» Sun May 13, 2012 2:33 am
Like has been said - Moderators aren't employees of Bethesda. Insofar as we moderate their forums for them, I suppose it could be said that we "work" for them, but it is a volunteer position. Our affiliation with the company sort of begins and ends with this forum. Myself, I came to these forums when Fallout 3 was announced to discuss my opinions about Bethesda's take on one of my personal favorite RPG series; and at some point I was approached by the moderating team to see if I'd be interested in helping out.
We do get some pretty neat swag on occasion for our efforts, and I don't think any of us would be doing any of this if we weren't fans of the company. That said, it's really no skin off our backs when people talk bad about the company - it's not "our" game, after all.
In answer to the question - we don't have any special sway with Bethesda. We're also not privy to any special information about the inner workings of Bethesda that's not also available to the public. Our contact with Bethesda itself is essentially limited to the moderation of this forum. Gstaff isn't going to tell us anything that's not going to go on a pinned topic or blog post, for example. We certainly don't have any special insights into the status of patches.
From prior experience moderating Bethesda's game releases - the Issues forums are always full of upset people. That's kind of what they're there for. Is the response to the state of the PS3 version of Skyrim specifically different from any prior releases? I honestly couldn't say. There's always going to be some degree of members who give us problems on all of the sub-forums. Skyrim is no exception, and that goes for the PC and XBox 360 Issues forums, as well - those versions also seem to have their own share of glitches.
As far as what version has the "most" problems, or is most in need of attention from the company's QA team - that's a question I leave to Bethesda. My "job" here isn't to track bugs, but to enforce the forum rules. I'm absolutely not knowledgeable enough about any of that to say with any authority what is going on with the status of any of Bethesda's games or it's specific versions.
Myself, I play Skyrim on PC. I have my own share of bugs and glitches to worry about. Apart from a couple of broken quests, I also have a graphics glitch specific to my hardware that required some degree of finagling before certain armors and faces stopped showing up transparent. I'm also starting to run into intermittent lag where I have to sit and wait for my rig to catch up before it becomes playable again (as I'm lucky enough to have recently upgraded my PC to something that's capable of running at very high settings with decent FPS, this is something that I'm hoping will be addressed in an upcoming PC patch.)
Anyway, long story short - I don't have any special relationship with Bethesda wherein they'd listen to me any more than the forum overall. And even if I did, I'm certainly not educated enough with what's going on with the PS3 version of Skyrim to have any special insights for them anyway. Sure, there's a backlash from those experiencing problems with their game (which, for the record, I do feel is understandable and also expected.)
My position on a personal level is that anyone experiencing any issues with their copy of any game of Bethesda's is an important issue that deserves their attention and should ideally be fixed with a patch, and with minimal effort on the customer's part. No one wants to spend money on a game that doesn't function to their satisfaction (or be given one as a gift, even.) That said - we do have forum rules which I'm here to enforce.