Nethaera has been a very important pillar of the World of Warcraft community as community manager these past five years. Nethaera and Tommy Newcomer (Creative Team) are celebrating their fifth anniversary in the company, and thus Blizzard Entertainment has awarded her with a sword given to all employees who have been aboard for five years. Wish I knew who else to name them. Blizzplanet congratulates Nethaera and all Blizzard employees.
I have met Nethaera a few times at BlizzCon, Blizzard Headquarters, and in Paris. She’s absolutely a very sweet person — except when her German-temper pops (thankfully I haven’t been around when that happens). Overall, I have very fond memories of her both in person and via e-mail.
She would reach out several times a month providing Blizzplanet with info, previews, and support in many ways.
I have a very cool anecdote to share with you of a personal experience I lived through with Nethaera in real life, and why I respect and esteem her aside from her feats as a World of Warcraft community manager. This one is more on a non-gaming aspect. It was a serious business real life quest, and she was the best tank leading us back home safely.
More on Blizzard Employees Service Awards: Swords and Shields Ceremony.
2008 Blizzard Worldwide Invitationals Paris Anecdotes
One of those nights in Paris, Bashiok and Nethaera took all fansites reporters to dinner at a Spanish food restaurant near the Porte de Versailles Exposition Center where the Blizzard Worldwide Invitationals was celebrated at. This was a dinner fully paid by Blizzard Entertainment. Actually, all dinners and hotel expenses, and my flight ticket were covered by Blizzard Entertainment. I love Blizzard long-time.
Everyone was having fun at the restaurant sharing some quality time with some Blizzard employees, and other fansite members. I remember it wasn’t as fun for me. I traveled to Paris with a massive tooth ache, and migraine. However, I was happy to attend the event, and to be around so many passionate folks.
After a few hours at the restaurant, everyone was ready to leave. Blizzard provided bus transportation from the hotel to the convention center, but in the evening it’s not easy to find a private bus company for transportation. On previous days, Blizzard had a private bus and mini-vans to transport fansites and press back to the hotel. However, this day in specific we stayed longer than usual at the restaurant, and the evening was upon us — considering there’s a bright sun at 8:00 pm in Paris.
Bashiok and other Blizzard folks left, while Nethaera stayed with the fansites, and escorted us to the subway train station to take us back to the hotel.
Once there, surprise-surprise! There was no trains running for whatever reason they said in French language. So now we had to walk back to the hotel without a map. Heck, what was the hotel address? I had no clue what the hotel name was either. Stress started to build up and surround fansite folks.
Our only hope was one of the fansite guys who said he had a GPS device to guide us through the ordeal of walking back to the hotel. Nethaera and the group of fansites walked a considerable distance following him. Funny thing is the GPS guy kept walking faster than any of us, and Leeroy Jenkins-away from us at a corner so fast we lost track of our only means to reach the flipping hotel.
We had been walking for about half and hour when the GPS guy went AWOL. At that point everyone decided to split — which I considered a very foolish thing to do in a place we had yet to earn exploration XP. A few fansite reporters decided to walk back to the hotel on their own — I asked one of them next day, and he told me they walked for about four hours, or so, arriving at the hotel past 3:00 am. Others decided to walk around to find Taxi. I had no idea how to get back to the hotel.
I was now alone with around five folks, including Nethaera.
Nethaera is literally Supergirl, a hero, and saved us. She paid a taxi and took the few of us aboard back to the hotel. <3 Nethaera
I will never forget that day. Thank you!
I was one of those that was stuck walking all the way back. I don’t think it took 4 hours but it was a pretty long walk – was rough because I had 2 backpacks on me with all my video equipment and my tripod. I was extremely sore the next day.
Paris nightlife was also quite “interesting”
Oops. I didn’t remember you to be among that group that walked back to the hotel. It was a crazy night.
I don’t think it was a good idea for the group to split into smaller groups and walk. Specially when we had a Blizzard employee with us. She was in as much a trouble as us. Our duty was to stick with her, and stay together like good lost boyscouts.
I think what happened to us is we got separated somehow because you guys got a Taxi – the one we tried to get wouldn’t take us because we didn’t speak French. Someone in our group knew where we were and how to get back so we just trucked it on. I think there were 4 of us that did that.
Now that you mention it, I remember around four guys decided to walk.
Then some people took taxi as many as they could fit in each taxi.
On my end, Nethaera’s group was the last one to take a taxi.
As a french leaving very next to Paris, well, I could understand your trouble. No subway past 3 A.M ( sometime sooner) and very rude taxi drivers ( even for french people )
Add to that that in some area the street in Paris looks like each others, and you could get easily lost…
that might have been worrying back then, but it’s maybe a sweet memory now, is it not ? ^^
( and I meant ” living” not ” leaving <_< )
You guys get invited to travel around the world, stay in nice hotels, have dinner and conversations with blizzard and they also pay for everything!!!!
And all I wanted was to get invited to Diablo 3 Beta !!
hehehe…
I feel so envious…
If it makes you feel better, they no longer cover expenses. Eldorian and Miaari paid their own flight and hotel the past few years.
Yeah, 2008 was the only time I had anything covered expense wise… every other year has been directly out of my pocket for events. It’s not cheap – and if it wasn’t for me paying for my trip early on in the year this year we wouldn’t have had anyone at Blizzcon this year since both me and MD were unemployed at the time (now I’m employed again)
I was just joking 🙂
Of course I think they should pay for it.
You guys and other fan sites dedicate a lot of time and money and invest a lot to show and praise everything that multi-billion-dollar company does!
It’s free advertise of any product they launch (and even free advertise of the stuff we just speculate they might launch or not!)
It’s a pretty good deal for them to trade years of great publicity and support for AT LEAST a few days of vacation for every fan site once in a while!