GM Developer Blog
Another new GM to the team?
I think some players will be wondering why do we have another GM to the team. heRO is an old but very small server, so why is there so many GMs?
TL;DR: 2 GMs moved to be inactive. Pandora and Aki moved to backend. Ciar, Ayu and Pereca have to do less, so we have Flutrane and Aventurine join to fill in.
Thus, it's time to revamp the wiki's GM Team page to highlight what is happening. As the server ages, so does the GM team, and different people handle different responsibilities. At the same time, some other GMs can no longer contribute as much as they used to. There have been age-old problems that plague an old server as well- problems that new servers do not have to face, such as a database of characters from 2006 that has to be compatible with a 2024 system. Furthermore, a mix of stagnant personality plus a limiting skill set does not allow the GM team to address these problems. New blood is required to keep things moving.
Therefore, some of the old GMs will take a step back. Players probably have noticed already, but GM-Rahice and GM-Garr have been absent for quite a long time for various reasons. They will step back to be inactive GMs. GM-Aki and GM-Pandora are rare for players except for those who may have support tickets submitted, where they support players in account or donation-related matters. Outside of the players' sight, GM-Pandora continues to be the server administrator who is responsible for server hosting and all auxiliary sites, such as the website and the wiki. GM-Aki assists GM-Pandora to be the account and database administrator. Finally, GM-Abathur has always been a GM in the background for scripting and coding support. So, out of the GM team, 5 members will unlikely be seen in the game too often.
That leaves three in-game GMs: myself (GM-Ayu), GM-Ciar and GM-Pereca. For various real-life reasons, the three of us have been less active than before, such as for school/professional upgrading, work and health reasons. Our timezone coverage is also relatively weak, especially since we have more European/Asian players than traditional North America. Therefore, we decided that we can use some new members to the team.
Our duties have also been shuffled around to reflect the reality of different GMs stepping back and new GMs coming in.
GM-Ciar will continue to lead the GM team, overseeing all other GMs' duties and serving as the final reviewer of all changes made by other GMs. High-level server directives will be set by GM-Ciar for other GMs to execute. On top of that, he will resume his usual status as our server's mapper- for example, the recent maps used in Rental WoE and Iron Fist tournament are Ciar's more recent work. He will also do some light scripting himself- he took part in some of the recent Port Malaya releases, the anniversary + Halloween event. GM-Ciar also has a November Thanksgiving event prepared for everyone as well!
GM-Ayu will retain the responsibility for server balance. Although other GMs and T/D members also make suggestions and contributions to balance, I will approve the detailed mathematical changes in execution. While I will still contribute to scripting, making backend changes (such as further class re-balance or making buffs/nerfs to existing custom changes) and being an event host, I will also relieve some of this work and pass it to the new GMs so that I'll take more of a backseat in this area until some real-life circumstances with work have cleared up.
GM-Pereca will be the main in-game and discord GM for ticket resolutions for non-technical matters, and hopefully, she can return to host some monthly events for our players.
GM-Flutrane will primarily be a backend GM who will take over as primary source code control and the main tech GM who will implement custom features for heRO. With Flutrane's help, heRO has recently implemented features unique to heRO only and not seen on other servers, such as pet inventory, weapon costumes and pet disguises. The recent roguelite arena in Mystic Tower is also supported by many Flutrane's work, even though Aventurine and I hosted the event. Flutrane is working hard on a never-seen-before-repeatable activity for players, such as this year's Christmas celebration, so be sure to look forward to it!
Intern-Aventurine will do a mixture of both player-facing in-game events, especially for players who like to take a risks and gamble away. Aventurine will help in hosting regular events so that we can restore monthly events with his increased coverage. Behind the scenes, Aventurine will help me in patch-related work, scripting, and most importantly, be heRO's network administrator to help in backend infrastructure fixes and improvements. Even though we had technical staff in heRO's history, we always had programmers but never anyone who specialized in networking. We look forward to Aventurine's contributions in this department.
Our last dev blog post discussed things that affect the players for the immediate future. This major GM change will also affect some things that will not immediately impact players in the game. Because these changes are not observable in-game, we hope that they'll be a net benefit for our small but close community.
