A few weeks back when we started this communication with our customers, I approached the goblins in the basement of the factory who usually take care of our personal calculators and other computing devices. As you can imagine, I am not exactly a numbers guy, but I do sometimes have a use for the technical devices the company provides.
I assumed the guys who deal with those devices would be the best equipped in helping me get this communication thing setup. I don’t really know a ton about the Interwebz, or whatever they call it. That is what the technical goblins called it at least, though it always seemed to be followed with a snicker out of the side of their mouth.
The meeting I had scheduled to petition their help took place in the main conference room upstairs near the management offices. This conference room is mostly glass windows looking out on Booty Bay. It is frequently sunny and incredibly bright.
When the goblins finally showed up they arrived in a pack of three. One was incredibly thin and dressed in what looked like a cheap imitation of the corporate goblins. While the intended effect was a professional appearance, it came across as a combination between desperate and clueless.
The second goblin was corpulently fat. Really there is nothing else I can say.
Wait. Yes there is.
He also smelled ten times worse than the sweaty and unwashed guards in Orgrimmar.
The final participant in the meeting was a mousy little fellow with horn rimmed glasses that were taped in the middle from some altercation that no doubt simply contributed to his timid personality.
The trio nearly caused me to break out into a fit of laughter as they shuffled into the conference room. It quickly became even more amusing however as the professional and fat ones shuddered from the window light, as if they were evil demons overcome with holy light. They cried out in surprise and quickly raised their arms to their face to shield the light.
I am pretty sure the diminutive one would have done the same had he not been in the shadow of the fat one.
Once they shuffled over to the table, slowly lowering their arms as their eyes and pale green skin adjusted to the sunlight, we began our discussion. I explained what I was looking for, a place to talk to our customers about the value of our products, and immediately Fatty and Mouse rolled their eyes.
They began mumbling under their breath about how they had other things to work on that were much more important. I didn’t hear all of it, and they used a bunch of language I really didn’t understand. Some type of goblin undercommon I think, though it was mixed with standard orc as well.
The guy in the crumpled suit finally raised his hand and they begrudgingly quieted down. He explained to me that such a request was a pretty low priority and that they were unlikely to get to it for many months.
I reminded him that it was an initiative from upper management and they quieted their complaints, begrudingly willing to assist in what I needed.
They began outlining where I should create this site and gave me the information to go start it. They chuckled and laughed to themselves the entire time, but I mostly ignored it. I had assumed it was simply more awkward nervousness from the Tech Trio.
You can imagine my excitement as I began this endeavor, outlining the content I wanted to provide to our customers and getting everything setup. As many of you know, we launched a few weeks back and everything had gone mostly well.
Yesterday Fatty came into my office and was laughing hysterically. I could smell him before he even arrived.
Apparently, those little twits thought it would be funny to tell me all the wrong stuff about how to setup this site. Their constant laughing and chuckling was the result of giving me bad information about how to get started.
Sooo… I have spent the last week just trying to get things setup correctly. As if my days weren’t busy enough trying to dodge the explosions and esoteric contraptions, I had the enjoyable experience of changing how the site was setup.
I do apologize to all of you who have already developed into loyal customers, and those of you who may in the future. There is a slight change to the address of the site and the address of the RSS feed however. The old addresses will work for the near future. Eventually however there may be issues with those addresses connecting.
Our new website address is http://thegoblinworkshop.com
Our new RSS feed address is http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheGoblinWorkshop
Thank you for understanding. And don’t worry, the Tech Trio’s story of amusement and woe isn’t over yet. I will keep an eye out for ways to return the favor to them.
Posted by Volog 
My office in the factory was previously inhabited by the machinist shop foreman. When I arrived they moved him out to the shop floor, much to the chagrin of the hateful little goblin. He wasn’t real happy being displaced for the marketing and public relations guy.
Once found, there should be an Interface folder in the root of the World of Warcraft folder. Inside this Interface folder is a folder called AddOns. This is where we will be installing our addons.
You should now see a screen that lists all the addons you have installed. Often these correspond to the folder names you placed in the AddOns folder, but not always.
When reviewing your typical Blizzard interface, the unit frames represent a concise representation of information about the different units in the world. This typically means your character frame in the upper left, your target frame also in the upper portion of the screen, and the different frames for other members in your party or raid. For pet using classes this can also be the frame that represents your pet.
Not only do these mods allow you to sometimes show new information, they also allow you to display it in different ways. Perhaps the percent of health is the most important factor to you when you have a target selected. You can adjust the size and placement of that. Perhaps the debuffs on a target are more important. You can adjust the size and placement of that.
The Guild Message of the Day is certainly one opportunity. As a communication medium, it is visible to every person who logs in and is in the guild. However, herein lies one of its flaws. For those individuals who frequently play alts, it can perhaps be days until they log in to their guilded character. The MOTD is further limited by length, only long enough to communicate a short message to most. Finally, it is restricted in its ability to communicate within the guild only. Guild alliances or close non-guilded friends can not typically see this communication.
As a result of this interface, I can create a mailing list with guild officers quite easily. However, I can then add the officer’s alts to ensure that mail is quickly received by those individuals. I can just as easily create a mailing list for our guild alliance raiding group which includes players from many different guilds.
Glad to finally see some activity on the plant floor, I approached hurriedly, eager to hear of their most recent efforts. They reluctantly elected one of their number to speak to me. The creature was pitiful, one ear carved up like a plastic surgeon’s practice cadaver. He walked with a limp and had a voice even more high pitched than the rest of the goblins.
The goblins tell me that I should just turn you away. Some have even suggested using a few of you in product testing. Given what happened to the last few test subjects though, I have explained that would be ineffective in building customer loyalty.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what is important to an individual playing a specific role. What is important, is that the information that is most critical to their success is easily accessible. When designing your user interface, consider grouping those critical elements together around your avatar so that you can more easily react to the information you receive and still move as you need to.
Regardless of their construction method or esoteric engineering designs, these guys know their stuff. Their instructions and advice on addons and mods for World of Warcraft is unparalleled. I just hope that I can decipher their ramblings sufficiently to make sense. It isn’t easy trying to understand an angry three foot tall ball of hate and deflected discrimination. They would rather be working on the production or engineering floor, so when I do get them to open up, it is usually for short periods of brilliance. Let’s hope I can decipher it. Of course, that means you are destined to listen to my long winded, winding commentary. Lucky you.
