GMs play?

[Ewalleus]

I've always wanted to know if GMs play WoW. Do players know who they are? Do they experience the weekly wait we do on maintenance? What if they make a friend and spend a lot of time together? Can the GM tell Him/Her that they work for Blizzard? Or will it always be a secret?

[Arcilux]

They do play, and it is kept secret. I'm not sure how detailed their NDA is, but blues have posted before that they have personal accounts where nobody in their guild knows that they are running raids and BGs with an off duty blue

[Darsithis]

All secret and hush hush but plenty of GM's play. They talk about it from time to time in their forum responses.

[Frozenbeef]

Must really suck...you corpse camp their normal characters and they respond by nerfing your class to oblivion :S

[Seranthor]

I've always wanted to know if GMs play WoW. Do players know who they are? Do they experience the weekly wait we do on maintenance? What if they make a friend and spend a lot of time together? Can the GM tell Him/Her that they work for Blizzard? Or will it always be a secret?

Yes GMs play, Yes GMs post on the official forums, Yes GMs visit and post here; No, you wont know who they are, Yes they have to experience the same wait times like everyone else, I realistically expect it would always be a secret, unless they were living together or something like that.

---------- Post added 2012-11-16 at 10:23 AM ----------

Must really suck...you corpse camp their normal characters and they respond by nerfing your class to oblivion :S

Thats why you play the game like everyone you encounter is a GM in disguise...

[Deleted]

I don't thing GMs have any influence on the devs :P
They are like... well... ppl who clean the government building. They don't really know the politicians and even less about the politics

[Lochton]

I've always wanted to know if GMs play WoW. Do players know who they are? Do they experience the weekly wait we do on maintenance? What if they make a friend and spend a lot of time together? Can the GM tell Him/Her that they work for Blizzard? Or will it always be a secret?

Well, I bet alot of GM's and Devs still play, just look at some of their posts. And yes, they will have to wait for maintenance as well, since it's the servers being offline. And the rule is normally that you aren't allowed to share what you do to just anyone. Of course some know that they are GM's but online, it's supposed to be hush.

[tehdef]

I remember for a time in WotLK there was a lot to do about the fact that some GMs and devs played in guilds like Vodka, Blood Legion, Death & Taxes, etc.

Up to this day it's still rumoured regulary that several devs play in Vodka.

I used to be in vodka during BC. I'll let you sit on that for a bit so you can assume why I even bothered replying to the context of your statement.

[Firecrest]

We had a GM in our guild. A few of us pried it out of her but most of the guild found out she was a GM after she was let go as part of that workforce reduction Blizzard went through earlier in the year.

You have to remember, there are thousands of GMs. People have a vastly overblown idea of what GMs are, but they are really just glorified call center workers. They work in massive customer service centers - but rather than answering phones, they answer tickets. Most have far far far less "power" in game than what people think they have. I mean, seriously, you think GMs could play during server downtime? Oye vey...

[sam86]

http://www.wowpedia.org/Caydiem

[parkerlynne]

I was a GM for another company and we played in our off hours because we genuinely liked the game and to become as familiar with it as possible in order to better help the players we talked to.

We got to play on the servers while they were down for maintenance too, they would be brought up for internal access only so that we could test all functions before bringing them up for everyone.

We weren't supposed to let people know that we even worked for that company and if they knew, then we were not to mention working as GMs (not that a lot of people even know what that is in the non-gaming world). I cruised forums and left posts but had to always be careful to not show that I had anything resembling inside knowledge of the company or game. It was kinda fun having a 'secret' like that.

[Joeydivision82]

It's not nearly as secretive as people may think. I have 2 friends that worked for Blizzard as GMs and played regularly, one of which was always trying to get me to transfer to his server and join his guild. Had there been an issue, he would not have asked me every time I spoke with him if I was transferring, and he probably would have told me in Dvance to never mention him being a GM.

The other friend, stayed at Blizzard up until recently and would regularly be able to help me with account issues rather than putting in a GM ticket and wait 3 days for a response. It was never something that could compromise her job or position at the company, but she had the pull to help things run faster for a few select friends.

I also knew another guy, but we were not really friends, and he was a GM while in D&T. We had a lot of mutual friends, so he would be around quite a bit, and would share things with us that weren't damaging, but our knowledge of him being a GM could have easily been exposed along with the stuff he would tell us.