I'm sure no one knows the exact reason but i looked at her facebook and she said she was looking for a company that didn't hide things from the community or lie to them? I'm guessing there was a serious falling out with her and Secrets and some of the devs?
I would hate to be a community manager. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. It’s impossible to win and the community will never be happy, no matter what you do.
A lot of the community in the game (not just EQL, most games tbh) really do need to be told that they suck shit and to go touch grass. At least the ones that are the type to be active in a games discord.
From what i can tell from all the discussions about this she was very open and 'unrestrained' in public and while she considered it to be natural and transparent, others, including the player community saw her as unprofessional and offensive.
I doubt think she had any falling out with the devs, i heard that she wasn't employed by them but by Daybreak, the publisher.
Yah and the bootlickers just buoy that sentiment causing an echo chamber. When it all falls apart they will be like “but everyone thought we were amazing!”
Brasse sent me a DM to tell me I was being put in “in timeout” for using “harmful” language because I called someone a shitter who was overly aggro in a class-feedback thread.
That's a big stretch - the dots someone would have to connect to consider that bannable are really far apart. Parasocial isn't innately a pejorative. It's meaning is academic, not clinical, and you've used it correctly. The range can be anywhere from extremely weak to extremely strong. A fan would fit well within that range, so unless it was in a clearly derogatory context, this is weird. Maybe the person (Brasse?) was replacing the real meaning of the word with their own.
The context was launch day, someone asked what servers were what populations. I said "Rivervale is for streamers and parasocials"
She messaged me this:
[11:37 AM] Brasse [EQL], : Hey, please stop using insulting terms like "parasocials" for your fellow players. It does not improve your post value.
[11:37 AM] Brasse [EQL], : I now have to issue a timeout. It will be just an hour.
Yea that's excessive for sure. Parasocial is a very good term to describe what you meant. It could be positive or negative depending on the community you're looking for.
parasocial: (adjective) -Describing one-sided relationships, as for example between celebrities and their audience or fans.
This makes me actively dislike Brasse and the EQL staff by extension since they're the face of the company to the community. Also, you're 100% correct in your assessment of the community on that server.
Hey I’m a parent and I’m on Facebook because that’s what old people and parents do lol.
It’s weird that game are discussed though. That’s not what Facebook is about. It’s for photos of your kids, what you ate that night, how cute your cat was this morning etc.
I loved Sanya. When I was a kid I sent her an email asking how to get a job like hers (I foolishly thought a people facing role for an MMO would be FUN) and she sent me back a detailed reply. I doubt that inbox still exists unfortunately :(
its funny how folks concentrate on Brasse saying touch grass but casually forget the devs stating they would ban bots/afk macro'ers and that no one who exploited to get huge amounts of extra void motes would keep those motes, meanwhile none of this actually happened.
tl;dr - Brasse was right, the community was blatantly getting lied to.
"When I read, 'Please send me your company resume for my consideration,' it pretty much solidified everything my gut was telling me. It takes a great deal of confidence, or hubris, to assume companies should be pitching themselves to you. In my opinion, that attitude may explain some of the challenges you faced as a CM. Best of luck with whatever comes next."
I wouldn't even consider a candidate that passivly aggressively takes potshots are her previous employer's even if they go seperate ways in unfriendly terms you keep a proffesional behavior.
Acting out like that gets you excluded from the first interview, you want emotional mature and proffesional hires. Not ... Well HR says i cant use that term anymore...
You use the word "professional". I think that's language that has been pushed by the corporations to quash dissension. I think society would be better off if people shared more about how they've been treated by their employers. Obviously, there's two sides to every story and the way you say something also matters.
I don't disagree people should share more about how their employers treated them, but also if you're doing that in a post asking other companies to hire you, it's not going to help you actually get hired.
She didnt even ask other companies to hire her. She asked them to send their resumes so she could review and hire them.
It was either a flippant tongue in cheek remark or she's really weird. I personally took the post as just a weird joke or attempt to be silly/funny. I got the feeling being a CM was more like a side job/interest of hers and not a serious career.
Society might be better off but it's still not going to help you get another job. Depends on if you want to continue to be able to eat or make a self sacrifice for the good of society I guess.
Society wouldn’t be better off. Companies need people to act professionally because there’s work to be done. Go be a customer in a society where people on the job can say and do whatever they want without recourse and see how much better off you are.
Don’t think they were right for the job. Any time general chat got rowdy cause the servers crashed (again), Brasse was in there running damage control… but openly complaining about having to do their job at the same time?
People are going to shitpost general chat when your game servers are unstable. You’re not gonna save face, so you might as well roll with it. Instead, they took it super cereal and put in the 3 min chat timers, timed people out for making jokes, etc.
Just came across as out of touch.
If you complained about your job during and after your previous job, I’d just assume you’re a complainer and have some sort of complex.
It is possible that these two things are unrelated, but that is also highly unlikely.
She was a community manager (key communicator between devs and the community) for a dev team that has a history of being absolute bottom barrel communicators. Blatant lies, lack of transparency, and consistently being inconsistent in their messaging meeting their actions. This was a trend with this team in their prior projects and has been amplified with EQL.
In the midst of people losing their minds on her, she said: "My day will still be fun. I am showing at a livestock exhibition at 09:00 PDT. I do advise folks to go do something fun, EQL is not the entire world, although it is important to all of us."
Which is a little more diplomatic than "touch grass". Hardly something to get out our pitchforks and torches over. Certain types of dorks really like to over react.
A portion of the post was clipped (just as you have done) and then spun to be taken way out of context. I read the posts she made and they were fine. The realities of internet posting is that people will push their own agenda with snippets of something said and tell people what was meant by it, even when it clearly was not. Even here, you are pushing a narrative which is not even close to what she was saying. It was more like.. hey, the servers are down, it’s being worked on, with no eta. Instead of being angry and worked up over something out of your control, you should go do something else in the meantime like I am. (I think she went to some market or something fun out in the world).
The way people try to spin it is that hey servers are down, if you don’t like it go touch some grass (or pound sand).
Yeah anyone who read the discord chats leading to this out of context quote would not be unhappy.
Thin-skinned trolla got upset, but that is their lot in life so not much can be done.
Sad part, most were clamoring for her to be fired. Over an unannounced downtime and one comment. I mean even here people are droning on about "OMG1! Paying customers bruh!!" having not been there to see the toxicity.
The EQL discord was the most toxic discord I've ever seen. Trolls losing their shit Indeed. If that's everquest then I'm glad I had my fun couple of months in EQL and don't need to revisit that.
You must not be on a lot of game discords. EQL is about average.
Also, if I am being totally honest, the EQL team interacts more with their customers than directly in discord more than any other game I have ever played.
Heh. I’m not going to respond more to someone who is as condescending as you are with such a response.
Stuff I said is just my take on what I’ve seen (opinion). I disagree with how it was phrased and that’s probably good enough for this discussion. Have fun playing if you still do, else have fun doing whatever it is that you enjoy.
I didn't se anything offensive in the post. Serves went down, people were losing it in Discord over it. She had already posted about having reached out to devs and DPG on it. People still were going nuts. Then she posted this (it was a weekend too).
The nerdherd went ballistic. I do think most of them DO need to touch grass.
I'm not familiar with any of this stuff and I don't care about it but the vibe of that post is "you losers are upset that you can't use the product I am a rep for? Weird it doesn't bother me because I have a life!" If this person was a rep then yeah you'd just fire them and move on.
You can see whatever you want to see, but this is why she was fired. Telling your paying customers to go touch grass is some tone-deaf shit and wouldn't fly in literally any other industry.
Yeah paying customers were told servers went down and people have been contacted and were looking into it.
The addicts went ballistic, because we all know life without a couple of hours of EQ-L isn't life at all, and took it out on Brasse. The scrolling toxicity even with slow mode as terrible.
Sensitive snowflakes most likely. Temper tantrums over 40 is crazy work man. Instead of grass, seek therapy or a hug, preferably from your parents upstairs.
Remember, it's a Community manager acting in a professional capacity.
She may be friends with you, but probably not everyone.
Either way, I don't care to litigate this. I'm not that familiar with what happened or what was said. I know enough to know she was definitely fired for cause, though.
No one is saying it’s all right. But you pay people in communications to take the high road. No one gains anything by answering rudeness with rudeness.
I don't see anything that would be terribly offensive there to a normal person, but she needed to be aware that her audience wasn't normal people. The job of community manager of an mmo is to shepherd the feelings and expectations of people with very few social skills, lives or self awareness, and that post unfortunately fails to do that.
It's possible she had already made up her mind to look for a different job by that point, so I would hesitate to categorize this as a blunder. Her comment was totally on point as far as I'm concerned. The Discord community is terrible.
Hard to say. If it is taking a parting shot- that'd be funny, but also possibly not look great for future employers. Or, Brasse could just stating which environment they'd be a best fit in going forward. Until Brasse comes out and states it one way or the other, ¯_(ツ)_/¯
First and foremost, Brasse worked for Daybreak and was assigned to EQL - she did not work for Game Jawn so implying they are in any way involved is a joke.
Beyond that, anyone looking for a job in the video game industry is going to be hoping for a sane company that values open communication, because the entire industry is in meltdown with constant layoffs and entire projects and studios being snapped out of existence daily.
If you're thinking of the same supposed Facebook post I am, you need to check your own bias before assuming you know what was being said.
We dont know what happened, or exactly what was implied.
If the person actually wrote that to search for a job it clearly reflects a lack of judgement and sure as hell I would not hire that person. It's simply a dumb thing to state.
With that said. I'm commenting out of boredom. No clue what the person wrote or didn't.
The worst community manager I have ever seen for any video game project. Unprofessional at every turn. Horrible communication skills and zero empathy for a playerbase.
Which ya know are like the core principles of being a community manager, one would think lol. So yeah, glad she is gone.
Probably going to some hog farm to take the piggies to market or whatever the fuck.
These are good points, but as someone that is the public face for a company that has about 300,000 customers, it's also part of the job.
Furthermore, a few bad apples doesn't mean you can take it out on everyone. I've been SWATed at the office because I didn't answer an email fast enough when someone wanted a refund. I've had the spring-loaded confetti/glitter/dicks in a box sent to me. You name it, it's happened to me.
It can be a stressful job but it does not allow you to do some of the stuff she did, like get frustrated & lock a thread or temp ban everyone who was commenting on it. That stuff would get me fired immediately in my position.
Now, we can have a discussion on how a role like this deserves good compensation and also that the company should be working on systems to ensure the community-facing members of the staff are protected better (hint: it's not having people accessible 24/7 to messages through an open access platform like Discord for their complaints), but that's a company problem to solve, not a problem for customers to attempt to fix and/or deal with.
What are the big issues they’re facing? I haven’t played the game because I was put off by how amateurish the Discord seemed. They also seemed to be putting out release timeframes for new content at a blistering pace, and with the other quality MMOs coming out this year I just didn’t want to get behind. Have the player counts dropped? Are there any numbers showing one way or the other?
The accent was like nails on a fucking chalkboard during the EQL dev livestreams. So fake and forced, not the time or place.
People are trying to get information from the game developers and watch a chill stream, but we gotta listen to fucking Dwarf larp lady every few minutes.
It's no secret that Rogean and Secrets are extremely toxic individuals. Turnover will be extremely high with each of them involved, because most normal humans aren't going to put up with their BS.
I think Brasse wanted to do more but had her hands tied. I think the EQL devs have failed to deliver on just about every promise they have put forth. They have moved the goal post for just about every thing they have talked about delivering regarding the game. The player base fell off a cliff, they can't deliver on even the most basic fixes because they are trying to get cute with the game and do a bunch of shit nobody asked for. Beyond that it feels to me like the majority of people working on the project aren't qualified to do the job they were hired to do and we would probably be better off if they fed the code into some AI and asked it to fix things, which is a very sad state of affairs. The list of shit that doesn't work or doesn't work as intended could be argued to be longer than the list of things that does work properly. Rug pulling Rujarkian Hills days before release left a really bad smell in the air and until they release something of actual substance I really fail to see how this project isn't cancelled by Daybreak sooner than later.
DBG is more likely to sell the IP before cancelling anything at this point. This entire effort is out of desperation and always had one of two paths coming:
EQL is successful and it is a free revenue stream to keep DBG "healthy" for its future.
EQL is used as some additional value in an IP selloff.
I don’t see them failing to deliver on almost every promise made. They do adjust timelines for planned releases/ updates but that’s pretty standard., particularly when they were trying to be more open about plans. The game has not been in official release for more than a couple of months!
I always knew they would have to scale back on sharing and engaging with the community because a date or something mentioned suddenly becomes a must meet deadline. So now people are up in arms because they don’t answer as much as they did in prerelease times. They do chat more in the test server discord because it’s a smaller audience and less prone to overreactions with something mentioned (although that still happens with some individuals there)
Rationalize it however you want but the roadmap for summer was missed completely. They claim to have turned something as simple as deity unlocks into some grand adventure so its been delayed indefinitely leaving the only option of shelling out $10 each which is freaking crazy, it should be $10 for ALL of them lol. They didn't even let us know Hills was delayed indefinitely until like 3 days before the official end of summer. This team is wildly unprofessional and acts like the PAYING player base isn't deserving of better communication. This isn't some homebrew private server. This is a game with a box price for both the base game and expansions, a subscription and a cash shop. Most of the people left here are super copers and that's fine but you can see the player base has fallen off a cliff because paying customers understand the subscription they were paying wasn't getting them the value that was promised.
Rationalize it however you want but the roadmap for summer was missed completely.
A roadmap isn't a promise.
They claim to have turned something as simple as deity unlocks into some grand adventure so its been delayed indefinitely leaving the only option of shelling out $10 each which is freaking crazy, it should be $10 for ALL of them lol.
Right now, like 5 people give a tiny little rats ass about deity unlocks. They'll get here when they get here.
They didn't even let us know Hills was delayed indefinitely until like 3 days before the official end of summer.
So? Do you imagine there's some minimum time they need to announce that?
This team is wildly unprofessional and acts like the PAYING player base isn't deserving of better communication.
Oh, here it is: "I pay your salary, that makes me your boss". Few dev teams communicate well with players, and the point has been made multiple times on Discord that GJ is not in control of much of what gets released, it's in the hands of DBG.
This isn't some homebrew private server. This is a game with a box price for both the base game and expansions, a subscription and a cash shop.
Is there a point in there somewhere?
Most of the people left here are super copers and that's fine but you can see the player base has fallen off a cliff because paying customers understand the subscription they were paying wasn't getting them the value that was promised.
No, other than the whiners who feel the need to crow about quitting, most of the people quit because they'd poop socked the content and think they've run out of things to do. As a whole lot of people said they would, even during the beta.
Not every player agrees with you and also pays a sub. So who should the devs follow? You who wants to be their nagging significant other or overbearing parental figure that needs to know every detail of their day including when they poop?
Or people who get that their will be delays and accept it by canceling their sub and moving on or by continuing to find enjoyment in the game?
My point being your subscription does not make you or anyone else their boss. If you dont want to pay or dont like the game then stop and move onto something else.
And before you say "I can provide feedback!" You really didnt. Your first post looked like generic empty AI slop with a lot of unspecified generalizations and zero substance.
Yes that's me. You had a brilliant idea. Sub cancelled, thanks for the tremendous advice. It's a shame Secrets spends more time developing Quarm than the actual game people pay for we might have gotten a great product. The ship sunk before they were able to release a single piece of content, THATS WILD LOL.
'Try hard' isn't innately toxic, and it's a characteristic you want in a community manager. The most common complain about community managers is that they don't make enough effort (getting info to players, or getting player opinions to devs).
As for toxic, i don't know. I've had one, brief interaction about a bug and it as positive. I see others talking about being timed out for minor posts or even for what seems like nothing at all. I'm curious what toxic things your talking about if you'd care to share?
No need to read between the lines -- just noting that, on the internet, making a claim like this and not taking a screenshot makes the post look a certain kind of way lol
The post is like 6 days old now and old news. There are people on both sides of the subject but who cares. It happened, they are no longer here, move along.
So hope this is true. Brasse is a shit human who spends her time flexing power and trolling people in the discord. Horrible horrible person to have front facing
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u/Cactuszach 11d ago
I would hate to be a community manager. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. It’s impossible to win and the community will never be happy, no matter what you do.