Feldon Eric “Piestro” Cleaver has been named as new EverQuest II Community Manager:
Hey Folks,
My name is Piestro, and I’m a Halfling./em waits for the “Hi Piestro.”
Some of you may have seen me in an occasional post, Facebook update, or tweet in my role as a member of the SOE Community Team. Previously I was assigned to EverQuest, but it’s my pleasure to announce that I am now taking on the role of EverQuest II Community Relations Manager!
So who am I? Well, I’m a long time fan of SOE Games, and an experienced Community Relations professional. For a little more than a year I’ve been working on EverQuest. This was easy for me, as EverQuest was always my favorite MMO and getting to work on it as a professional was a dream come true in many senses.
While I dearly love EQ, its Dev Team, and community, when I was told I would be switching to EQII I was very excited. In my role on the Community Team I have been attending EQII meetings for some time and every time I learned more about the game, I’d get a little more curious and interested. I’m really looking forward to the next GU. You’ll all be hearing more about it soon enough!
Working with the EQII Team is a fantastic opportunity and I’m very much looking forward to getting to know all of you; I strongly believe that the true heart of any MMORPG is the community of players who inhabit it. The EverQuest II player community is passionate and creative, and cares about their game; what better group of people to work with could there be?
I’m also having a lot of fun playing EQII! I’m one of those people who was too invested in EQ at the time EQII launched to make the switch – yeah, one of those people. I logged into EQII for the first time back in December, and was amazed at the depth and polish of the game. I started playing a Defiler and loved the Neriak starting experience, with all the story and lore packed in there. Since then I’ve started a Shadow Knight and am busy leveling him, but you might see me roaming about Norrath leveling my Halfling soon; the question is, should he be a Warden or Fury? I’d love to hear your opinions before I create him.
You’ll hear more from me soon on the forums, and say hi if you see me in-game!
Thanks,
-Piestro
Also from FreeRealms @ Zam:
Welcome Tiffany “Amnerys” Spence, former EverQuest II Community Manager, to Free Realms and Clone Wars Adventures! A little gnome told us that this is just a normal rotation of Community Managers within SOE, and Lydia “Zatozia” Pope will become the Community Manager for Vanguard, EQ Mac and EQOA.
It was not very cle(a)ver to put him in charge in the middle messed up situation about the prosieben case … the poor guy will have a lot to do …
LOL @ how EQ2 gets a new community relations manager the DAY AFTER they announce they are selling off a portion of their customer base to ProSieben.1
So is he going to get a grip on the completely out of control moderators?
One would hope so they need taking out into the yard and a bucket icy water thrown over to calm them down a touch
I wonder what the poor guy did wrong to get this “promotion” at this time.
He said that he found your drawing funny :p !
http://www.change.org/petitions/sony-online-entertainment-stop-the-prosieben-soe-partnership#
Free Realms and Clone Wars, eh?
Sounds like Piestro’s not the one getting shipped to Siberia.
Funny thing, Amnerys has been posting on the P7S.1 firing range thread…
Wow, EQOA is still online?
Not sure why we got a new one right after this, maybe the old one told them “GFY I’m tired of you ass-hats throwing me under the bus.”
It could also just be the typical SOE song and dance where they are attempting to give the impression that they are listening, and the vast majority of the forums probably feels that wasn’t happening.
Cirth, haha, probably 🙂
For now.
Happy trees!
EQOA still has a decent population…
I feel for the new guy he just walked into a hornets nest.
They should bann Piestro and make Fel the Com Manager, he speaks for more people than SOE do.
Haha! Either he has the worst luck possible in terms of timing, or he is deliberately being thrown to the sharks while Brasse makes a get-away. Oh, Cheesepirate, you’re hella famous now with your cartoon all over the blogosphere.
That wouldn’t last long. 😉
Off topic slightly, I got an email saying they were doing double station cash this weekend, any word on your end?
@Tarb There’s double SC for cards purchased at Gamestop only, starting tomorrow. http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=515269
Guess that explains why I saw him on the feedback thread last night. SOE playing musical chairs again I see. Piestro said he loved EQ1. Why pull him over here to a sinking ship? I’d much rather prefer a person in charge who loves what he does then someone who was moved there by the higher ups.
Double station cash for Gamestop SC cards only.
New Senior producer, new community manager, selling the Euro customer base … what is going on over there?
Lets hope hes more involved with the community than the new producer
That doesn’t seem like a surprise… Rothgar (Greg Spence, her husband) left EQ2 for EQ “next” not long ago.
I thought Piestro did a nice job responding to concerns with the botched rebates last weekend. I’m looking forward to seeing how he interacts with the playerbase on a regular basis.
Interacting with the playerbase on a regular basis is not part of the job description.
hmmm, did the previous community manager have a melt down or an attack of conscience and needed to be moved from the firing line?
I dont think a melt down happened. They do (for no good reason?) shuffle managers around between games for some reason from time to time.
Also EQ2 always was a very intensive community, taking very much mental energies to stay sane (not including the recent/current euro scandal), and Tiffany did just have some offspring.
KiddiesAndCapes land is a nice plush inert Community job for her to coast on. (also remember that her hubby just got yanked off of 2 to get 3 running, so no reason for her to hang around this sinking ship)
Ahh the innocence of it. He’ll soon be turned bitter and twisted, I’m sure 🙂
Typical corporate management accountability avoidance strategy ~ “Don’t blame me, I’m the new guy.” -ad nauseam
I will always cherish my times with the 2008-2009 SOE crew at Dragon Con. I’m just going to try and pretend that those people are still in place somewhere.
That approach is sure paying them dividends.
If you want an example of a Community Manager that actually interacted with and tried to get answers for the community, often ending up being very unpopular within SOE due to her player advocacy, well you know who I’m talking about.
I do genuinely believe that the Community Manager rotations yesterday were already in the planning/pipeline before this brouhaha blew up, otherwise I would have said something.
I really would appreciate it if he finally could get this “heavy moderation” under control.
What they are doing there over at the SOE boards (at least to me) is almost worse than the whole deal!
Censorship on such a highly and enormously sensitive topic like that deal is an absolute no-go!
While so far I was about to somehow stick with SOE but that whole bullshit how they treat their community is outrageously stupid!
I really expected MORE of Linda “Brasse” Carlson! I really did! About time that the whole press looks at how they strongly implemented sort of the chinese virtual wall on their bords the way they are swinging the golfclub of censorship.
Very bad idea, SOE – very bad idea!
SOE may have every right to censor as much as they wish on their boards – but enough is enough!
While bad timming at best, I would have to agree that this has been in the works for a while. The former CM, Amnerys is wife to the former Lead Designer, Rothgar, who was transfered to EQ Next not long ago. It was just a matter of time before she transfered projects anyway. I think the fact that they are announcing it now is a sad attempt at changing the topic of conversation.
This feels like SWG all over again… Started to get over loosing my favorite game in December (even though it was a gimped game, destroyed by CU/NGE), joined EQII in January and now having to witness the guild I joined thorn up because of it all. And the CM´s and moderators seem to be acting the same way SOE always do.
Another “fun” part in this ordeal, is the gamingmedia not covering the story. I personally contacted several newssites with this, being promised by 2 large sites that they would run the story as soon as they had heard from SOE. About 1 hour later, both sites just said they had changed their mind and wouldn´t print a word about it…. I smell something fishy.
I contacted Mike Bilton over at mmorpg.com to ask them why they have not run this story yet. I have yet to hear from Mike yet, and thats unusual as he usually gets back to folks, even though usually me and Mike disagree with a lot of things he usually keeps an open line of comunication.
For anyone that knows Piestro, he’s sure to do a hell of a better job than anyone EQ2 has had in a long while.
@Feldon Are you talking about a Sexy Dark Elf>
I also contacted several related news sites to inform them about this developing story, and haven’t seen a peep on any of them yet. I’m suspecting perhaps SOE has asked the media to hold the story until they are able to formulate an official response (presumably including details of whatever ‘compromise’ they are working on). They would likely have more pull with their media connections than we would.
Hello Piestro. I am both happy and sad for you at the same time. I am happy that you received your new position (hope it was a nice promotion and raise for you). However, I am saddened with the uphill climb you have. I believe SoE has made it very clear over the past several months, especially with the ProSibien announcement, that the only people who think there is a community are the players and fans. It is purely business at the top as they have once again put the cart so far in front of the proverbial horse. Now that horse is trying to catch up and slow the cart. While you may repair the server split, the anguish caused to “our community” not SoE’s, cannot be repaired with all the “double this” or “double that” weekends. My best advice, get new rope…you are gonna need it one way or another.