While I was gone on vacation, Verant made a big change in their Customer Service department, with the promotion of Gordon 'Abashi' Wrinn to the post of Associate Producer of EQLive and the Scars of Velious, under Jeff Butler. Replacing Abashi is Alan “Absor” VanCouvering, formerly of EverQuest Express. Here are the two producers letters posted, one by Abshi on his leaving, and the other by Absor on his new position...
Hello all,
It seems like only yesterday that I came to Verant to build our community relations by acting as a two-way conduit of information between the players and the development team. In fact, it's been nearly a year since I began representing the company to the players, and in return, the players to the company.
We've certainly had some bumps in the road, but overall I think that the development team and the community of players have grown much closer over the past year. We've addressed a lot of issues, solved a number of problems, and overall improved the game as a result of our relationship. We now have more development team members posting on the boards than ever before and our response time to issues in game has dropped dramatically. Furthermore, we've become much more flexible in terms of addressing everyone's issues. We've seen a number of old bugs addressed, and implemented numerous enhancements, both those related to a particular class, and to the players as a whole.
Many of you have noticed that I've been around a little less than normal over the past couple of weeks. Some have gotten the impression that we'd become less resilient in our goal to maintain a strong community. I can now let everyone know that this is not the case, that our commitment to our players is stronger than ever, and that we remain committed to continually improving our relationship with EverQuest players.
Today I am pleased to announce that Alan "Absor" VanCouvering, formerly of EverQuest Express (eqx.simplenet.com), has joined the EverQuest Team. Alan will be taking over my position as Community Relations Manager of EverQuest, and will be responsible for taking our community relations to the next level. Alan has been the editor of EverQuest Express since early beta, and comes to us with nearly 10 years of customer service experience. Please make him feel at home and take it easy on him until he comes up to speed. Alan has posted an introduction below.
With Alan coming on, I've moved to the development team as Associate Producer of EQLive and the Scars of Velious, under Jeff Butler. I'll be concentrating more on the "Live" side of things, with coordination of day-to-day operations of EverQuest being among my responsibilities. I'll still stop by the boards from time to time, as they remain an excellent resource for information and player feedback, but Alan will be your point-man there. While I'm proud of the work we've done over the past year, I'm very excited about this new opportunity, and am equally glad that we were able to bring Alan on.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to address your concerns and making me a part of your EverQuest experience.
Sincerely,
Gordon "Abashi" Wrinn
Associate Producer, EQLive and the Scars of Velious
Verant Interactive, Inc
Hello everyone.
My name is Alan VanCouvering. As Gordon mentioned, I will be taking over as Community Relations Manager for EverQuest here at Verant Interactive, Inc.
Let me start by giving you an idea what it is that I will be doing under the auspice of the wordy title "Community Relations Manager". It will be my job to understand the players' concerns about EverQuest and to get those concerns to the development team. It will also be my job to get responses to those concerns back to the players and to help the development team to speak with the community. There will be other tasks (I imagine there will be loads of other tasks), but that's my primary job.
Until recently, very recently, I've been a player. I have been involved with EverQuest as a tester and a… commentator about the game since the early beta. Some of you may know me as Absor from EverQuest Express. I'm not going to claim to know everything that there is to know about the game. I don't know where all the problems lie, and I don't know all the good things. Of course I will be trying to absorb everything that I can from the designers here and from the players. But let me apologize now if I don't know all the answers to your questions.
I hope that you will bring your concerns to me so that I can understand them. Don't be afraid to over-explain something to me. And don't be too surprised if I ask for clarifications on a point or two. I haven't played all the classes to 60th level, so I may not understand the problems with "x" item or "y" class from personal experience. I am, however, certain that I can understand them if they are explained to me.
I've also learned that I have a somewhat conversational style when writing for public consumption. I hope that this doesn't make me seem less professional to any of you. I promise you that I take my work seriously. I just find that I communicate better this way, and my job is all about communicating.
As a fan of EverQuest this job is a wonderful opportunity for me. Not only do I get to continue my involvement with the EverQuest community (and get paid for it), I also now have the chance to affect change.
Alan VanCouvering
Community Relations Manager, EverQuest
Verant Interactive, Inc.
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