GM003 tells his story! (real convo!)

lol i have spoken to him before not alot though….. wait are we sure he is a he not a she?

erhm Muhlakai… you really shouldn´t have posted this. I don´t know how well you know Asians and the way they try to tell you things with subsentences, but he really tried to make you aware, that he feels quite unconfortable with the conversation and that he really wants to keep this conversation private.
[Help]You: I’ll post our conversation on the forums. Then they know your story.
[Help]gm003: Needn’t
[Help]gm003: I only want to talk about the game
His needn´t is a typical mistake for English learners. He meant : You must not post this.
I hope you will read trough this conversation again and remove it. You will make life for him really hard with this.

Muhlakai… why dont you try to speak there language..? and let see if you can do better…

Flaggued your post.

Sorry.
Gm003 said he don’t wanna you to post in public your private message with him.

So why did you ?

he try to do his best, it is his work, that give him food each day, no need to make him lost his work.

And a private message can’t go public if one say “no”, and he said.

Here I’d like to say something for the GM003.

Muhlakai, you asked for first name of the GM for several times, but I think this maybe you do not know much about Chinese names. In America, first name are normally not personal, for example there may be thousands of male share the first name “Michael” and people are very likely to tell strangers their first name, not the last name. While in China, last names are often shared by many people while first name are regarded very personal. Chinese will only tell strangers their last name, NOT their first name. So, the GM may may feel strange when you ask for her/his first name while you may feel weired that she/he refused to tell you the first name. That’s the difference between cultures.

I’ve been learning English for 15 years and now living in USA, but still you can not expect too much from my English. But I can feel that the GMs are trying their best to communicating with the players.

I think the online GMs is one of the best feature of this game!

Some quick replies:

wafuness: I’m not making fun of his ability to speak English. I never did. In fact, if you look back at the history in this forum of people talking about the GMs we didn’t even know that the GMs were Chinese and not just English speakers who were too lazy to do a thorough job.

Re: posting the convo – GMs shouldn’t be robots. That only assists people in getting angry with them. 003 showed some real care for the players in this convo that I thought was enlightening. I know that I, personally, thought more highly of him to hear of a human side, i.e., his arguing with 002, his pride in taking care of customers, his desire that no one was angry. To me, that shows character that has been missing from typical interactions with GMs. Frustration, instead of being directed at the GMs who apparently receive minimal training and direction, can be more properly directed at the companies that put them in those places.

Finally, cultural misunderstandings are common in these types of situations. Whatever is typical in one society is usually irregular in a second one. If I was playing a game that focused on a Chinese audience, was visiting a place of Chinese culture or was otherwise immersing myself in an interaction steeped in Chinese tradition then you guys might be right to suggest additional consideration. Instead, these guys are made digital visitors to Western culture and the expectation should be that the customers they deal with will have Western tendencies. That said I also disagree with the concept that I showed insensitivity. I didn’t berate him for not giving me a name. I didn’t embarass him. 003 has shown his thanks to me, if anything.

In short, this convo made me appreciate 003 more. For those of you who think that that means that I was insensitive or vaguely racist you can go grow up. Please shove it until you do.

Originally posted by montev:

ur so stupid muhlakai

lol this is goldenwing btw

He is stupid for actually showing some intelligence, Right. You do realise calling people stupid with no basis or proof is really silly and immature, rite?
But yeah, the GMs are just normal people, albiet from a difficult culture, who are trying to help you, trying to use a language which they probably don’t get too much chance to practice with, which is not helped by the pure illiteracy of a fair amount of the English speaking/typing population of the world, and doing a very difficult and stressful job.
Show some patience and appreciation, and if you really find them not useful, ask in chat(either global or Kong)
/rawr

JetLag (1): he’s my guildmaster in-game.

Montev: ur stupider. lol :D

Wow you flagged my post and I said nothing negative. I simply supported muhlaki for posting the conversation. So I ask what was offensive about my post and even more why was it removed? Was it because I said Muhlakai should be the official interviewer? Or because I requested that Muhlakai should post more? Personally I don’t see either one of these things as crossing the line or even coming close to it. Now let me give my opinion on the people who seem to be supporting GM003. First I could understand not agreeing with Muhlakai for asking for the guys name, I think that would make almost anyone uncomfortable, including most Americans. But the rest of the questions, I didn’t think were overboard, nor did I think Muhlakai was trying to target the Chinese race for speaking bad English. The reason I support Muhlakai is because I have personally had a very bad experience with GM003, and it wasn’t at all because his English was bad, but rather he was no help at all and decided to respond to me 10 times in 3 hours. And to make matters worse he decided to abandon the conversation after leading me on that he was solving my problem. I like help sections in games too, but if there is a specific GM that is not helping the problems and instead hindering them I think it should be pointed out so that way either the GM can improve on his helping skills, or a new GM is put in his place altogether. This is just my opinion on the subject and hopefully it didn’t offend anyone.

Why was there a need for this?

Stupid trolls. Sigh

Originally posted by KenjiTamada:

erhm Muhlakai… you really shouldn´t have posted this. I don´t know how well you know Asians and the way they try to tell you things with subsentences, but

Stereotype.
Is 6 years not enough to know how to speak proper English?

There was nothing racist or insensitive about this post. If the guy doesn’t understand someone’s imperfect english, that doesn’t make him a racist.

Not being racist is the new racism. It’s fashionable to be blindly cultural ultrasensitive now, just like it used to be fashionable to think the races should be segregated. It’s still just people not thinking for themselves.

just because someone does not have good English does not mean shit, well many, english is just the universal language cause the British ruled almost all the Earth once upon the time. i bet Russian would have been the Official Universal language had they ruled.

please give the Guy/Girl a break, if you need help, pls use simple english.

No we shouldn’t poke fun at him for not speaking great English, I know I can’t speak his/her language. That’s beside the point, this is a game written in english for I presume people that speak english. So therefore the help in the game should speak english, especially when this game has an option to charge cash (during Beta), all sorts of things are likely to belly up and it is very irresponsible of someone to bring such bad support to the game.

The GMs shouldn’t be learning the game, I encountered a GM yesterday who didn’t know what I meant by an NPC.

A chain is only as strong as the weakest link, and this game is choc full of bugs and has some support members that nether know how the game functions or how to speak the language that the game is written in.

Uncool on several levels.

A: He’s probably giving his time freely to help people out, not necessarily getting paid at all. I don’t know how GMs work on here, but many other gaming communities have volunteer moderators. Don’t see why this would be an exception.
B: You NEVER ask ANYONE their name EVER… that’s common internet protocol… especially someone in a position of authority. That’s never your business unless he wants to tell you, which he obviously didn’t, and understandably given the way you treated him.
C: Actually posting the conversation incriminates you more than anyone for being a jackass towards a GM.
D: Though arguably not racist your tone was unnecessarily rude and condescending.

Ease up on the GMs.

As far as I’m concerned asking for a name should be bannable, as with A/S/L or any other cyber-stalkeresque behavior (realize that wasn’t the intention here, but important to note that it’s the reason behind the generally accepted rule)… you got off easy.

Luckily for you he took a passive stance instead of biting back as he should have.

I’ll ask people their names as and when I choose. They have the right to refuse to tell me or provide an alternative and I have the right to decide whether I’m ok with that or not. Wow, I’m pretty placid but your post actually annoyed me.

Yeah, I looked at the rules after and apparently that’s cool on Kong. My bad.
Most other online communities the A/S/L thing doesn’t fly. At all.
Annoyed or not, it’s a fact that there are a lot of creepers, especially online, which is why most sites have guidelines in place to protect against that sort of behavior.
So yeah. Ask whatever personal questions you will of anyone at all. Have fun.
Sorry to disturb your placidity.

Maug, you’re still a bit hot-headed, I think. Sure, my words were “first name” but if you’re going to analyze my intention then why don’t you ask for them? I’m surprised that more “name objectors” haven’t realized that the context for my question (which is clearly enumerated in the chat) was that I wanted to have ANY handle at all to call him by other than the anonymous GM003. He could have told me his name was King, Jumpy or even Maugwal. First names are common handles for personal reference and many in Cafe Kong know each other by first name.

“Most other online communities” apparently doesn’t include anywhere that I’ve visited in 20 years as a netizen. I’ve never been somewhere that would ban you for asking for a first name. There’s lots of places where people guard any pieces of identity jealously, but I’ve definitely never seen that on a game site. Consider Kong, for instance. Lots of people talk about where they live (country/state/region, their age, first names, what they’re doing in school/at work, etc. LAST names, by contrast, are VERY well guarded, as are relatively highly specific pieces of info like zip codes.

You should interview GM007 next.