@Caspian
Before I continue you need to understand what I’m about to say isn’t an attack but on observation from an objective 3rd party.
You are the head of the studio. The same studio that has the awesome idea for CoE and has given the player base this long list of innovative ideas that are to say the least brand new if not utterly outrageous for a MMO setting. So much so you’ve coined the phrase MEOW instead. Knowing your audience you have to understand players have a vested interest in their future world and future virtual lives. MMO players are like ants. We will organize ourselves into collectives and try to fill the jobs we expect to exist within the coming game whatever it may be.
In normal mmo terms it’s relatively easy. One game is just like everything that came before we’d know what to expect. But with CoE we have so many new ideas we have no idea how these systems interact or how to order our little communities. So when the head of the studio says something we latch onto it as gospel.
Now that said you and the rest of sbs have given out warnings about discord like you did again here. However you are the boss. When you speak it’s like the almighty to Moses. Every community I know has either a bot or individual who copies and pastes sbs comments from discord, website forums and interviews (QAs and the like) into their communal discord channels. Why do communities do this?
Money.
In a standard fare MMO the developer has a publisher footing the bill. Here we the players have given over 6 million in capital to fund CoE. So in addition to the normal MMO angst of trying to understand how things work and get our communities ready to hit the ground running on launch day folks have their wallets tied up in this as well. Right or wrong money is a strong motivator. So any shred of information no matter how “official” of said by the CEO it will be taken as fact.
Now we know discord isn’t official as said above but we have the soul chamber now. A place where adhoc QAs are held for those who have the time and luck to be idling in discord when you decide to hold one of these sessions. Because of this you have those who hear from the horses mouth and those who have to catchup in their community discord’s (hence the reason for bots and individuals coping the info as mentioned above) surely you can see how making an official channel in an unofficial medium can muddy the waters a bit.
Miscommunication is going to happen like the recent discussion over mayors and how to game the system when the ceo decides to drop in and just chat with folks. Don’t get me wrong that is an awesome thing to do but with the community so hungry for any scrap of info right before the most important milestone to date DSS you have to understand what you say can and will be analyzed, and dissected over and over.
So the problem from my ramblings above is this.
Communication.
How do we separate the informal chats that are not accurate as you don’t have notes and aren’t prepared to speak from those that are as accurate as can be given the development process?
In all honesty the only real solution is to have a public facing communications officer. Be it an actual hire or a community volunteer. Someone the community can follow and know when they post something regardless of media (discord or forums or whatnot) it is to be taken as concrete.
No one wants to lose the access and transparency you are trying to project but there has to be a better way to differentiate between official and unofficial.
This is my personal opinion and I’m sure I will get crucified for having it but honestly the problem keeps coming up with various folks giving out conflicting information (IP lock) and discord chats causing uproars there simply has to be a better way to communicate.