Originally Posted by
General Wang
Honestly, I don't feel that a change in staff is really going to help anyone. It might, but things won't be significantly different. Instead of pointing fingers at the PR's, I'd rather point fingers at Era's current society. Right now, Era is at a phase where the entire game is centralized around the PR. Now why is that bad? Allow me to explain:
First of all, PR's are pretty useless. I'm not trying to offend anyone, but think about it. Era is a very straightforward game. Most things are self-explanatory, and if not, there's NPC's who explain certain things. Era also is part of Graal. Last I checked, Era's not the only Graal game. There's also Classic and Zone. Although Era players do find these servers less appealing, some will occasionally venture to another server. What's interesting is that they'll usually spend many hours on this new server, even if they dislike it. It's likely that they'll spend a fair amount of time on a new server because of the sense of exploration. Exploring new gameplay, new areas, and even new graphics can be an enjoyable experience. But if there's a PR to tell you where everything is, you lose chances to explore areas that you find by mistake when looking for a certain place. Era's also a social game. I highly doubt that any of you can accurately say that you don't have friends on Graal. The interactions that many players have with PR's are much less fulfilling than having an interaction with a knowledgeable friend. I'm sure this sounds like a major tangent, but trust me, it'll come into play later.
So far, we've explained why players don't need PR's. So why does that make the players the problem? Simply put, it's because the players are the ones who make being a PR such a big deal. From my experience, when PR's get hired they are paraded either in start park or in the events house (honestly, I don't know if this happens anymore). Other players see this, decide that they want the recognition, and shoot for PR. This results in 3 major consequences: 1) Players are trying to increase the demand for PR's and are able to use peer pressure to overwhelm current PR's. 2) Massive amounts of players are applying to become a PR, even when they don't really understand the job. 3) The most disturbing consequence is that players are now willing to do anything to become a PR, such as trying to gun down other PR's or lying in their applications. What these consequences ultimately result in is what players are upset about: a perception of a highly inefficient PR team. Why I say "perception" is because the PR position really doesn't need to be doing much, as pointed out earlier. But because of these consequences, we have 35 PR's (this number comes from the staff list here on the forums) who are constantly overwhelmed by players. They don't need to be overwhelmed and we certainly don't need that many PR's; they're better off in a different positions where they can speed the development of Era.
So players, next time you want to complain about PR's, think about what you're doing. You're inflating the team and steering Era's society down the wrong track. I will admit that I'm not a fan of the current staff team, but still, they don't deserve as much heat as we're giving them. The best way to permanently fix issues like these is to shape the Era community into a society that's less dependent on PR's.