March 14, 2011

Mod versus Dev

Know The Difference

For a long time, everyone with a gold name has been called a Mod (short for Moderator) but there are actually 3 kinds of people walking around with gold names. Mods, Testers, and Devs (short for Developer).

• Moderators: moderate the game, reading reports and keeping AQW safe and fun.
• Developers: developers make the game itself - artists, programmers, writers, designers
• Testers/QA: testers take what the developers make and make sure it's not broken.

Moderators and Testers are usually loyal fans and supports of the game who are helpful and patient with new players, fun, friendly yet responsible with the other experienced players.

As we need help moderating the growing game we bring on more moderators and we almost always look for players (usually over the age of 18) like the ones i just described above.For the most part being a Mod is a volunteer position, although they do enjoy other rewards like free memberships, free ACs and access to pretty much any item they would like.

You might see Reens (the Lead Mod) and Stratos (the Mod General) running around the game with some of their team muting people who try to spam chat, flood chat or curse or possibly handing out kicks and bans to players who are being rude and trying to ruin other's fun in AQW.

Testers also do exactly what the name implies: they test our releases to make sure we squash as many bugs as possible before sending something out to you guys. They are not in-game moderators and cannot mute/kick/ban any other players.

Devs develop the content for the game. Content can be anything from writing quests and cutscenes to building weapons and armors to crafting the beautiful maps and bacgrounds to programming the game so everything works! Devs build AQW.

As we need help building the game we usually look to our community to find some talented volunteers to help craft items and adventures for you. Most of the Dev positions start as volunteer (Assistant Dev) and if things work out, it may turn into a paid position as a part of the AdventureQuest Worlds team. We try to only take on volunteer developers who are 18 or older. RARELY an exception will be made, but the chances of that are slim to none.

I'm sure you've seen me, Artix, Alina, Beleen or some of the other Dev's running around.

Dev's have all the same powers as Mods plus they get to create content for the game on a weekly basis. That keeps us very busy so we usually leave the moderation to the very capable Mod team but sometimes when we see someone breaking the rules we are forced do a little moderation on our own.

Although we both have gold names we have very different responsibilities, and the criteria we use to finds Mods is very different from what we look for in potential Devs. Testers usually start out by being a mod or dev on another game. RARELY we will put out a call for new testing help. I think that's only ever happened once before, though. 

Now you know the difference but we will all probably just keep calling everyone a Mod. It's eaiser sticking to one name and it's not like you can tell the difference between one gold name or another.