Shall Anet open GW2 to the community via democratisation?

It's only you that live in a basement...


I'm going to have to side with the other technocrats here. While player input is good, it's better to have professionals have the final word. Democracy is slow, and ad populum is a fallacy.

Off the topic... but if HG:L hasn't improved by magnitudes of at least 10 since the end of beta, the only thing that's ever going to fix that game is the Delete key and a complete rewrite :\

You jest, but "benevolent" tyranny IS the way to go for something like a video game.

The theory behind a political democracy is that people are motivated by self-interest to educate themselves on important matters affecting them, and those people will then educate themselves on political candidates and choose the ones that best fit their ideals (we could argue whether or not that actually happens most of the time, but that's, loosely, the theory behind it).

That doesn't work so well in a commercial product though. We can make all the suggestions we want, but we have no reasonable way of becoming informed about things like the design of the game's physics engine, or the database and network structures, or the capabilities of the art team. As such, you can have people vote, but they're not going to be voting for anything based on anything but emotion because they won't have any ability to form a valid rationale for their opinions.

Beside all that, we already have a way of voting: money. If I don't like a video game, I'm not going to spend any of my time explaining why to the company, I'm just not going to buy it and I might say negative things about it if people ask. I just don't care enough about video games to worry about, and most other people are the same way.

Just put him on your ignore list and quit arguing with him. He stopped posting useful things long ago so you're not going to miss out on anything.

But that's more or less the heart of the problem. I see a lot of popular ideas floated here that are just plain BAD. The reason they're popular here is because the forum generally attracts primarily hardcore players who spend way too much time in front of the computer. The people who play in more reasonable blocks don't speak up because, simply put, they don't care. They're not going to complain about things even if you change the venue for doing so, they're just going to stop playing quietly if they're annoyed enough at something they perceive to be wrong.

I don't think you're ever going to get those people involved because they just don't take video games that seriously.

Look at an issue like loot scaling. It's very unpopular here, but I'd wager most of the game's players have never even heard of it. They probably never saw the anti-farm code notice prior to the LS update. If I had to bet, I'd place money that a good 80% or more of the active playerbase of the last two years either doesn't know what it is, doesn't care, or likes the change. Yet, to see this group talk about it, you'd think the very end of the world was upon us.

You're just never going to get a good mix of valid opinions in a video game. Most people, frankly, just don't care enough about them to spend their time complaining or trying to brainstorm new ideas for them.

I should have never mentioned the word "democracy" in the title of this thread. Now all people see is this concept and imagine a GW game directed by players. Never. Going. To. Happen.

I'll say it again, patiently: this is about representativity and the relationship between GW players and Anet. End of story, no "stupid playerbase making stupid decisions for Anet" or people getting cookies in basements.

A different picture on this topic:
- imagine a huge tree with at the bottom (ROOT) Anet and at the top (LEAVES) all GW players;
- current situation: our tree of relationship has hundreds of branches, crossing in all directions and with two HUGE nodes just above the Anet root (Gaile and Andrew), and around 10 BIG nodes in the middle (the 9 elite fanforums and GWiki); call it cacophony or organised chaos;
- proposed improvement: add a 3rd HUGE nodes next to the CRs which are connected to the various significant other nodes in the tree (and ultimately to leaves, i.e. players).

P.S.: I still have to reply to may posts, and it'll take me some time to do so.

Biggest thing you have to deal with is also bad player choice of their own representatives, they can make many mistakes.

For example, how do communities choose their representatives?

* Populism - whoever gets voted will get voted because of his populist view, which turn to be bad representative for anyone since it will produce lowest common denominator person which does not put forward any meaningful feedback as it would usually mean that he would have to take sides.

Example: When "ursan" (oh noes, again) comes to discussion, all this person would say "yeah, it exists" as pretty much anything else would mean he has to take sides (and choose views to support) and loose votes with opposition.

Theese can happen with direct vote, and will beat anyone who actually has opinions as those took part in debate and pissed off people.

* "Earner" - long time member of community who has no qualities making him viable representative of comunity but who simply stayed long enough to become known veteran. Its already pretty bad when such person becomes forum mod. Similar are "big posters" who are seen in every single thread.

If site chooses in more tight group (i.e. only admins vote, etc), they are type that can get voted as representatives. Not really good either.

Representative that is rep only because he chose proper clique to be part of is not that desirable, and will be bound to follow that clique ethos, which does not make him good representative of that site.

For example, representative from site where wants to be on good terms with anet at all costs would just nod to anything that anet says and object to nothing.

These are but two examples how it can get wrong.

Politics of choosing candidates is important because it implies quality of representative. And quality of representatives overall is what makes this idea work or not.

Thanks Ctb for your participation, all your posts are very helpful (no sarcasm I mean it!). This paragraph made me laugh because this is the thread-killer: if enough people VOTE for this, my thread becomes pointless by its own argument, as it's mean elected out of the realm of important topics and useless discussion .

I personally believe that putting money between us is not the solution, as Anet has proven many times IMHO. We're more than buyers/sellers, customers or lambda-citizens, and IMHO MMOs and social networking is just putting a bit of (disorganised) order in the computing/gaming world. Anet is and has to stay in control (I like your idea of "benevolent tyranny" and careful examination would show that current democracies are far from their model and closer to "malevolent tyrannies"), not only for obvious commercial and legal reasons, but also for the sake of the game. This is NOT about control, but about relationship. It's difficult not to derail into other related topics such as politics or who to trust, but I hope that I'll open the mind of a few people to suggest that we shall not be bound by what we know.

I'll reiterate (and this does not contradict your previous replies, because you know EVE much better than I do) that CCP's decision is revolutionary. As was facebook and WoW in their time (read this btw, timing is of essence and with Gaile leaving I believe this discussion is worth it). One way to move towards a closing of the various "rifts" (PvE vs PvP? UB? titles? etc. etc.) is to seat people at a better organised table.

P.S.: I think Malice Black has usually some interesting points and he's not trolling, so it'd be unfair to rule him out (to be completely honest, I'd ask him his opinion on issues of rare items and economy given what I read that he wrote here), but I guess he does not want to write more on this. Fair enough.

P.P.S.: to zwei2stein, first short answer to your post (have to go do other stuff now) is that you're right, but there are things we can do, read the rules I propose. And it's not a perfect mechanism (voting) but it's clearer and more transparent. It'll take some time to adapt, it take a few steps to realise the rights and wrongs. More precisely: what do you think of the rules I proposed above (message #34)? How would you modify them?

/Unsigned.

This is just begging for nepotism and corruption. Which 9 players would be chosen? The leaders of the largest guilds and/or people who know how to rig ("Ron Paul") an online vote of course.

EVE is a special case, in that it is a trade simulator with optional combat. Electing the players is part of the EVE gaming experience; politics and commerce is what EVE is all about, and a vote like this will keep the EVE players occupied for months.

EVE seems to have implemented this to quiet players' concerns about favoritism, etc. GW has never had that problem. As Gaile and Andrew have constantly told us - no spawning of gold or items possible on the live server.

I think that creating the type of organization that has been described, would not only NOT work, but would suggest to people that it was needed to oversee the ANet employees.

ANet has taken the sampling of player opinions supplied by the forums as the basis for some changes. I don't believe that a "council of player-advisers" would be any better or supply a wider base. Most players won't want to bother, so you end up with the same group electing the same people.

Great idea as long as you can get your leaves to pay for what they want to have added, which is called a subscription which is exactly what EVE Online has. Then again, the biggest gorilla in the MMO field has no need for any type of democracy (this is WoW).

I wholly disagree btw, players are not owners nor do they or should they have a say in how the product Guild Wars is run and develops, players can vote with their feet and the rest should be left to the owners of the IP, if they choose to share that IP and open it up, thats fine but as long as they do not there's no room for 'democracy' which whill simply mean that the loudest folks on forum such as this get what they want while the big mass of casual players simply wants to play their game now and then without hassle or politics.

Which is why choosing representatives is not a viable idea. The community is capable of electing administrators as every wiki will show, but the moment they start thinking of the administrators as politicians the project is doomed.

Wikis are good at maintaining a high signal to noise ratio even when its administrative structure is cloistered and corrupt, mainly because a large amount of administrative tasks traditionally relegated to "moderators" can be performed by anyone. One person cannot wage a war against a community - notice how stupidly ineffective vandals and trolls are on any of the Guild Wars-related wikis. If the admins are likely to become a serious problem (and we don't really have evidence of this from the existing wikis -- if anything, the admins traditionally defer too much to strictly constructivist interpretation of policies, even when it's clear that consensus would support them), they can be term limited out.

Benevolent Dictators are far more effective in Arts and Entertainment. The vision has to be pure and cohesive. I'm dealing with too many "Design by Committee" in my RL profession--it is usually an unmitigated disaster.

Arena Net listens to the fans more than many companies out there. Their vision is best served by one cook, with a full featured menu for fans to order from.

I don't know why, but I like this system we have here so far. You have the people making suggestions on various sites, some being implemented, some not... some of this stuff is actually listened to by the devs. I'm pretty happy with it.

In any case, we can't make everyone happy. No matter how hard people try, no matter which decision you take, somewhere out there a group will whine. And if you implement something they wanted, the rest will whine against it sooner or later.

I don't see how a coucil of gamers would improve that, 'cause you'd have to go past the game aspect of it IMHO if you want something effective... or totally impartial people willing to listen to ideas that make sense.

Whatever they do, they should definitely put the old band of alpha testers together.

We were a hell of a team.

I agree with this an INGAME POLL that is there for ALL the member to participate in if they want to at the Login screen. I don't want any single person or a handful of persons representing ME. I don't care for congress or senate and that one man/person can veto the whole show after the others have agreed. Nope we do not need politics in gaming in any form other than a poll or vote where EVERYONE gets a chance to participate not just some elitists PVPers or PVEers who think what they think is the best after getting elected to a representative position. All politicians and representatives become crooks and liars and self centered as far as I'm concerned.

Democracy is good. But not here. Players should NEVER have any influence whatsoever over game design decisions. Suggestions yes. Anything remotely resembling a decision. Never.

It's like electing a hippy for the UN security council. That will fail faster than Sonic on steroids. So, this idea fails.

If this was implemented the Bot owners would be running GW.
1 account = 1 vote and the players would be out numberd 2 to 1

I'm starting to think that people only read the cover of the book here, i.e. the OP. 3 pages of posts, discussion and explanations? "Don't care, I'll just add one more opinion to the list and one message to my counter."

So let's repeat again: such a council of players would have no power. They'll report questions, concerns and suggestions (which, btw, influence the game design already) in (that's the real question here) a better way than is currently done.

I'm starting to think that may be a lolcatz could explain it better than I do, or shall I draw more diagrams? Or may be I should let the thread die and move on.

How about no. I'd rather not have a band of resentful veterans trying to get rid of Heroes, get rid of non-core classes and campaigns, etc.

I think this thread is a perfect example of why adding player-elected representatives wouldn't work very well.

'Tis the nature of teh interwebs, my friend. In fact, one might even say that arbitrarily paginated forums in the grand phpBB2 tradition are among the worst possible designs for floating ideas, because the best suggestions are buried on page 3 of a 50 page thread, the rest being filled with endless variations of the same three knee-jerk reactions.

This is why a wiki is better, because old topics can be archived and active discussions can be floated. A comment system like reddit.com's might be even better.

I say let the devs and community relations people do their jobs. Guild Wars is doing fine as it is.

PLEASE no cats hehe

Fril, what I think a few of us are saying, me included, is that it is, although mild, giving a body of players a position of power. I know you'd prefer to discuss that at a later point, but I don't think it can be ignored now.

If you (just example) have the ability to speak with Anet directly and I don't, you have a position that does hold influence. That if xNumber of players, elected to serve a role to represent, has direct contact with Anet that noone else has, it gives them greater influence. They might not have official title and they might not be "employed", but they will be put into a position that the rest of the player base won't have access too and the community should worry about that. Perhaps "power" isn't the proper adjective, but it best describes what would become a hierarchy directly within the player community. Also, to note; If the goal isn't to have some sort of influence on decisions, then it would seem to me that there is no reason to consider having such a representative body in place.

I don't think it's wrong to be concerned about that body properly, without any bias, informing Anet of issues on the minds of players. I would be greatly concerned, that if I had an issue I felt needed to be brought to great attention, that my message would be given in the same manner I delivered it without being taken out of context in any fashion.

I would also like to add that I don't believe Devs and Relations are out of the loop on issues players have. Quite the opposite, in my opinion, Devs and Relations are probably ahead of the curve in knowing what key issues are and what issues will come.

I'm all for making communication more efficient, more clear, and I'm all for having issues resolved as quickly as possible and effectively as possible. I, speaking only for myself, just feel having a representative body is not the proper way to improve the matter.

If a tool of sorts should ever be created it must be a tool everyone has access too directly. The ideas of a suggestion-box setup, directly in game, is a wonderful idea and somewhat mimics a similar idea I brought up about a more detailed Report Page that players could have access to. It's ideas like this, where every player can have a "voice", without going through a new additional channel, that can be an improvement.

Fril, don't let things die. You're one of the few posters around here I highly respect and always make sure I read for your articulate approach and your willingness to discuss and debate(as opposed to just arguing one liners which is not debate at all)without resorting to net-antics. You're a believer in the exchange of ideas and so am I. You're a believer in the idea that even though two parties can disagree on something, they can still respect each other. I believe that too and while I don't agree with the proposal set forth in this thread, I still have great respect for you and undoubtedly always will

I'll start a round of replies, for respect of the time invested by a few people here (no disrespect to those I don't reply to, there are some really good ideas before, and I also won't comment on Ctb's repositioning on EVE's move, because he's quite right from the CSM document I read). But I've got no illusion that this thread is dead-alive. And ok -Sonata-, no catz for the lolz

On the first part, I don't think that actually hardcore gamer would have a lot of appeal to the general GW population (and I added in message #34/the rules there should be some limits of category of players). Om the second part, I remember Anet explaining a very long time ago that this is not doable for them, they can manage a wiki with comments, but not a forum like GWG. The fansite program was their alternative, until the official GWiki was out.

In essence, that's why Greeks invented democracy, to make people aware of others' opinions and create a means to move on together in a way that is as balanced as can be possible. So instead of just sitting in their homes, they grouped in the Agora and debated. GWG is already doing that, and there are some trully interesting debates in the middle of the cacophony, but is it effective? May be it is, but I don't think so.

Very interesting idea. E.g. specialist groups on the GW economy, PvP skill balance, PvE skill balance, etc.

I'd think the contrary instead. Casual players will simply take a relaxed approach, not worrying too much, while hardcore gamers would argue over numerous aspects of each candidates, whose "program" would be examined very carefully.

Cont'd

I get the same feeling as you do on the big wikis, i.e. Wikipedia and very probably the WoWiki (see article quoted in message #7 saying it's the second biggest English wiki in the world). Wikipedia started with non-polemic topics and it was astonishing the amount of information gathered. Then people started disagreeing and wiki articles became, for some topics, subjects of propadanga (I've directly experienced it with the topic of Trusted Computing, I won't go again into the lengthy discussion I had on this with Chthon by PM). And as you rightfully concluded, I don't see this as a means to communicate with devs, unless Anet introduces the computing mechanisms implemented in their game (which they won't do for obvious reasons). It'll simply be a list of complaints on this armor details, that monster AI or this other quest reward. What about the other topics?

The CSM paper explains this very well. It's the idea of trying to structure the debate that is central here, candidate for council membership will have to try to demonstrate their ability to represent people. Among the first few elected people, there'll be some that won't work this way and people will remember (it's not like electing a government, because it's a game that people care about and there's no direct penalty, in the worse case their point of view will not be represented which is not different from what is happening on fansites). Of course in the long term, political phenomenons will appear, such as lobbies and affinities, playing on words and twisting their meaning, and the extremely important trust model (which is failing in RL democracies). There are elements of solution for this, but I guess we don't have to discuss this since this thread is dead.

I believe that's what Anet's fansite program was all about, and you shall know better than anyone given the Elite status of GWG. I honestly think that GWG is doing a brilliant job, really, if you scrap the trolling-bashing-QQing, there is may be (I insiste, may be, this is a guess and any mod could correct me) 66% of interesting and relevant stuff here. Sardelac regularly has interesting ideas, though it's probably too late now, but you get the regular "does Anet read our ideas?" threads that shows the communication problem I was mentioning before (give us some feedback because you're asking for our input).

I suggested, controversially and with a little bit of provocation, that Anet asks in-game about player's profiles, from the hardcore to the softcore, and the young/old and PvE/PvP. And then you ensure some sort of representativity, possibly influenced by Anet's intentions (given how demanding PvP players are, they may not want to have 50% PvE and 50% PvP?). As said above, this would not work well with the first elected board, but we'd learn what's working and may be able to correct the process in the next iteration.

QFT ( From another thread which I suggested a similar idea)

Well, you'd have to have candidates, which campaign and have to declare their opinions, the way they want to act as "ambassador", etc. It's exactly like the consumerist model of the GW trademarket, you advertise something in a way at a given price to try to find buyers. Of course, then people could become "populist" as said by zwei2stein, I'll come back to that.

Very funny call to the status quo Let's not move because staying here is cool enough!

Trust works with a scope. You don't trust people blindly for anything, you trust them for a particular set of actions (your friend may be reliable in assessing a build but may not have the best taste for graphics). The idea that people are idiots is irrelevant to the topic because if that was true, then GWG would be totally pointless, which it is not given that (as I said above) a significant part of the threads and posts are interesting and relevant. And I suspect (I may be wrong) that people are prejudiced due to the way democracy have worked out in Western countries (I don't want to talk about that as it'd require a lengthy and possibly boring explanation, I agree that you may want to disagree ). There are a lot of careless people, here and in the game, but I suspect that given the right incentives and mechanisms, you can work out something beneficial to everyone. And the "democractic process" (people organising their ideas, debating in a proper way) may by itself improve the community, transforming an "idiot" (note the double quotes) into something more positive.

Anet can't sustain this model, because they can't create an official forum. It'd be misused violently and would bring more doom/ban/QQs.

I understand that this is your main point of contention and I only partially agree with it. It's an obvious problem, that our RL politicians failed to address. An element of solution is to always balance a "power" by a "responsibility" (I love Spiderman's moto, so greatly illustrated by J. Michael Straczynski, but I digress). So there needs to be: 1) a code of practice (CoP) for the elected members; and 2) a means for players to report these people for breach of CoP. That's the "stick" approach and, though I'm not a big fan, it has to be done. But there are more positive ways to do that, for example with "satisfaction scores" that each fansite could maintain on their elected members. And I guess that the fact their mandate is only 6 months (could be less) may make their power very limited, not to mention Anet's vigilance. It's also possible that this process would actually elect very responsible people, that care about the whole population and are able to have a constructive discussion with other elected members and devs.

You here mention a very strong point against my idea, and I want to acknowlegde it clearly: this "ambassador-ship" may make the game a tad less fun and a bit more serious than is necessary. I do not want that, it shall stay a game, with its distinct social side nevertheless, and as such cannot become too "involved". On the other hand, the game is pretty involved for a fringe of the population if I believe some threads and posts on GWG (I had a different feeling on GWO so I wonder if my vision is not distorted). On the other hand, I'm not sure that such a council would lead to that.

Very true indeed. But if you think about it, it's already the case with the fansites. (I laugh because I remember how I changed my mind in the "LS removal" thread while almost everyone kept on their "side" of the argument) I have my doubts too but I'm a bit more optimist/naive than the average and I was willing to give the idea a chance.

You may actually have a much better idea than mine. I think you ID'd a "rare gold" I'd be interested to know what others think of this (after all this thread may not be totally dead, but it'd be better to start a new one afresh and this is your idea after all). Anet could probably manage a small forum of direct communication with devs, but it may need to be private and some level of authentication ensured.

You've got 2 points here. But on the first, I'd like to think that this process could elect the best people, or at least propose to them to refocus their activities into a more productive way, for the benefit of all, but it may require of them (or the ones that feel responsible?) to do more work of gathering information and weighting opinions. On the second point, it's possible yes that people wouldn't participate (what if there're prizes to win? ) and we'd end up with opinionated elected members which would be useless in this communication. But then (remember, this council has no power, they're not in charge of the game), Anet could quickly say that the experiment was not conclusive, disband the council and move on.

Would it be possible for you to copy and paste the relevant information please?

I think that the idea of representativity would balance that, and anyway popular ideas like removing LS would be countered by Anet's knowledge of why it's necessary (and not released under NDAs). As said above, there'd be the problem of incentive to vote for casual/fun players who have a more relaxed approach to the game, but this council would not remove the other channels of communication which Anet seem to master to get the mood of the casual gamer .

I think that your vision is a bit biaised because of GWG and these polemic discussions. In a balanced council, these discussion would remain polemic and not clear-cut.

You're right but a lot ahead of the idea's implementation. It takes a lot of time for these political phenomenon to appear, and contrarily to the RL, this council would stand in front of Anet's team and these guys are not stupid. I guess you can even imagine that this new communication channel would report back to players and "educate" them about what's clearly right and clearly wrong, leaving the stuff between for discussions (see the CCP's CSM document where they mention this).

Thanks everyone for contributing!

True dat. Direct votes, or better yet, leave it be.

QFT

Representative democracies = Fail imo (from my experiance anyway)

Guildiki and poll's are nice.

First of all, "representative democracy" is the system of government in all western countries, including the US. It's not perfect but it's the best there is.
(And if someone now feel the words "constitutional republic" come to their lips, that's a subset of representative democracies. It means that it's a democracy with a constitution but no king. France and Finland are other constitutional republics, while Norway and Britain are constitutional monarchies. Americans are often confused on this issue because they think that democracy = direct democracy, a kind of government which has never existed in the real world, ever.)

Anyway, what's suggested here is that a group of players act as ADVISORS to ANet. Go betweens. When ANet wants to know how people feel about Ursan these are the guys who'll get to say that Ursan rocks but needs to have better self-healing. When players are upset about big guilds farming glad points by synch-entering random arena, these are the guys to tell ANet that the community would like more double-fame weekends.

In an ideal world it'd improve the communication between the players and ANet, in the real world it's a new layer of corruption for big guilds and goldsellers to further their own goals and screw small guilds and casual players.

Besides, ANet already have informal connections with some "elite" guilds and farmers, and some of the worst ideas in Guildwars, like the minipig trade-in, are the result. That's bad enough. Let's not make it worse.

Guess you misunderstood my idea. Its not a forum, its a suggestion box in its purest form. We as the players don't get to see what is in the suggestion box, we don't get to search through suggestions, we don't get to discuss, we only get to post suggestions period, everything else about the suggestion box is all dev side only, highest number of posts autosort function included.

Why dev side only? Well, you want your voice to be heard right? This way it is a direct message to the devs that is unfiltered and not drowned out by opposition, nor taken out of context in transistion from CR to dev. If the devs choose to read your message, they read it direct, in context and in its entirety. Since it is purely one way traffic, bandwidth concerns over multiple posts debating an idea is not a concern, there is no debate, its just a suggestion post, it is no more traffic than you chatting to your guildmates (or bots spamming you for that matter).

As for misuse, well, what idiot would want to do that? Like i said, this is like a direct suggestion box to the devs, you want to send them a message that is filled with vulgarities, name calling and all sorts of foolish stuff, go ahead, you are just giving them first hand evidence to ban your ass without even any need for an investigation heh. Well perhaps for the seriously retarded, just add a warning when they access the suggestion window about consequences of misuse and possible account ban. If the informed still want to be idiots, can't blame the ban then.

No. Any form of democracy is immoral so why should I want ANet to endorse it?
It works right now, don't break it.

Done and done


The key difference is that the team advocates are not elected, but are selected by the devs. They're essentially CR's, but unpaid and specializing in more specific areas. It should also be noted that Hellgate is not a competitive PvP game, so doesn't have the very fragile balance that Guild Wars does.

Ok, so that means that Izzy can officialy appoint his buddys and really screw over the casual players.

It's a game ruled & made by Arena-Net,let them have their fun.We're just here to play,not to rule a game.

And did you not read what WE said. Nobody wants that crap in the development of THIS game. Learn to accept that everything you think isn't going to happen or needs to happen. Now go make up another stupid topic just to read your long winded syntax.

One can choose what to report (beneficial to self) what to conceal (thinks it sucks).

Players will have preferences. Players will want their gameplay enhanced based on their own preferences, often at the cost of other gamers. That is indirectly influencing design decisions.

Does anyone not understand what does "Conflict of Interests" mean?

Gosh why am I putting in so much details so that people fail less?

It wouldn't fit with how GW works at all. It remains to be seen how GW2 will work, so there's really no possible way to have an opinion specifically for that. Comments are pretty much generalized up until the last mini-paragraph.

It's a fun/nice idea to get players more involved, but it just seems like a bad idea overall. There are also too many issues that could come up to make it worthwhile.

In a perfect world, it'd work perfectly. There are assumptions such as assuming that the people on the selected team are pretty much selfless and are focus on the game and community, rather than themselves. Though such people exist, it seems rare at times. Basically, ditto to what Default Name wrote. It'd also assume that there were no favoritism/bribery going on. There would be more issues, of course, but those would be the main two that I'm thinking about, other than messing with the voting system, heh.

Of course, the reps from the company working with the players hopefully not just take everything the players on the team claim, so that balances it out, but then it doesn't seem much different from gather player opinions through various forms of input (forums, wikis, etc.). Or, alternatively, if a company did use this model and the reps did just believe everything and possibly shut out the rest of the community, they could shift the blame to the player with "Well, so and so told us ___."

Another more extreme opinion that some may hold is that the company is basically exploiting the players to do the work that would be normally done by paid staff members; they even hint at that themselves. From the limited amount that I read, assuming that the first post and excerpt above was all that was needed (heh heh, just taking a quick break from other stuff), it doesn't seem like they receive benefits/compensation, other than making it sound like an elite position that has potential to influence gameplay. Don't get me wrong; helping with the game is definitely awesome, but that's what I think an observer's opinion would be. It's somewhat like hiring Graduate Assisstants instead of salaried staffers, I suppose, though GA's gain plenty more benefits and not just interacting with their superiors.

It seems like GW's current system is fine. Though it may take longer, there's a far broader and better represented range of opinions (and ignoring the random junk). Not every thread/e-mail/whatever will get a direct response but not every thread needs them, nor does every thread need to be read. It's also not that practical to go through all of them. And natural biases ftl.

Player feedback is not democratization. Gathering feedback is a necessary part of any effort aimed at fixing up/improving a game.

However, do remember that Anet is already doing this - they have their own people reading the forums and similar.

Yeah, I perfectly know that. As I said in the OP, I even saw one of my suggestions implemented in-game a while ago, and I know I'm not an exception, so it tells you a lot about the relationship between Anet and its customers.

But I can imagine the pain of Anet devs going through the junk of this forum... (plus now we lost 2 CRs and don't know what will happen to these jobs)

Thanks Pae for your reply and thanks Dr Strangelove for the copy/paste.