City of Heroes Coldfront (CoH, CoV)

Cuppa, Welcome! When we started off last time you introduced yourself as CuppaJo - COH Associate Community Coordinator for NCsoft. Now there have been some changes with your position at NCsoft, so what is your title looking like these days?

My new official title is City of Heroes Community Coordinator - the old one was Associate Community Coordinator.

Obviously with the change in title there comes a change in responsibility. How have your job duties changed at NCsoft?

I still have all the old responsibilities - I just got some more things added on. For instance - I am now responsible for the email promotions and newsletters - so for instance I did the Labor Day promotions that everyone got in their email box. I also do most of the contests now - coming up with ideas, picking prizes, writing copy and facilitating everything behind the scenes about them (legal and such). Actually I started doing contests before my promotion - my first one was the Movie Marquee contest.

I am more involved with marketing initiatives primarily as a community voice to the marketing team. For instance, if we do X promotion, how will the community respond to it?

I guess overall I feel like my main functions haven't changed - I am primarily a communication link between the community and Cryptic and NCsoft. For the players I answer questions or point them in the right directions to get answers. I compile and report on community responses and concerns about issues. I am the player advocate to both companies. In turn, I communicate to the community for both Cryptic and NCsoft as well as facilitate internal communication.

My other main focus is to help build and maintain our online community.

Sounds like a fairly comprehensive list of responsibilities. Have you taken on additional management duties? Primarily do you have any help in any of these areas? Can you yell at folks and make them cry? :)

Management? No, not really. We do have some extra moderators (Waves to moderators 4, 6, 7, and 8) where all they do is board moderation for NCsoft. They get training from us (and I did help with that) but have their own manager. In our group (CoH/CoV) we all have our own responsibilities but help each other out when it's needed. I do yell a lot - but mostly at the computer screen. :-)

Can you give us any insights into some up and coming contests that we might expect in the near future?

Well - actually, no. *laughs* If I told you what was coming up some people might try to get a head start on them and it wouldn't be fair. :-( We like to do contests that have some creativity to them - it makes them more interesting to participate in, more fun to judge, and builds community in ways a contest where you just pull a name out of a hat doesn't. I will say that we will be doing a contest soon that involves the comic book again.

Let's also get back to one of our questions from last year :) Will you have any responsibilities with City of Villains? If so what might those be?

So far, all I have really done for CoV is some work on the beta boards and help out whenever Alexa needs a hand. I have also been a consultant of sorts to the team to advise them on how the community might feel about various marketing initiatives, beta issues and design choices.

City of Heroes has come a long way over the past year, how has the community changed/grown/evolved since that time? Everything still feel the same? Has the mood shifted? etc...

The CoH community really has changed over the last year but it has retained its great love of silliness and creative expression. I think the largest change has been in the general attitude towards game changes and the Developers. The honeymoon is over, so to speak, as CoH develops into a more mature MMO. In some ways, Issue 5 felt like CoH’s adolescence complete with growing pains and a large number of changes. I hope that we move from this point into maturity as the developers create a more robust game universe. I think with I6 and CoV that updates will again be looked forward to rather than cause fits of Doom™

That's an interesting analogy you bring up in reference to I5. I realize Issue 5 has been very controversial and I'm curious if you dealt with anything out of the ordinary, or perhaps extra stress was put on your position by this release? How did I5 directly affect you in your day to day work in the forums? Was there an usually large amount of slapping of the users going on? :)

Issue 5 was the one where players had the least amount of confidence that it would turn out ok in the end. I know that both Bridger (the UK CC) and I talked about the issue at length when we got the patch notes internally and tried to prepare for the reaction to the global defense changes. In some ways it was all that we had feared, but in others, I actually felt like Issue 4 was harder. I know emotionally I was prepared for I5 better than I4. The main way it affected my work was the sheer number of PMs and moderation. It was like this in I4 as well. I could get over 200 PMs a day easy for the first few days. As it is I average 82 PMs a day normally and I do my best to answer all of them. That said – I wouldn’t even want to think about how many PMs Statesman probably gets.

There were some issues with a few posters. I understand that people get upset – but I still don’t understand threatening bodily harm on developers in graphic detail. I mean, the only affect that has is that it gets your post removed and you might get banned. If you want to get a message across – post within the rules and tell us what you specifically have a problem with. Generic “This issue and the devs suck” posts are rarely helpful to the developers and won’t get a single thing changed in the game.

Is your work with the City of Heroes community a good fit for you or is there some other love you would like to pursue in the future? Perhaps some personal goals that lead into another area in the game industry?

I have to say – this is a pretty unique and challenging position – but it is stressful. Right now I am interested in our incorporation of CoV and how that will affect the community. I want to do everything I can to get us on the other side of CoV’s release before even thinking about anything else.

Long term I am more interested in producing games than designing power sets or story lines.

Do you have to spend time in game for any reason, in an official capacity?

Sometimes I go in-game for community related reasons – for player events or celebrations. I have even gone in for test server arena bouts. J It is one of the really fun things to do in my job, however keeping up with tells can be overwhelming!

Looking back over the last year. Can you pick any single moment that has given you special pride in your job or just made you think...WOW I love my job? :) (just curious if you had something defining happen to you...or something special that really stood out)

It would have to be the anniversary of CoH. I got an invite to an in-game “thank you” from several SuperGroups on Freedom started by the lovely Babes of War. There were over 50 SGs in attendance and we actually instanced Atlas Park several times. There were some devs there in disguise – but I showed up as CuppaJo. They had a little ceremony to say thank you from the SGs and players and then we had a celebration dance. It was truly moving and brought me to tears a few times. It was amazing to see seas of heroes in every direction you looked who were just there to say thanks. It still gets me. After a year of fighting fires, taking complaints, chasing down bugs and moderating forums it was nice to be reminded that CoH is a game that people play to have fun and that they really do enjoy it as much as I do. It really made it all worth it.

What is your work environment like at NCSoft?

NCsoft is a great place to work – we have a casual, fun environment that is more cooperative than competitive. There have been a few elaborate practical jokes between Richard Garriot and the Tabula Rassa crew. I have also found lobby furniture and plants in the elevators several times and posted notices often turn into handwritten flame wars. It is the only place I can think of that would post signs in the building warning not to talk loudly about Star Wars – Revenge of the Sith so it doesn’t spoil the movie for those who haven’t seen it. It’s not constant insanity but it’s never boring.

CuppaJo, I want to thank you for taking the time out once again to speak with us here at Coldfront. I hope we may have the pleasure of speaking with you again. Any closing statements you would like to leave us with?

You can read more about handwritten flame wars between Manticore and Statesman in the upcoming “Web of Arachnos” novel? Just kidding. I would just like to thank our forum community and fansites for caring about the game enough to send me PMs, test, /bug, code and post about it every day. You are our greatest asset.

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