TEAM COMMENTS

3/7/08 - A Q&A session with GM Lemoncobra

1. Where did your GM name come from?

Well, after watching Talladega Nights, I was particularly taken by the term “Demoncobra.” I wrote that down on one of our dry erase boards to represent myself. One day, I came back to find that someone had replaced the D with an L, and I found I really liked the absurdity of a Lemoncobra. Hence, I decided to make it my official GM name.

2. How did you get your job at NCsoft?

Mostly I got this job thanks to a friend that worked here. However, I have a lot of experience in Customer Support.

3. How long have you been on the Lineage team?

While I’ve moved to quite a few of our games over the years, I’d say I’ve been working on Lineage for around 2-3 years.

4. How do you typically spend your day as a Lineage GM?

Usually I’ll go through the top level tickets that require investigation into our logs or more detailed responses. From there, I’ll work with Fracas and our Tools team to determine what can and cannot be provided. I also review appeals by players who violate the User Agreement. This includes language, exploits, or third party program violations.

5. What exactly are your responsibilities as a GM?

I’ll go ahead and describe some of my core responsibilities but this certainly isn’t an inclusive listing of all the responsibilities of a GM:

• Handles most major communication with Production, Quality Assurance, Tech Support, Billing, Community and Web regarding Lineage 1 issues.
• Investigates most public issues (Items with high customer involvement or are very public)
• Investigates the game logs for item transactions, item loss or chat violations
• Investigates the game logs for third party program users
• Investigates the game logs for any evidence of selling or transfer of adena for real world currency

6. Do you spend a lot of your time actually in the game or outside of it?

I spend most of my time outside of the game. Our Monitor staff is responsible for in-game issues, while I handle most of the investigations.

7. How long does it usually take for a support ticket to get answered? What is the procedure you use for answering and dealing with tickets?

While we try to answer every ticket as soon as possible, this is not always possible. Typically, it’ll take around twenty minutes for the initial response. If the ticket needs escalation or requires further investigation of the game logs, it can take around a day or two before I can make a definitive response. For cases that are more complex we usually need more time than one or two days.

8. What’s the best thing a player should know or do before asking for help?

We have a very good Knowledge Base that can help answer any questions players might have about a certain issue. It’s located at http://www.plaync.com/us/support/prod_8.html. The Knowledge Base covers the vast majority of questions you may have, so it is a great resource for players. Also, if you require assistance on a certain issue, the more information you can provide the better. By providing specific information, we are able to more efficiently search for a certain item, character, or within a specific timeframe. It does help—a lot.

9. Do you have a favorite player?

All of our players are my favorites. Well, except for the non-human ones…

10. Do you have any funny stories from your GM experience that you can share?

I guess the biggest belly laugh that I can share without revealing any personal information about our players would be the time I found a group of third party program users. I was asked by our Monitor team to verify some pass-through hackers—players that use a third party program to pass through monsters and other players. I observed the players in invisible mode for a good amount of time to help ensure that lag wasn't the issue. They were passing through their friends and monsters for quite a bit of time. Because I was in a weird mood that day, I decided to talk with them. In Local, I said "Hello! how are you doing?"

My first response from the party leader was "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!"

That was when I started my belly-laugh. If ever I found a guilty party, this was it. I then asked them (still invisible and in local), "How are you able to pass through monsters and other players?" and by this time other GMs had heard me laughing and come over to watch. We all had a good time as the "leader" proceeded to repeat the phrase, "I NO BOT!! I NO BOT!!" a few times.

At this point, I politely informed them that they would receive an e-mail from Support explaining the reason for their account block. I then kicked them and blocked their accounts. It was an awesome verification of third-party program users.

11. My friend XXXXX was banned XXX years ago, can he/she be unbanned now?