Interview with Mod Acorn

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Hello r/2007scape, it's been a while!. Hope everyone is doing alright in these corona times. Today we have the pleasure to talk with Mod Acorn, who was recently promoted to Senior Community Manager!

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Acorn

Mod Acorn is a Senior Community Manager for Old School Runescape at Jagex.

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Follow Mod Acorn on:

·Twitter: @JagexAcorn
·Reddit: JagexAcorn

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Interview with Mod Acorn

28th April 2020

1º How's a day in the life of Mod Acorn?

Good! I normally start my working day by checking all social (Reddit, Forums, Twitter, FB, Insta, and Disc) to make sure there wasn't anything I missed overnight that might need flagging first thing in the morning. Most of the time it's memes, but it's a good laugh for 7am. After that, I attend a lot of meetings throughout the day. This is mainly due to the OSRS Team being split into various scrums that work on different things at the same time to ensure regular updates. CM is a shared resource within the OSRS Team, so we take part in every scrum's stand ups, sprint plannings, and sprint retrospectives. Between meetings I work on weekly livestream prep and game update newsposts/social.

2º What was it like when you joined Jagex? How were you first days? Why did you choose Jagex?

When I joined Jagex, I started off in the anti-cheating team. The first few weeks were training but after that I started primarily on taking down OSRS bots with the occasional RS ones too. I moved to the CM team after Ayiza (miss you) recommended me to apply for the position due to my passion and open communication with the OSRS playerbase while I was in the anti-cheating team. I chose Jagex because it was something I always wanted to be part of since playing in 2003 and knew a lot of friends that worked there already.

3º How would you define the Old School Runescape community?

I'd define the Old School RuneScape community as passionate and extremely dedicated.

4º Do you play the game frequently? What type of content do you enjoy?

I play the game every day after work for a few hours. There's quite a lot of content I do enjoy but if I had to name a few it would be CoX, Farming contracts and Leagues.

5º You have been through many moments in OSRS's history... which are your favorite? And the worst? Do you regret anything?

One of my favourite moments in OSRS's history that I've worked through was probably the release of Leagues. When we first announced it, albeit not revealing every detail, people were sceptical of how it would work and if someone would really want to play for 2 months only to have that progress wiped. After a few days into the Twisted League, people seemed to really enjoy it. I would like to think that it brought back that MMO portion of the game where players saved ploughs for each other or helped others with tasks. The worst moment in OSRS's history I think would be the game update that occurred 4 days into my training on all things CM. It was the game update with the tbow spawn. While I had no permissions to updates newspost or post on social just yet, it was an intense few hours in the office just watching things unfold and learning how CM deal with situations like that. Communication was poor and the messages were mixed, but at the end of the day it was a great learning experience and ultimately came in useful when we recently had to shut the worlds down when they were unstable to prevent having to rollback or cause mass player deaths.

6º PvP community is with no doubt one of the most demanding and important within the OSRS's family. What's your experience like with this community? What's like working close to the players? (Discord server...)

The PvP community, though small in the grand scheme of the OSRS playerbase, is just as passionate and dedicated to the game any other player. There are so many different types of PvPers (solo PKers, PvP world only, DMM, clan/multi PKers, etc.) that it can be quite difficult to please everyone, though this doesn't stop the team from trying. Working with players closely whether it’s on Discord, Reddit, Twitter, etc. is overall beneficial and crucial to the game. We pride ourselves on being community driven and part of that is making yourself available to read feedback, listen to it, and take it on board. I try to make sure I respond to as many people as possible that message me, and while it can be draining, I find it extremely valuable and rewarding.

7º What areas of the community/Jagex do you think need to be improved?

I personally think communication from Jagex could be improved. A lot of times I see comments from players that feel updates or news is sprung up on them with no notice, or that they lack the understanding as to why we are doing something or why a particular update is taking so long. Being able to give players a more behind the scenes feel of what we are doing and why we are doing it (listening in to a meeting with the team or even more pre-release blogs) could go a long way.

8º We could say that one of the Community Manager's tasks is to collect feedback from players and pass it to the team/devs. The OSRS community is very passionate and hard to please. What would you call good or bad feedback/suggetions?

Good feedback suggestions have a clear why or how this is a good suggestion. At the end of the day, part of my role is to explain to the developers and managers why players want this update or feature and if I can't get that from the suggestion then it makes it difficult to justify doing it.

9º It's a shame that Runefest 2020 got cancelled... What does Runefest mean to you? How were your previous experiences?

Runefest 2020 cancellation announcement

RuneFest to me is a place where you can form long-lasting friendships. To finally put a face and personality to that character you've probably raided with for months. My previous experiences as staff were pretty hectic running around with a headset in my ear trying to locate people or make sure things are running smoothly behind the scenes, but at the end of the day you meet so many people and that’s what just makes RuneFest amazing.

10º Not many game companies have their workers so in touch with the community (Twitter, Reddit, Discord...) What are the benefits and inconveniences of being so close to costumers?

The benefits of being so close to the community is building this connection with players and giving them that personal experience that this game is not just some game you install, play/complete, and move on without ever knowing the people that worked on it. It's the benefit of learning what the community likes or doesn't like, learning from mistakes, and building on that for a better future. The only inconvenience is time. There's not enough time in the world to answer every player, read every comment or post, or attend every 99 party, but the benefits outweigh the inconvenience and I'd gladly spend a few extra hours of my day doing those things if that means giving players that personal experience.

11º What are things Community Managers do and we do not know?

I'd say something players don't think a Community Manager does is attend so many meetings! My typical day consists of an average of 7 meetings. CM is also involved in a lot of behind the scenes things which can include anything from proofreading marketing emails to players, playtesting the future content, or even reviewing a video before it goes live. Typically, anything that goes to the players (in-game or on social) CM have had eyes on it at some point in time.

12º Managing new players' experiences can be tough. What can the game do to gain new players? Team is working around Tutorial Island at the moment. What's the role of a Community Manager regarding this?

The CM team sits in on the discussions where data is shown to the team that indicates at what point a player "drops out" or decides "no more" to various pieces of content whether it’s a quest or Tutorial Island. As an example, we often see people start a quest and then at some point in the quest about 10% of them just never go back to complete it. One of the scrums within the OSRS Team is to figure out how we can improve that or make it better to stop those dropping out. Our role, as CM, within that is to help come up with those ideas, relay them back to players, and then return player feedback back to the scrum.

13º How often do you check social media? Which one do you like the most? How do you cope with bad feedback from the community?

I check social media regularly throughout the day. It's where we can get live information on anything that is bothering the player, updates on achievements, or even a bug report. Since the OSRS Team currently doesn't have a Social Media Manager like RuneScape does, CM absorb some of that role which does involve looking through social a fair bit. I don't personally have a favourite platform for social, I think each one is extremely unique in the feedback it provides and the content they play. While Twitter is limited to a character count, it could be quite difficult for a player to get their point across, however sometimes less is more, especially when it comes to trawling through a couple thousand posts a day. When it comes to coping with bad feedback, you learn to not take it too personally. Sometimes people need someone to vent their frustrations to and that's okay.

14º COVID-19 has struck hard in everyones' life. Some people are going through terrible days and they take refuge in Runescape. Jagex has done blog posts in order to help people in need. What's your message to the community in these hard times?

Wellbeing During Isolation

My message to the community during these tough times is stay safe. If you need someone to talk to then let me know. I'm happy to help anyone the best I can, even if that's just a listening ear for a few minutes to talk.

15º How has COVID-19 changed your life? How are you dealing with the quarantine? How did coronavirus affect the game? How are you coping with working from home?

I'm not sure what I'd do during these times if I didn't have dogs and Old School. I do find myself working more because my desk is right next to me, which means I find it difficult to switch off. Nonetheless, the game has provided a good outlet of entertainment while stuck at home.

16º What hobbies does Mod Acorn have? Can you recommend us something to do during this quarantine? (apart from playing OSRS of course...) (music, films...?)

One of my hobbies is baking. I love anything with chocolate, so you'll often find me feeding the OSRS Team with baked goods at least once a week. For all you 99 cooking cape wearers out there, I recommend during these quarantine times to dust off your chef's hat and try cooking IRL, who knows... you might like it.

17º This year won't be the same anymore but what are your plans/goals for 2020? And for the future?

My plans for 2020, if it is safe to do so, is to take a holiday. I had one originally planned for May of this year but unfortunately due to the current situation it was cancelled. I also am hoping to get 99 Herblore at some point in the very near future and then move on to the next skill!

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Thanks to Mod Acorn for taking part in this interview. Congratulations on your well-deserved promotion!

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That's it for this interview. It was a pleasure to talk to Acorn.

What other questions would you ask to Mod Acorn?
Who would you want to be interviewed next?

Cynth_ia.

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Read more interviews:

• Interview with a JMod: Mod Ash
• Interview with Woox: Runescape's most prestigious player
• Interview with Mod Flippy: Meet a new JMod, Twisted League, future plans and more!
• Interview with Rendi & xzact: The Fire Cape Race
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