From Sage Sundi, Global Online Producer:

New Policies

We are proud to announce that we are making our GM policies public and accessible to everyone. This decision was arrived at after much deliberation between our development team, global branches and other departments using input we received from players through Allakhazam.com and numerous GM calls. As a result, we decided to make the GM policies public, and in order to provide an even higher standard of GM service, to reassess what it is that GMs do.

Now that the GM Policies and Online Conduct are public, we’d like to point out major changes and clarify parts that may have caused confusion in the past.

What are Game Masters (GMs) for?

GMs are customer service professionals in FINAL FANTASY XI that possess a rich knowledge of our games. Their goal is to directly connect players within the game to our services, acting as the first line in our service front. They aim to help you achieve the best gaming environment possible and to help solve any problems that you may have. Only people with passion and an understanding of these goals can become GMs.

Lofty it may sound, but every GM in FINAL FANTASY XI shares these goals. And to foster better understanding, we have decided to release our Online Conduct and GM Policies to the public.

Restoring Items

We often receive calls about lost items. After investigating, sometimes we find user error was the cause of the loss. Regrettably, we could not return lost items to their owners.

While some lost items are of extremely high value, we realized that many players had a great sentimental attachment to items of relatively low worth. The value of those memories is unique to each player, and we cannot attach a price tag to make up for such a loss. Taking this into account, we sat down and thought about what our GMs could do to help in this situation.

We are happy to announce that we have decided to empower our GMs with the ability to restore items, regardless of reason, so long as we are able to confirm that they were indeed lost.

However, as written in our GM policies, players can only take advantage of this feature a limited number of times. This is necessary to prevent abuse of the system and to maintain fair game play. Currently there is a limit of one reimbursement ticket per account.

As outlined above, if you lose something important to you, you have the option of using this ticket to get your item back. However, we ask that you act immediately. If you delay for more than a week, we will become unable to confirm the item loss and restore your item.

Also, we intentionally left the number of tickets ambiguous ("limited number"), since we feel that in the months and years to follow, there may be a need to increase this number at some point in time. This decision was made to allow changes as needed in the future without having to announce them. If you ever lose an item that is important to you, please report the issue to a GM immediately.

Restoring Lost Experience Points Due to Technical Difficulties

Since we provide service throughout the year (24/7, 365 days a year), sometimes the servers for FINAL FANTASY XI encounter technical difficulties. This is our responsibility, and our number one concern has always been restoring service, as soon as possible. In addition, we have decided to start reimbursing players who have lost experience once an area is up and running again.

We’re sure that some of you have come back to the game after a server problem, and after logging in, find yourself in front of an “Incredibly Tough” enemy and then KO’d. A GM will broadcast an area-wide message asking for players who need their assistance. If you are one of these players, send the GM a tell and wait in your KO’d state. A GM should arrive shortly to move you to a safe place and revive your character. We will then restore your lost experience points.

Of course, you can always choose to forgo this option if you would rather quickly return to your home point, or have another player raise you instead. However, please be aware that we will be unable to compensate any lost experience once the above happens.

We plan to implement this policy in the next update because the GM functions have to be upgraded to accommodate this feature.

Will This Really Improve the GMs’ Standing?

"GMs don’t listen to what we have to say," "All they’re good for is getting us out of a stuck situation," and "It’s not worth it to call it in, you’ll just get punished instead" are just several examples of opinions we’ve heard voiced on the forums.

Our team’s primary goal is to change the perception of our GMs by helping our players understand what our GMs do. Some have said that making our policy public would cause great harm to our support staff. Even within our team, there was much opposition to allowing GMs to make themselves visible. However, we believe that unless this and other policy changes happen, we would be unable to demonstrate that we are here to support you, our players. Without these changes. our GMs' reputation would remain poor, and we could no longer take pride in our service.

We are aware that GMs are held in low regard because, their role in handing out punishment clashes with the image they project in other support tasks. Punishment is unfortunately necessary to protect our players in Vana`diel. Indeed, the image of meting out punishment for harassment and improper behavior contrasts sharply with the friendly, accessible GM that you normally encounter. Furthermore, GMs must keep confidential the results of our investigations in order to maintain the privacy of both parties involved. This adds to mistrust in GMs.

Since this is the perfect time for us to discuss this, I'd like to make the following clear. The support staff are here to support you in the role-playing game that you, the players, enjoy. They (the GM staff) will never mix support and role-playing. Part of the reason we decided that our GM staff should make themselves visible was to make this distinction clear.

Though it may seem to some of you that there is a misunderstanding within the Japanese MMO market as to what MMOs are about, special cases aside, GMs are never in a position to role-play. GMs who role-play during weddings only do so as a specific task. After their task at the event is complete, they still have other responsibilities which can include punishing players. Oftentimes this may come immediately after the event in which they were previously role-playing. One thing we would like to make clear is that we feel any role-playing that coincides with normal support tasks is inappropriate. Unfortunately, not everyone who provides service in this industry shares this view, and some services choose a different standard. These services unfortunately tarnish the professional image that GMs deserve.

In order to ensure a positive image within FINAL FANTASY XI, our valued players will always receive the following service from our GMs.

• Our GMs will make themselves visible as much as possible
• While we will not role-play, we will be as friendly as possible and never be rude
• We will ALWAYS give you an answer in some form to your questions
• We place the satisfaction of you, our players above everything else
• We will take a much harsher stance against disruptive game play
  

In other words, you will never be punished when making a call, no matter how trivial it may be. But if a call is intended to obstruct our service, then our GMs will have no choice but to take action against the caller, because it prevents us from giving other players the support they need. As long as nothing inappropriate is done, our GMs will always be friendly and forthcoming when communicating with you.


Global Online Producer
Sage Sundi