Today the announcement went up that Sanya Weathers, former Internet Relations Manager for EA Mythic on DAOC and Warhammer, was moving on to pursue new opportunities, onward and upward, exelsior, etc.
If you played EQ, one of the first impressions that you probably got from Sanya Weathers is that she did primal screams really, really well.
If you played DAOC, you probably spent a lot of time doing a slow burn about how Mythic hated your class/realm/life and it was probably Sanya’s fault because everyone could clearly see where the stars aligned so that your class abilities were clearly underperforming as any basic statistical analysis could show even the worst moron who never plays their own game and when they do it’s on the side that is being favored unless you play on that side in which case they hate you and should be reported to the Better Business Bureau or the World Court. (exhale)
My perspective is a bit different. I was privileged enough to see her career from the inside. I was able to watch as she took a much-maligned job and turn it into a profession, through the simple and painfully obvious act of …being honest and professional.
That latter probably threw quite a few folks who only knew Sanya from her profanity-flecked message board rantings pre-DAOC. (And yes, she can make a sailor blush if given enough reason, thanks to quite a …creative vocabulary.) In fact, one of the hits she took, often, in her new job was that she was uniquely unqualified for her position, due to her constant sniping from the sidelines.
She took that, filed it in a box alongside the ever-growing collection of hate mails and photoshop manipulations, and kept doing her job. Which, since it wasn’t really clearly defined, she proceeded to reinvent.
Her take on official message boards, for example, is that they’re inherently inefficient. Many-to-one-to-many. You can never get complete feedback from a message board thread, because it’s a self-selecting sample of people who have gotten quite good at jockeying for position on a message board. So instead, she pulled regular reports both from analyzing message board trends, as well as from any other metrics she could get her hands on (one of my jobs at the time involved trying to come up with more).
She then made sure that decision makers for the game had that information available (whatever they did with it, beyond that point, was up to them), and then carried back to the player base as much information as she could about what was being done with that information. Meanwhile, the self-selecting sample of people who had gotten quite good at jockeying for position on a message board started to feel a bit ignored, because there wasn’t always an immediate response to every Dramatic Crisis d’Jour.
Much of what she did was “gimmicky”, such as the weekly “Grab Bags” that collected often unrelated answers to random game-related questions, along with an opportunity to respond to whatever Dramatic Crisis d’Jour presented itself. Yet in many ways, the gimmicks worked. Players knew to expect the Grab Bag on a weekly basis, would often handicap it, sometimes complain about it… and always read it.
Her navigating the twin pillars of Scylla and Charibdis, the developers in danger of retreating into bunkers and the players lobbing grenades at said bunkers, was not always perfect, but it was still far, far better than any had seen before. As the years passed, many players become frequently more and more abusive, often simply because, well, they could. And often, developers gave her incorrect answers to questions (including myself, a few times) for which she would take the blame. That, too, unfortunately, was part of her job.
Finally, almost every competitor paid her the ultimate compliment: here a grab bag, there some player stats, and central community news sites, well, everywhere. And that is truly her greatest legacy; that the style of communication that she fostered became adopted everywhere, and made routine. For those of us who remember MMOs prior to 2001, that was an accomplishment all its own.
I suspect we’ll be hearing from her again.
#1 by penrose on May 2nd, 2007
Sanya’s awesome. I would have thought she would have quit a long time ago because of the large % of whiners and just plain unpleasant people playing DAoC. STFU n00b! c4n u g1v3 m3 g0ld???!!?!?!?! y0u h4v3 t0 g1v3 m3 500g0ld n0w!!! Its amazing how quickly your /ignore list can fill up.
Sigh. Anyway, I am glad she seems happy and I hope she does something exiting next.
The “mutual decision” thing is crap though. That is HR speak for someone at EA wanted her to leave and the person writing the Press Release did not want to be a dick about it. I am interested in the actual story. Does anyone know what actually happened?
#2 by IanB on May 2nd, 2007
I still think “no official message boards” is a terrible decision. “Not JUST official message boards as a feedback path” is fine, but I am a little confused by all of the praise going around for Mythic’s communication methods; even as a Pendragon insider I felt like the feedback we got from Mythic when I was a player was very limited and poor (except for from the itemization people, they actually participated.) The average player who didn’t even have that kind of access felt even more shut out (based on what I’ve heard from the people I played with, anyway), grab bag or not.
Granted I left a little while before they got rid of Mackey, and maybe it all got better after that.
#3 by Xanthippe on May 2nd, 2007
Mythic’s loss – Sanya was a real asset to the company. I kept playing DAOC longer than I would have had she not done what she did so well.
She set the bar high for community relations.
I’d wish her luck but I doubt she needs it. I hope she’s happy in her next incarnation.
#4 by Clyde Q Cragmoore on May 2nd, 2007
Could this herald the return of Tweety’s Rants?
#5 by Bob on May 2nd, 2007
Oddly enough, another former DAOC internet relations guy, Markey, sits in the cube next to me here at WotC.
#6 by damijin on May 2nd, 2007
I was never a DAoC player, but Sanya’s work with the game is pretty legendary. Good luck with whatever the future has in store for you, Sanya!
#7 by scottj on May 2nd, 2007
> Oddly enough, another former DAOC
> internet relations guy, Markey,
> sits in the cube next to me here at
> WotC.
You got both his handle and his job wrong. He was a designer on DAOC, specializing in class balance and provoking large quantities of love from message boards.
#8 by Needin on May 2nd, 2007
Sanya was one of the shining lights of Mythic Entertainment and DAOC. Cheers to her and greatest hopes that the future will bring her good things.
Thanks for everything Tweety!
#9 by Malderi on May 2nd, 2007
Thanks for the link to the exit interview, that was fun to read.
“And, I, uh, had this website…”
Let’s hope it gets revived for a post or two before she gets sucked back into the corporate world.
#10 by imweasel on May 2nd, 2007
“I still think “no official message boards” is a terrible decision. “Not JUST official message boards as a feedback path” is fine, but I am a little confused by all of the praise going around for Mythic’s communication methods; even as a Pendragon insider I felt like the feedback we got from Mythic when I was a player was very limited and poor (except for from the itemization people, they actually participated.) The average player who didn’t even have that kind of access felt even more shut out (based on what I’ve heard from the people I played with, anyway), grab bag or not.
Granted I left a little while before they got rid of Mackey, and maybe it all got better after that.”
QFT
#11 by Bob on May 2nd, 2007
>You got both his handle and his job >wrong. He was a designer on DAOC, >specializing in class balance and >provoking large quantities of love from >message boards.
I did get the part about him sitting a cube away correct though. He, unfortunately, isn’t here this week so I had no opportunity to clarify my facts. :/
#12 by Freakazoid on May 2nd, 2007
Mackey was given the boot? And he works at WotC?
I heard a new m:tg set came out, so I’ll keep an eye out for the sorcery card that taps all opponent’s creatures and the 1/1 green creature that sends all tapped creatures to the graveyard.
#13 by Will on May 2nd, 2007
I was just sort of hoping that Tweety was gonna go work on the WAR stuff.
#14 by Trol on May 2nd, 2007
Sanya rocked, plain and simple. I hate to see her go before WAR’s release. It seems EA is dismantling one of the greatest MMO company’s slowly but surely.
#15 by Buur on May 3rd, 2007
It’s a shame. Was starting to really look forward to Warhammer since I am rather burned out on WoW. Not that Warhammer won’t still be a good game, it was just going to be nice playing a game Sanya was involved with for a change.
#16 by Darniaq on May 3rd, 2007
Good luck Sanya!
#17 by No.6 on May 3rd, 2007
Tweety on boss mobs: “If the only way they had to make mobs tough was to cheat, i.e. make them hit ridiculously hard, AE lifetaps, ultra-high resistance, etc., then it would be a boring game, and we wouldn’t be here arguing about it 2 years after release.”
Oops. Doesn’t that describe *every* MMOG’s ‘named’ mobs? Oh well, somewhere we got stuck on ‘aggro.’ Mobs became infinitely stupid and were only capable of tallying up that they hated Cleric01 3,540 much and Fighter09 3,792 much, so they must go hit Fighter09 even though he’s never going to die as long as Cleric01 is standing behind him.
In a reasonable MMOG, the only reason an intelligent mob should stop before killing Cleric01 is because it is dangerous to continued life to turn one’s back on people who’ve spent their whole lives training to carve things up with 3 to 6 foot pieces of sharpened steel.
Hmm, I’ve gotten on a bit of a rant myself. Best of luck Sanya and I’m sure your decision was the right one.
#18 by Oliver Smith on May 3rd, 2007
Sanya was one of the few MMO devs at my first AGC who gave me a case of the groupies
Some of us over at WWIIOL might quibble about a qualification of “first” on some of your grab bag, hehe
But you won’t get any argument from me for accrediting them as Sanya’s legacy. To her further credit – I’d be highly surprized if Sanya had been aware of the WB/WWII versions of some of those things.
#19 by Oliver Smith on May 3rd, 2007
Sanya was one of the few MMO devs at my first AGC who gave me a case of the groupies
Some of us over at WWIIOL might quibble about a qualification of “first” on some of your grab bag, hehe
But you won’t get any argument from me for accrediting them as Sanya’s legacy. To her further credit – I’d be highly surprized if Sanya had been aware of the WB/WWII versions of some of those things.
All I can say is that Sanya being “available” can only mean some MMO is going to get very, very lucky
#20 by No.6 on May 3rd, 2007
“I’d be highly surprized if Sanya had been aware of the WB/WWII versions of some of those things.”
As you noted on your side, you’d be surprised how often people looked at WB as inspiration. I wouldn’t venture to guess that Sonya did or didn’t – but when I saw DAoC’s thing, I personally said “oh, ok, they have score pages.”
Of course WB has always relied on “whatever lunatic is so inspired by the game that he wants to give hundreds of his spare hours to create ” ranging from the score pages to, well, Roger Wilco.
Heck, really DAoC’s RvR is nothing more than the old Air Warrior A/B/C endless war… (/grins)
#21 by Vaergoth on May 4th, 2007
Don’t worry. Old CMs never die. They just stop crushing and start baking bread.
#22 by Sanya on May 4th, 2007
Doh! I claim pitiful and inexcusable ignorance w/r/t WB/WWIIO. To play a warsim of any flavor requires more gaming skill than I have. The Z-AXIS requires more skill than I have. Really, in ‘01, if it was outside the fantasy MMO ghetto, I never saw it.
I’ll say also that we didn’t think we were revolutionary – we thought we were the purveyors of obvious truth. (We = Scott and I, we did the Herald together and he deserves much more credit than he is taking for himself.) If I had known, I would have tipped my hat years ago.
Everything on this thread has been too nice, and I sincerely thank you all. Swearing comes easier to me than what this thread is inspiring.
I’m using sanyaMTW (at) gmail (dot) com for now, though the volume is temporarily making response time… as bad as it was when I was Mythic’s head CM
#23 by Atricks on May 4th, 2007
Wow, good luck Sanya. I can’t believe she put up with us all those years at E3 when I was (somewhat) doing stuff with Todd Pratt. I know super Canadian Mike Shears is also probably sheading a tear too.
Thanks, Sanya!
#24 by Njal on May 5th, 2007
Go Sanya.
I always liked what she did and she kept me in DAoC a goodly while longer.
#25 by dammy on May 6th, 2007
YANDC (Yet Another Nail in DAoC’s Coffin) has been hammered in. Hopefully she found a better job else where and left before it all inploded.
#26 by Pika on May 6th, 2007
BRING BACK TWEETY RANTS, BEEEOTCH11!1!
#27 by YelkonY on May 7th, 2007
I’ll miss her also. She gave strength and heart to the DAOC peoples imo. I wanna know what game she goes to so I can buy it. EA bites imho.
#28 by David on May 8th, 2007
Wow, this news blew my mind when I heard it. I never met Sanya, or even talked with her, but I listened to her voice and read her input for nearly half a dozen years. Her voice was how I saw Camelot.
I always loved Sanya as our CM because she had so much fire and life, you just knew she would go up to bat for you and put it all on the line when it mattered, and maybe she finally lost that battle.
But I tell you what, whomever hires her gets my business. I believe in a CM who can tell the truth and will tell the truth, and will fight for the players. I’m happy to have given Mythic six years of my business, when I heard they hired Sanya to talk for them, I knew they were my kind of company.
I suppose that with the change of tides so comes the change of faces. Now that they are EA, and Sanya is gone, well, I don’t know what to think but I don’t have much faith in them now.
Gonna miss Sanya terribly, terribly.
#29 by Circle on May 9th, 2007
Thank you Sanya for all you have done for the gaming industry, you will be missed.
#30 by Jessie, Colorado Springs, CO on September 25th, 2007
an ok person leaves a lame game