“Khajiit Has Wares if You Have Coin.”
Sometimes you get to be a part of something that is truly unique. The number of people who have launched a AAA MMO is small and I’m fortunate to be one of them. I started at Zenimax Online about 6 months before the launch of Elder Scrolls Online. I was a GM, a game master, a venerated figure in the MMO zeitgeist. Having been a World of Warcraft player for years I was already well versed in the world of MMOs.
I didn’t stay a GM though. After a couple months management started forming the “special teams.” I applied for the enigmatic “Live Team.” In fact, I may have been the only person who did apply for the Live Team. This was the team I was on when the game launched. We were responsible for overseeing all of the internal customer service tools and managing emergency situations when they happened. We were also part of the game server maintenance once a week (Later I would manage those game servers, but that was after launch and a whole other story.).
The launch was a massive team effort. We were opening the game servers and allowing millions of people to flood into the world of Tamriel. This was a rare moment where everyone in the entire company was working on the same project at the same moment, all of us completely engrossed in the event. On launch day I was busy tracking metrics like current player count, how many contacts were coming in, and the most common complaints. I would update the “War Room” with these metrics every hour and run any reports that they needed. I was also keeping an eye on the CS tools and managing the work force. We had six call centers around the world, and I had to make sure that they were all functioning efficiently.
This game launch was high stress. A lot of money, time and effort had gone into building it and everyone had a personal stake in its success. We all had “Launch Team” jackets that we were wearing so we even looked completely unified. It was amazing to see such a large group of people working together in such natural harmony. We had planned everything down to the smallest detail. I had email templates ready to go in the event of any number of failures. I didn’t end up using any of them. We kept the War Room running for about 48 hours before we all felt comfortable enough to move into “maintenance mode” or normal everyday operations.
This was one of the most important jobs I have had, because over time plenty of things did go wrong, and I learned how to manage an emergency calmly and thoughtfully. I also learned a phrase which has been important to every job I have worked since then: “If everything is a P1, nothing is a P1.” We ranked problems by priority, the lowest being P5 and the highest being P1. Even today I explain to people that I work with that if they end every email that they send with “ASAP” that they aren’t actually prioritizing anything, they’re just putting a frustrating expectation on the teams you work with who can’t possibly do everything all at the same time. Prioritizing and delegating are difficult and important skills and this was where I learned them. I now analyze every task and request for how important it is in relation to everything else going on. I consider not only my workload, but the workloads of others and the overall goals of the team before I throw “ASAP” on anything. Trust that your teammates are already working as efficiently and quickly as they can and don’t put any unnecessary stress on them.
Considering the novelty of the event, this story is pretty boring, and that’s the impressive part. There were no catastrophic failures, there was no chaos. Everyone was prepared and worked together and treated each other with respect and trust. The outcome is a game that is still online today with millions of players and my name is in the credits.
