Gaile Gray

"Hey Cliff, the Minipet Jade Hammer is missing his hammer, can you fix that for me?"

"But working on something really important!"

"Itll take you 5 minutes, and the stuff is already loaded on your pc and then you can get back to that."

"Ok...done. Now let me get back to work."

Just to reply to the post directed at me:
Yes you are right there are ways to suggest things. The obviously wrong way would be the one you mentioned and I understand you are just talking 'in general'. I just want to quote the first post made in this thread:
It is a little edgy but its all right to say things like this. Its an open ended post meant for discussion. However this thread seems to have degraded into another
"flamefest/one line reply/ WoW vs GW/ Monthly payment/ I love Gaile" thread :P To that I see no reason why it should have turned out so.

Did your girlfriend ditch you recently or something? Y'know, sounding like the expert on "losing something" xD...
I wholeheartadly agree with this post (wow, I'm agreeing with Kijik Oni Hanryuu, who would have thought it... if it can serve as a lesson to some of the other people in this thread, lets take this as an example of two people disagreeing but without that necessarily meaning they reject anything the other person says. You can't discuss anything without a certain level of understanding and respect for the other party). Also, I agree with him that this thread should be closed... it doesn't seem to be going anywhere

indeed sometimes its questionable to see gaile answering the same questions constantly, but thats infact because well - people are not.. informed (i wanted to say stupid) to the point of satisfaction.

most of the real players who play consistent will know by now everything in the topic of mini pets, whats rare whats not, how to get them, and that yes theres going to be more after your character is 2 years old - from a different list of mobs.

so there you go, its "us" more like them who play enough to know who gaile is and dont play much thereafter who are the problem. though it would be nice for gaile to put her foot down in a sense to say, ive answered that 100 times already and the answer is "yadaydyayda whatever it is" and try to get out real information from devs without coming across rude.

its a pretty hard job to deal with all that expectation and all those messages and still be sane.

so hats off to Gaile

you deserve it - keep up the good work.

Believe it or not I have an IQ above 70

I am aware Anet has a blitz list 10 miles long of things gone wrong. Like any one trouble shooting it is called priorities. The basic mechanics of game play should out weigh the fluff when it comes to what gets fixed. If you are going to try to convince me that Anet couldn't see there would be a storage issue BEFORE factions came out it is a losing battle. I own a high end computer company (servers and medical equipment) ... if I tried giving a client a new mousepad when their server needed more storage I would not have customers for very long. Address the basic game play then work on the fluff ... not asking much.

Lyra, I want a divorce!

THAT is something I think Arena Net could improve. Between these Forums, the GW website and the Gaile Talks, we have the answers for a lot of questions (despite how many of those are "we don't know a specific date, we'll tell you more later").

But how many people actually know of those? I have the feeling that, despite how GW requires Internet to be played, the majority of the player base doesn't come to any of the GW forums, or to the GW main site itself, or to the specific Support tab of the main site.

I think it would be convenient to mention that Support section on the little log thing at the log in screen of GW - that's the only way I see to reach most people who play the game.

(And I agree with what Kijik and Deadly have said - you cannot expect Arena Net to listen to criticism if it comes only in a rude, whining and overly demanding way. That would be the same as saying that terrorism is good because it's pointing at some flaw in a government.

Good changes came from good feedback - constructive criticism, reasonable suggestions together with a complain, things like that. To say "OMG that sucks ANet u morons!!!11!!!" adds little, while saying "I think feature X has problem Y and Arena Net should do Z to fix it" creates the potential for a good change.)

Erasculio

whos to say they ARENT working on it and it hasnt been implemented on the dev server and they are just unsure or debugging it.

we only see the end result. If anet ONLY focused on the true hard stuff, we would see updates once every 2-3 months or something.

And then what? we would complain that they dont give us enough stuff cause they only update very rarely and its only for major things.

Minor bug fixes would be tossed aside and wait until major updates.

So, its okay to wait 4-6 months then for a major problem to be resolved? It makes more sense for pressing issues to be taken care of first. Honestly its not the first time anet has been late with something. I believe pretty much all their large scale updated have been somewhat delayed. I know they have a small team compared to other online multiplayer games but if you can't handle it then I think its time to get more people.

About Gaile, I'm glad she gives us at least some feeling that we are linked to the rest of the staff. And I believe she does her best, but shes probably flooded with negative questions. And who doesnt get tired of answering questions like that.

GW updates still need a lot of work I believe. Small updates < Important updates. Its that simple

Lucky for us Anet is mostly interested in the money and won't feel insulted by this thread. After all, most of you will all buy chapter three, because you are hooked

Gaile Gray is a pleasant woman that most people have nothing but kind words to speak of when they meet her in person. (Outside of the game) I have never personally met Gaile, and I'm not one to bother with going to overcrowded districts to listen to her, but some of the people I know that have met her I am confident in their judgment of her.

As a person, there is not a thing wrong with her.

What people seem to disagree on is what her actual purpose is. But let's hold off that for the moment.


What I can tell you is that, "Don't shoot the messenger" more than applies in this case.


Now, despite that, I do NOT blame the community members that DO choose to shoot the messenger. I don't think they should, but I don't blame them for doing it.

What other means do we have of speaking with anyone from Anet other than through Gaile or hoping they happen to read our specific posts on various fan forums?

People that desperately want to be heard are frustrated to find only one apparent avenue of contacting ArenaNet through, and that person is Gaile. So who receives the flak? Gaile does.


Play NC support, while being quick to reply, do little more than reply cookie-cutter answers. Though I doubt they have the authority or the policy setup to do otherwise, the point remains that unless you have something to say that can be suitable answered by a cut+paste response, there's little help there.

ArenaNet has no official forums of its own. Everything you want to say has to be done through an unofficial fansite, and your comments may or may not be read, and may or may not be relayed.

So people see an apparent window of opportunity in Gaile, only... She's not a human filter. She's more like a player with an NDA that happens to be pal-sy with the dev's. <_< A player with more patience and thicker skin than most other players that happens to know a little more than everyone else, but can't say everything she knows, and doesn't have an incredibly in-depth understanding of the inner mechinations of the game.


The real question to ask, I suppose, is if having the avenues many other commercial MMORPG's have to communicate with the developers directly is really any better. From what I've seen of WoW and a few others (mainly foreign MMORPGS), people are just as desperate to get dev responses to all of their concerns (BLUE RESPONSE NAO!).


That Guild Wars community relations could be better goes without saying. All things Guild Wars, much like everything in the world, could be better.
But when you look at the industry standard, it is my opinion that Guild Wars is definitely no worse than any other commercial MMORPG out there, and probably a bit better than many.


At this point, I think the next promotional event should be another contest. "Be Gaile Gray For a Day." A single player could feel the joyous experience that is being Gaile, and, under a limited disclosure agreement, share the experience with the community. That, I believe, would foster quite a bit of understanding between the community and Arena Net.

QFT

theres nothing wrong with Ms. Gray. I think that the ppl who complain about her should be complaining about Anet not her. Its her job...nothing more, nothing less.

Exactly! But sometimes she does get overwhelmed by it all

Bingo. I'm glad someone can understand exactly why some of us are speaking negatively about ArenaNet's communication with the community. (Despite Kijik's insistence that we're "whining", we actually aren't.)

hi

what if the real answer on your auction house/improved trading is exactly the same as the last 1000 times it was asked?

do you want a 3X a week update saying we are working on it and there is still no date for it because if we missed it by one day the whole fing community would go apeshit calling us lyers for breaking our promise?

Actually, everyone except me can be Gaile Gray, and I can singlehandedly represent a certain part of the Guild Wars community by bitching at them about the same items over and over again. Letting everyone have a firsthand experience FTW.

While i dont personally like Gaile, i dont want her job either.

While reading through this thread i came across many good points and agree that generally the choice in community communication is poorly implemented but it serves their marketing needs.

The suggestions for improvements would be to:

1) Have more comprehensive information on the website.

2) Adopt some form of Dev dairies system where some Dev can shed light on the progress of some of the new game improvements. Many other gaming sites have adpoted this to great success and response from their community without compromising IPs.

Feel free to add anything i may have over looked.

Out of curiosity have you stoped to wonder why you have had no reply from Galie?

Would you read a topic that is belittling your work?

Galie has said on many occasions that she see all your questions and tries to answer them but when people keep repeating the same questions that she will ignore you.

If you have a problem with the game or it’s employees try and provide some positive feedback and suggestions on how things could be improved. Shooting the messenger will never get your what you want and will only result in people with hurt feelings.

FYI I love the frog so cute

whether or not Gaile Gray states that updates are coming out "soon", or she just gives a cookie cutter answer, doesn't really change anything. Anet likes to play games with us...last summer's 'summer update' came maybe a week before summer ended, even though we were waiting for months...i was up til 3:45 AM EDT last night, waiting for my damn mask, and the guy never came. None of that is Gaile's fault; and she is probably vague with us because she knows that Anet will find a way to screw up any release dates that she gives us anyway. How would you like it if she told us that the storage updates were coming 2 weeks from now, and then they didnt come for a month? The fanbase would be more furious than they are now, and Gaile would take the undeserved flack for it. This thread should be directed towards Anet, not Gaile.

I would ignore alot of people too since you people treat her like a celeb. Personally I don't care about her, she can do her job as long as I play and enjoy the game I can care less about who and what she does...

Please cool it. Guru allows threads like this because people learn from mistakes, criticism can be a good thing, it helps people see both sides of the fence, etc. etc. But back-and-forth arguing trying to convince a community of your standpoint 1. never works 2. will deteriorate into name calling and flames. If no further quality discussion can come from this thread then it will be closed.

Well,

Gaile is a very kind and polite person. Over 2 years ago she answered 2 emails about my account and questions I had- great response and to the point and most of all friendly. I have talked to her in districts, I have danced with her and yes I shamelessly have followed her on her "runs" through Lions Arch. AS a person, yes she is great!!

Her role as the Frontline / Bouncer / Nanny / is hard and she does a great job. The game hasn't gone where it needed to be but hopefully commercially a success (2 mill sold).

As Lovitar put it: She has had the same questions repeated to her 1000X and she still repsonds when she can. Give her a break!

I want to thank Gaile for sticking through with us and even though she doesn't always bring the best of news, she definetly does her job and we should be grateful we got someone like Gaile.

A lot of kissing up to Gaile, but why not. I think she deserves it. I can't imagine talking to all these retards in game and in the forums day after day...I would Instadelete them in game if I was her..

So you piss poor suckers that gets your feeelings hurt and feel alone and ignored...

Get a grip

Ratatass (ppl since oct 04)

IMHO just being able to communicate to the developers - albeit indirectly through Gaile - is one thing that sets this game apart from all the others I've played in the last 20 years.

Ok, so maybe it's just that GW was my first online gaming experience, so I don't really know if this is the norm or not (I have to admit that I've recently started playing WoW too, but have yet to see or hear from their 'Gaile' - if one even exists).

And the frog thing ... so cool.

Keep up the good work Gaile.

Um, haven't read all the posts, but this whole conversation seems silly to me. I don't remember seeing on the GW box or reading in the manual a guarantee of some in-game developer avatar to answer all my questions. Why is this something worth complaining about?

You pay Government taxes, and you should expect better public TOILET PAPER.. if you like to complain so much, then please do something and give voice to the better quality of pulic toilet papers thanks.

Most games don't give their player base a place to discuss about things, so they don't need to hear any complaints, once the game is released, they are happy to take in the money. But with Anet, they are still providing services after they took the initial $$ of buying the game.

There are changes, there are fixes, they exist, but just not to the expectation of YOU.

I myself are very satisfied with Anet and Gaile for what they have done and what they are continuing to do. Please appreciate what Gaile is doing.

If you ever work in customer service.. I don't think you complainers will want to hear yourself 1000 times everyday.

I sign this, as soon as we get better hench in Tyria, so we don't have to wait for days to find a party. It is getting very lonely there, and it seems like Anet doesn't care.