Who Will Get the Axe?

[hennebeck]

Oh, and I still have every faith in the D&D brand, 4e and Scott. If he says he's going to do something you can believe he will do everything in his power to make it happen. He's good like that.

You don't work for them anymore, remember, you can tell us the truth now.



Thanks for doing a fabulous job, Linae.

 

[catsclaw227]

I did see a lot of people who seemed to praise this Mike fellow in this thread so it confused me and that is when I wanted to learn more about what the whole 3000 + post was all about.

Anyway, I just wanted to see if I was understanding the issue at hand or if there was something else I didn't see.

Actually I am sorta curious as well, not from a morbid, watching a train-wreck kinda curious, but more like an interest in what was causing all the controversy, and if it might have contributed to his unfortunate release. If there are lessons to be learned, then the story might benefit some.

 

[DM-Rocco]

Stupid double posts

 

[DM-Rocco]

Actually I am sorta curious as well, not from a morbid, watching a train-wreck kinda curious, but more like an interest in what was causing all the controversy, and if it might have contributed to his unfortunate release. If there are lessons to be learned, then the story might benefit some.

And I'm sure you too don't want to read through 3000 + posts either.

Hey, I see in you sig that you are converting the Age of Worms into 4e. How is that going? It seems like it would take a lot of work to convert. It is not like converting 2e to 3e, which, er, isn't all that easy either, but slightly more so. Well, you get the idea.

 

[catsclaw227]

Hey, I see in you sig that you are converting the Age of Worms into 4e. How is that going? It seems like it would take a lot of work to convert. It is not like converting 2e to 3e, which, er, isn't all that easy either, but slightly more so. Well, you get the idea.

It's been work, but not that difficult. I have had to adjust the levels of monsters and have made some of the encounters more spread out over multiple "rooms" but all in all it's coming along OK.

The tricky part has been the quick jump into 11th level PCs for the players (and me), keeping track of all the powers, ongoing effects, etc. The players didn't get to play these PCs in 4e from 1st level, so suddenly dumping 11th level abilities on them has caused some slow-down in the game, but once we get the hang of it I am sure that it's get much easier.

 

[Dragon Snack]

...this Mike fellow seemed to be the cause of a controversy and I just wanted to understand more.

I'll preface this by saying I haven't been to Gleemax in ages (other than to read a couple pages of the thread linked above - certainly not all of it) and it involves a friend...

G0 actually rubbed a lot of people the wrong way (as you can tell by the beginning of that thread), but everything came to a head when he asked for people's opinion on forum reorganization. He then promptly ignored everyones input and instituted what were seemingly random changes. They even went against some of his own 'rules' for reorganization - ie, if a forum got more than 50 posts a day it was to remain open, but yet the Character Optimization board was trashed (or was slated to be). This caused a rift between G0 and Autumn, the VCL, so G0 fired Autumn (apparently the V in Volunteer Community Lead didn't stand for volunteer) and replaced her with someone who hadn't actually applied for the position (volunteer is such a pesky word).

So, between ignoring people's opinions on the board reorganization and deriding (he went so far as to publicly call her unprofessional) a long time community leader (Autumn was formerly WizO_Autumn), G0 seemed to many people to be actively working against his stated role as "Community Liason". At the very least, his qualifications for a Public Relations position were questionable (even if you believe his hands were tied from above).

Again, I was not on gleemax and Autumn is a friend of mine, so maybe this is just a small subset of the firestorm he created (can I safely call a 3,000+ post thread a "firestorm"?). I do know people had "unkind" knicknames for him even before this event. Take it as you may...

 

[fba827]

I don't personally know any of the people at WotC, nor do I know any of the history or baggage associated with any of these decisions. I simply wanted to post to say: best of luck to those who have to make some changes now. Hopefully everything will work out.

 

[JahellTheBard]

I will miss your wise and kind words, Linae .

I'am sure you will find a good work soon ... you already proved to be very good at all you did ...

In the meantime ... i will miss you ..

 

[Chadarius]

There has to be a reason for "realignment?

In my experience layoffs and reorgs usually either mean the company isn't hitting its target numbers or the company is undergoing a major change, such as a merger or a sale. I doubt WotC is getting sold (though hope spring eternal) or merged. With Hasbro, it isn't hard for a brand to not perform up to expectations. I have no clue what brands are ailing at the moment, but it will be interesting once we start hearing who gets cut.

After being in corporate American for the last 15 years, I'll agree that often its because of mergers and such. But just as often it happens for no reasonable or aparent reason. Sometimes management just reads a new book or goes to a seminar and rethinks their org chart, usually with the same terrible results as the last reorg.

I think the realignment in this case is pretty obvious though. The online strategy is a failure. Unfortunately they think a realignment will fix it. I think it was dead on arrival and there is nothing that can be done to fix it.

Which means that there will be yet another "realignment" at a later date to fix it again, and so on. Somewhere along the line I hope that Hasbro/Wizards figures out that they can't do technology and find or buy someone who can. Or just leave the tech up to the community. So far projects like PCGen or Kloogewerks and simple spreadsheets have been more than enough to satisfy me.

 

[jinnetics]

Which means that there will be yet another "realignment" at a later date to fix it again, and so on. Somewhere along the line I hope that Hasbro/Wizards figures out that they can't do technology and find or buy someone who can. Or just leave the tech up to the community. So far projects like PCGen or Kloogewerks and simple spreadsheets have been more than enough to satisfy me.

Hear, hear!