A Passing of the Community Relations Manager Guard

A Tear-Stained Letter from Scapes (view source)

June 29, 2015

Scapes has headed off to work on a new project and Celestrata has taken his position as the ArcheAge community relations manager. His official good-bye as well as Celestrata's official introduction posts are below.



Adventurers,

A little over a year ago, I joined Trion Worlds to take point on building the online community for their newest game, ArcheAge. I had heard of the title years before, back when it was only a project name uttered in hushed whispers at my erstwhile studio while publishing a competing product. It was very poetic and a privilege to later shape the player experience on a game that thrills me with the richness of its features and openness of its gameplay.

Reviewing my notes from those early days, the second page of the first journal includes a one-liner I wrote down while FireCait and I designed the GDC 2014 press demo. It reads "the game players and developers create together". ArcheAge has evolved considerably since our service first opened its virtual doors to players worldwide during Alpha. My writings are filled with community achievements, chronicling game changes that were communicated and enacted based on the critical yet constructive insights from ArcheAge's passionate players. Early examples such as changing the trade pack loot division during Beta, increasing archeum availability days before launch, and adjusting the offline labor regeneration rate a few months ago come to mind. It was your feedback as ArcheAge's community that made these changes reality.

I fervently anticipate the changes still to come with the many-featured ArcheAge 2.0 game update on the near horizon but I will enjoy learning, testing, and playing this new content alongside you all as a member of this community. It is with bittersweet excitement that I announce I am joining FireCait on a new, as-of-yet-unannounced project. You may have seen our teaser for it last week: devilinsideyou.com. Taking up the mantle as your Senior Community Relations Manager is the utterly excellent Seraphina "Celestrata" Brennan, my friend for many years and now colleague as of this day. Her experience engaging fiercely zealous fanbases and championing proactive communications pairs her to the ArcheAge community perfectly.

ArcheAge has been a milestone title in my career and I will absolutely continue growing the empire of [NAME REDACTED], my character on Ollo. I may also continue hosting the weekly ArcheAge livestream alongside Khrolan and Amary from San Francisco until we finish construction of a second broadcasting studio in the Austin office. I eagerly look forward to meeting with you all at Gamescom and PAX Prime later this year to trade war stories and salty tales together over a mug of ale.

Wishing each and every one of you calm seas, safe travels, and may the wind be ever at your back!


Evan "Scapes" Berman
ArcheAge Senior Community Relations Manager Emeritus




Greetings Adventurers!

Let me start off by saying how excited I am to be posting here today! My name is Seraphina Brennan, but some of you may know me better as Celestrata. While I hail from the great Northeast of the United States, I've moved to Austin, TX to join the Trion Worlds team as your new Community Manager for ArcheAge!

Now while I'm relatively new to the continents of ArcheAge (currently grinding up my characters on a few servers so I can immerse myself in what's going on), I am anything but new to massively multiplayer gaming. Some of you may recognize my name from my days as a Senior Editor and Community Manager on Massively.com (now Massively Overpowered, of course), while others may recognize me from my days traveling Middle-earth in The Lord of the Rings Online, and still others may recognize me from the battle-torn Lost Sectors of Infinite Crisis.

But before any of that, I was tearing through MUDs like DragonRealms and Gemstone III, adventuring in EverQuest and Asheron's Call, and capping my character in one of my favorite MMOs of all, Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds. I have to say, it's pretty surreal to be working on a game made by Jake Song after playing Nexus so long ago.

While I normally play tanks and healers in my games, I've been all over the place in ArcheAge. My favorite class so far is my Hexblade, but I also have a lot of love for my Inquisitor and Shadehunter. I'm still totally in the period of frequent class swapping as I play around to find what really fits my play style for the game I could fall back to my usual ways as a Paladin or end up at Darkrunner, who knows!

Some of you may be wondering where Scapes is heading to. Don't worry, my old friend will be taking on a new role which you'll get to hear about very soon. Exciting times!

With all of that said, I cannot wait to meet you guys! Feel free to post your own introduction, thoughts, and/or questions here in this thread or, join us over on Reddit. I'll be doing an official AMA over there all day.

Until then, may your feet find your path, and may the wind find your sails.

~Seraphina "Celestrata" Brennan