GM Lloyd - NCSoft or Paragon Employee?

I have to wonder if it wasn't the same kind of thing with Neuronia and the marketeering comment. I wonder if they had more sense of what players were active forumites (and where they were active on the forums) than I would have expected.

to be fair, all the GMs are outstanding and really do go the extra mile to provide a positive customer service experience (OMG! I'm speaking corpspeak... shoot me now!)

I've dealt wth many over the years and they have always, without exception been courteous, helpful, willing and have never just let things go. That in no small measure has been part of the joy of playing CoH - you always feel that calling support is not a chore.

The best GM name in my book has to go to Pulpy Orange though!

Black Pebble if you have contact with those guys, please reiterate once more my thanks to them for their collective helpage over the last few years.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

I loved getting GM_Lloyd.

Mind you, there were some that got me angry, and not because they didn't know the game, but because they refuse to respond with anything but a pre-written response line.

But Lloyd was great because I was able to point out problems that were bugs and he'd agree it was a bug and file a ticket on it.

Hmmm... perhaps a CSR rally is in order!
We can get the whole rally stuck in the geometry or something, HAHA!

I'm serious though. Every interaction I had was friendly and we've shared spaces with 'em for many years now.


CSRally?

I can't honestly recall the specific GMs with which I've interacted over time, but in general they were great. Once they even went an extra mile to refund a ton of in-game influence taken from me by a copy-paste bug at the auction house, back before we had a very-large-transaction prompt (for which I personally begged).

They could easily have said sorry, we can't alter an in-game transaction, and honestly that's what I expected would happen. However, it didn't hurt to ask, and they were kind about it.

I will definitely miss GM_Lloyd. He was able to help me out on a number of situations. He's a paragon of in-game GMs.

Aside: the only time I saw him in-game, he was dressed as a Police Drone

I don't remember if it was GM_Lloyd or someone else. But I distinctly remember seeing a GM at an old school hammy raid on Justice as a Banished Pantheon Zombie, just chillin' at the edge of the bowl.

If memory serves me, there used to be a lot of complaints about people griefing the raids by pulling in monsters, so this GM was there proactively to either prevent it from happening or catch them in the act.

he will be with us till the lights go off AND THEN SOME????? hmmmmmm.....

I too recall being assisted by GM_Lloyd on a couple of occasions. Strange how that name sticks out more than others. I need to double check when I get home, but I wonder if he helped me with that very first mission where all the blinkies were in the center of the Earth.

Over the years I have played this game, the support has always been top notch. Much thanks to all of them.

My last interaction with a GM went something like this:

Was on a defeat all council cave map (uggggh) with my main toon (I Burnt The Toast)and was showing no more enemies on the map. I looked for a good 15 minutes because I did not want to petition it and then be like: OOPS THERE HE IS! (I MAY have done that before.. MAY HAVE!!!)

So I petition it and within 5-10 minutes I get a GM inside my mission...flying all around me in circles non-stop and here is a synopsis of what transpired:

GM_X: Hi I am GM_X how can I be of service
I Burnt The Toast: Well you could hold still for a second yer kinda making me dizzy LOL!
GM_X: So you need Dramamine?
I Burnt The Toast: LOL Or a taser!
GM_X: OUCH I am not into pain!
I Burnt The Toast: OK I will save that for the next date... hehe

GM_X disappears....................

30 Seconds later GM_X re-appears

GM_X: Is this considered the second date?

We chuckled and he found the last NPC half hidden in the ceiling...

He asked me if I needed anything else and I said No and thanked him for his help and the laughs....

He then said:
GM_X: You sure you don't need anything else???

OK so at this point I thought to myself: Uh oh does this guy think I was really flirting with him? (I tend to be flirtatious with everyone, but never really FLIRTING)

So I said Nah I am good..and thank him again.

GM_X: Ok Good...cuz I don't know how to fix a toaster! Have a good night!

I chuckled for a few minutes and just thought to myself: Only in CoH would a GM be that fun

(I looked for the email regarding this to give credit to the GM who it was, but I think I deleted it Hence why the name GM_X)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

I've gotten GM Lloyd on several occasions as well. One particular issue took a week to resolve, with the weekend and playing email tag and all, and it was resolved to my satisfaction.

GM Lloyd and the other GMs I interacted with as I was handed up the chain were all very helpful. I was so impressed that I wrote a letter and sent it in.

All of the GM's that i have met over the years in the game (and other NCsoft titles) have been pretty decent.

The email support, that can need work on in terms of making the responses more "human"... but they still get the job done overall (for me at least).

So thanks in particular to:

The EU GM who gave the Union server moral support the 1st time Hamidon went down (GM_Charles i think, although i seem to believe that he thought that we didnt have enough players to do it (this was back in 2005)).

GM_ROFL (US), who showed up in Tabula Rasa with the most *garish* clown outfit possible (left NCsoft to do something with photography I belive).

And to GM_Vagabond (US), who used to like dropping Thrax mobs on my head, insta-kill me if i spoke in General chat and generally messing around with me (once again in Tabula Rasa).

You 3 all showed me that the GM's like to have fun with their players, and have a passion for the games that they support.

So hats off to the GM's in general for doing a job where players only get in contact with you when stuff has gone wrong and people need someone to vent at.

*doffs cap*

Hey folks,

Thank you for the concern and praise, in both this and the other thread from last year. I've only been a City of Heroes GM since 2008, while GM Roland had actually been with the team since the launch of City of Villains. We'd been the top tier of all support for the longest amount of time, so that's probably why long community memories include us.

Yes, I'm still working at NCsoft for the foreseeable future. Yes, we're very busy with another game you've probably heard about.

City of Heroes always had a great community, but it didn't come easy. I know the developers gained a lot from suggestions made on these forums, and my team always appreciated the filter through which not-so-great ideas had to pass if anyone was going to pay them much mind. I'll give the Community Teams over the years credit for enforcing the rules here, but ultimately, it's the quality of the players within that community that matters more. CoH's community never lacked for pillars.

This will be my last post, and please don't send me private messages. I just wanted to say this much, and be gone again. The best GMs have always been there when you needed us, and not too much longer.

The fun you make was between yourselves and what the developers were able to provide. I encountered very few players I didn't consider smart and capable of finding their own joy in the entertainment they chose. My job was always to find that missing or obscured piece of information, or correct a minor mistake that stood between players and what they wanted, so they could get back to having fun on their own terms.

I couldn't always do it the way you wanted. But I always tried. We weren't perfect, and the way we handled things might have seemed impersonal at times. But we did it that way for a reason.

You deserve whatever joy you can make, however you choose to make it, with the respect and understanding that there are other people trying to have fun, too.

For whatever hammers I might have dropped on players in the name of rules enforcement, well:

It wasn't ever personal.

I tried my best to be fair.

I wish you all the best of enjoyment, wherever you look for it.

Best,
GM Lloyd
City of Heroes Support Team

Fparn!

Thank you GM Lloyd for all you have done!

Inclined to agree.

Have had a few encounters where specific GMs shall we say 'beat around the bush' and Lloyd comes in and clears it all up in one email!

Thank you GM_Lloyd for all you have done for COH !

I will not see you in the other game.......

Such class. We've had such wonderful people supporting/running this game all these years, and every red post just confirms it more and more. Thank you GM_Lloyd.

I have GW2 but don't really play it - it's a nice looking game but I am just not feeling it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rsi Thank you GM_Lloyd for all you have done for COH ! I will not see you in the other game.......

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

GM_Lloyd was actually the one who helped me when a group and I first encountered the TPN crash bug and ended up losing connection to the mapserver and rejoined to find ourselves in a random warehouse mission with level 12 NPC enemies...

I remember that he was very professional and had a sense of humor, if you continue to read this thread, I hope you know that I appreciated your help...even though you couldn't give us the badge for completion of the trial

My favorite GM encounter was on my Stalker doing a Tip mission. I had cleared the whole place of Carnies and the mission objective just would NOT update to the next part. So I did like 10 more sweeps to see if I missed the one dude who would trigger the next stage, and it never happened. So, I /petitioned.

For some reason I had stepped out of the mission, and the GM had entered after me and located the last Carny that was stuck in a wall or something and asked me to invite her to my team so I could be teleported to her when I entered. So I did... and it reset the mission.

/facepalm.

So the GM was like... "Duh! How did I not think that would happen?!" So she completed the mission for me. We had some nice banter for a minute after all of that, but it was a very fun and personable encounter, even though things didn't work out as she had planned.

I can't for the life of me recall what the exact name was, but it was something obviously feminine... and I think she called it a "blonde moment."

I think that was the one and only time I actually finished one of those surveys about my experience after... extolling how fun and personable that GM was.