I recently had a chance to interview Jon Virtes, aka “Lazlowe,” about a couple of features in Runes of Magic’s upcoming expansion and his role as community manager.

Lazlowe is new to the Frogster America team and has been a community manager there for about a month. He got into the industry 14 years ago and worked his way up from a mailroom at a major publisher, through QA and a few other roles, to Frogster and Runes of Magic.

GamersInfo.net: What’s it like working at Frogster compared to other places you’ve been?

Lazlowe:I think the main difference is this is a newer, smaller operation than my previous companies. I find this exciting at this point in my career, because I feel I’ve learned a lot from the more established companies I’ve worked for, and now I aim to apply that wisdom to helping develop a business from nearly the ground up. There’s a lot of opportunity to get things done here, and that’s very satisfying.

GamersInfo.net: What’s your philosophy on community management?

Lazlowe:I believe that the most important relationship a company has — especially a company in the business of running a live service like Runes of Magic — is the direct connection you have with your audience. Community management is such a new role, I find I have to define it for a lot of people. The best way I sum it up, in short, is: It is like running the fan club for a band. Only we’re better able to be connected, since our entertainment lives online.

GamersInfo.net: Hopefully you don’t have too many scarily crazed groupies. Like the ones that throw their unmentionables up on the stage.

Lazlowe:Hahaha. Well, I guess our groupies throw their unmentionables on our forums.

GamersInfo.net: What’s the key to fostering a healthy community (in forums and otherwise)?

Lazlowe:The key to fostering a happy, healthy community is being upfront and honest with the community in delivering information, and emphasizing and encouraging the positive members of the community to feel heard and to have a sense of belonging and ownership in the community. It is all too easy to fall into giving the “squeaky wheel” all the attention when you should be empowering the good members of the community to keep bringing a good attitude to the community.

GamersInfo.net: The trolls really do seem to get the attention.

Lazlowe:Exactly. Do not feed the trolls.

GamersInfo.net: What sets Runes of Magic apart from other free-to-play games?

Lazlowe:What attracted me to working here was that Runes of Magic is a higher-quality product than most of the other free-to-play games out there. Many free-to-play games feel like imports from Korea or China and, while RoM is developed in Taiwan, it shares a Western aesthetic to its design. Also, we are making a bigger effort to do in-game events and run almost constant promotions and contests and things that will keep the community engaged almost constantly both in game and out of the game. We want this to be a true community of friends, players and guilds that enjoy sharing time together.

GamersInfo.net: What are you favorite in-game events?

Lazlowe:I think GM-led raids are great. It takes what is by nature a static environment of a videogame and gives it a human-crafted element. It makes an MMORPG feel more like a table-top pen-and-paper style game run by a GM. That’s what a game master really should be, but in videogames, they’ve kind of become more an extension of customer support. I’d like to see them become more like digital actors, but I digress.

GamersInfo.net: Why do you think players are drawn the game, and why do they stick with it once they start playing?

Lazlowe:I think players are drawn to RoM for a variety of reasons. Maybe they are burned out on their last MMO and looking for something new. RoM appears to be familiar in that it is a classic fantasy setting we all know and love, but once you start looking at the features, it has some decidedly different gameplay mechanics. This should spur enough curiosity to at least give the game a try. I also think some people, due to the economic crunch we’ve all been going through, may be looking for a more affordable option to the subscription games out there.

Free-to-play games, especially RoM, give you the option of how to play and how to pay for your game. I think this model is finally finding an audience here in the United States due to the economy.

As for why people stick with it once they start, there are two things that come to mind. One, we offer a fantastic level of customization for the player. You can deck your character out in a variety of costumes and ride a wide assortment of cool-looking mounts — so much so, you won’t often see a character that looks quite like ours once you’ve made some progress in the game. There’s also customized player housing, guild castles and so on. You get to have some real control over some features of the game. Second, and this is true for all online games, people ultimately stay because that’s where their friends are. So again, it comes back to community.

GamersInfo.net: What role does story play in the game?

Lazlowe:The story serves to immerse the player in the mythology of our game world, Taborea. There is a great deal of backstory to the setting that is conveyed in the quests and other text in the game. If the player wants to take the time to absorb all this info, they can. If that’s not your play style, RoM is also a very fast-paced game — if you just want to rock through it.

GamersInfo.net: Tell me a little bit about the “marriage system,” if you can.

Lazlowe:Ah, yes. The marriage system seems to have created quite a bit of interest in the community. Unfortunately, we’re not at a point where we can release more information about this feature. We know people are dying to know more about it, and we’re hoping to release more info as soon as we can.

GamersInfo.net: Top secret. Got it.

What’s this I hear about a music festival?

Lazlowe:The Masked Ball is currently going on, which is the only announced festival we have right now. Although you never know — that’s the fun with being a free-to-play MMO. We can do anything at any time.

GamersInfo.net: I’d like to revisit the concept of a digital actor, if you’re up for it. Could you give me more of a definition of what you meant by a GM serving as a digital actor? What role would they play, and how would it affect the player’s experience? How would you like to see the concept utilized?

Lazlowe:Bear in mind, this is theoretical and my own personal view, but I think GMs should be essentially storytellers and agents of adventure. If you look at the game master as it pertains to pen-and-paper games, the GM runs everything that is not the player characters. Yes, this means she is the one to adjudicate the rules, but more important, they give you story, setting, atmosphere and play all of the NPCs. In the tabletop game, everyone can run the rules, more or less, but the true art of GMing is being the storyteller and the actor playing all the other parts.

For MMOs, I’d like to see a dedicated staff of GMs whose sole purpose is to interact with the player characters and the world to create loads of random encounters and different conversations. Even if it is just playing the town drunk that hassles you when you go to the city to trade, it would be a memorable detail. But if it could be launching custom quests for people on the fly, even better. If done right, it would bring a level of verisimilitude that is lacking in MMOs up to this point.

GamersInfo.net: Thanks for putting up with my barrage of questions.

Lazlowe:You’re welcome.

For more information about Runes of Magic, visit www.runesofmagic.com.