TERA news » October 2015 Producer Letter

Greetings TERA Citizens!

Treeshark here to talk about recent changes to the TERA Team.

Obviously, all of us were saddened over the past few months to see both Tonka and Minea leave the TERA community team. Both had worked long and hard to make players feel welcome, informed, involved, and cared about. Their departures, while understandable on a personal level because both left to follow exciting new opportunities, left a hole in our hearts as well as on the team.

After an exhaustive search, today we are happy to announce that we have hired a new community manager team lead to help fill that hole. So, allow me to introduce you all to Donna “Danicia” Prior, who has helped manage gaming communities for both tabletop and video games for over a decade. Donna cut her MMO teeth at Flying Lab Software on Pirates of the Burning Sea and has also worked on Star Wars: The Old Republic, Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, Guild Wars 2, and numerous games from Sony Online Entertainment such as PlanetSide 2. She’s also active in game industry events, speaking at PAX, PAX Dev, GDC, and her own “analog” game convention, OrcaCon.

Danicia is new to TERA, however, so don’t expect her to know too much about Darkan’s donut just yet. But I’m sure she’d be more than happy to talk to players about leveling up quickly, which class is the best (I know you all have opinions on that one), and the new Stepstone Isle experience.

While she may not be a TERA expert just yet, we are all very excited about adding Danicia’s incredible community expertise to the TERA Team, the core of which is still intact. Harmonia and I are dedicated to maintaining continuity with the community, as we have done for years. I’ve been here since the beginning and Harmonia (or, as you may know her, @TERAonline or “Mystery Facebook Admin”) joined the TERA Team in 2010 as an early game tester and has spent the last five years supporting TERA players in-game, on the forums, and on social media.

Plus, as I mentioned in my September letter, we also added Denommenator as a senior producer on TERA this year. Denommenator has been an En Massian since 2012, and has worked behind the scenes on TERA, ZMR, and other titles before officially coming to TERA.

In addition to the community and production people dedicated to TERA, En Masse also added a director of product management for the game this year. Chris Lye joined En Masse in May to provide marketing support to the TERA Team, almost immediately cutting his teeth on the Go Berserk update.

Chris brings a wealth of RPG and MMO knowledge to the team having worked on Dungeon Siege, Asheron's Call, and Jade Empire while at Microsoft. He then took a year off to lead a raiding guild in World of Warcraft before being recruited by ArenaNet to market Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. Chris is playing a Baraka warrior on Highwatch, so maybe he’ll tank for you sometime, although I keep telling him warriors should DPS.

So, while we will all miss Tonka and Minea, I am here to tell you that TEAM TERA is as strong as ever and we're looking forward to some great things coming up in the next few months, including our annual Extra Life Twitch stream and a major content update that will unveil TERA’s newest class after a month of promotions and in-game events!

PEACE-

Treeshark out.

Join Danicia today, October 27, on /r/TERAonline for a reddit AMA!