures. Please cite the sources of this information. I am genuinely curious.

I cannot imagine entry level high school student caliber jobs paying the same or more than a computing industry customer service job.

You guys are thinking local. You can hire solid trainable Computer Science professional for like 6k a year in India.

can vs do.

I am only asking for a source to his statement.