hristmas is getting closer and a hustle and bustle is in the air. Some of you are probably already very excited after waiting so long for wished Christmas or Hanukkah presents. Many more of you surely eagerly await this year's Christmas update. However, Tibia and new updates would not exist if there weren't a whole bunch of hard-working people that make sure that Tibia is running, that you as players are happy and that this great game is growing and developing further and further. There seems to be a great interest among Tibians to find out more about the people working at CipSoft and their various tasks. Just recently, the administrators of TibiaBr.com, visited our office. Today, we want to give you sneak a peak behind the scenes and introduce you to the people that work at CipSoft.

Currently 36 people are working at CipSoft - 9 women and 27 men. With an average age of 31 we are still a rather young team even though we have been growing somewhat older together with Tibia. Of course not everybody is programming the game, building new areas and additionally, taking care of the game servers. People work in different departments depending on their qualification, talent, preferences and skill.

The biggest department is customer support, 10 of the people who you can find in the gamemaster list work in this department. All customer support members have CM characters as all are involved in rule enforcement or player contact one way or another. As we get asked several times in-game, CM stands for community manager.
There are many tasks that are fulfilled by all support members in turn. This includes answering emails of players, checking name reports and name proposals as well as processing board and statement reports. In addition to this, every team member has a task which he or she is specialised in.
First of all, there is Solkrin. He is the team leader of customer support. He is scheduling the various tasks, guides several projects, develops ideas to further improve the service for our players and has an open ear for all problems a team member might have. Alguzara is the head gamemaster. She is watching over the regular gamemasters, helps them to find the right decisions in tricky situations and investigates difficult cases of rule violations reported by the GMs. Iscen is the head of all tutors. She is mainly busy answering tutor questions concerning names, statements or board reports. Isolan is in charge of TibiaME support. She answers all emails from players of our mobile game and answers questions in the forum and also comes up with new ideas for the game and homepage. Sidnia is specialised in all payment matters. She answers questions on the billing board and stays in close contact with our payment partner element 5. Being our test expert, Grimrath is the first to check if newly introduced features or quests work the way they are supposed to. Tavaren is fit in all technical matters. You may recognise him from the technical board, but he also takes care of all emails in which players have technical problems. Neofine and Andasstra are the newbies in the support team. Nevertheless, they already do a great job. Neofine is actively supporting Alguzara and Iscen or replaces them when they are not in the office. Andasstra has just recently started to attend to our great supported fansites.
Finally, there is my humble self, Manina. I am responsible for all texts on the website but also ingame. Most news and featured articles are penned by me, but I also proof-read new NPC scripts or book texts for the content team and update or correct sections on the website whenever necessary.

CM characters are also needed by most members of the content team. They mainly use them to check reported ingame bugs. Altogether, there are 4 creative heads that are constantly developing the fantastic game world of Tibia further. Chayenne is the lead game-content designer. Like all content team members she develops new challenging quests, builds great new areas, thinks of interesting new features or scripts new NPCs. Moreover, she coordinates single projects in her team and works closely together with our graphic artists and the Tibia product manager to name just a few of her many tasks. Second in team is Denson Larika. His main task for this update was to revamp old areas but he has also developed new exciting quests and scripted the needed NPCs and quest logs for them. Knightmare, too, has worked out new funny quests and scripted the needed NPCs. In addition, he also wrote the new monster descriptions for our creatures section. Finally, there is Judigator. Some of you might still recognise this name from Tibia, however nowadays Judigator is more known among the TibiaME community. He is the main person when it comes to content for TibiaME. Not only many fantastic ideas for TibiaME originate from Judigator's head, but also the building of new great areas, scripting new NPCs and the realisation of new features lie in his hands.

As already mentioned, the content team works closely together with our 2 talented graphic artists Jan and Richard. Jan is the 2d artist focusing on concept art, illustration and sprite creation and is therefore mainly busy with tasks for Tibia and TibiaME. The concept art concerning new creatures, outfits or environments for these two projects and most of the artwork on the website, which you find in the news, manual or featured articles, is done by him. Moreover, Jan is also working with a few very gifted external artists, some of whom are former Tibia players, who have been contributing sprites to Tibia since its early days. Richard does some 2d art too, for instance the funny picture of the Christmas CipSoft team has been "embellished" by him. However, Richard is an expert in the complex field of 3d art and thus, his main focus is working for a new project which is taking up the bulk of his time.

What is more, we have no less than 8 clever programmers working for Tibia and TibiaME. With their tricky coding, they improve the stability of our game and login servers. Furthermore, they write the code for new game features that the content team later implements into the game. They also develop and constantly improve tools to ease the work for other departments. For example, the content team needs a special tool called editor with which they create new areas, set monster homes or place objects on the map. The support team has a special tool as well, which is needed for several tasks such as processing statement and board reports. Last but not least, our programmers successfully search and fix errors in the code and allow for an error-free and fun game experience.

Uli, also known as Durin, and 4 notoriously busy system administrators are probably the most busy and hard working people at the office right now. They work many hours overtime to protect our servers against DDoS attacks. They have already implemented some very useful improvements, but further protection is needed to oppose the varying DDoS attacks. Apart from that, it is part of the daily routine of our system administrators to maintain all servers, to install computers for new team members, to set up new servers and to generally ensure a stable and smooth game service.

Apart from being the head of the system administrators, Uli is also the lead product manager for TibiaME. In this position, he supervises all new developments and projects for our popular mobile game and is also in charge of the client tests on numerous phone models to ensure an error-free gaming experience. He works closely together with TibiaME's product manager who is known as Balinor in the TibiaME community. Balinor is mainly responsible for technical details such as additional testing of new clients, supervising internal tests and assisting players with technical problems in the TibiaME forum. However, he has also the last word on new content and of course also contributes great ideas for the development of the game himself.

Stephan is the head of business administration, meaning he is responsible for finances, human resources and organisation. He selects new CipSoft employees together with the responsible team leader or holds appraisal interviews. He is also making sure that the company pays all of its taxes, that everybody is getting a salary each month or that the rent in the data centres for the server spaces gets paid. Since nobody knows the code for the Tibia server better than its developer Stephan, he is also involved in difficult programming tasks, such as implementing tricky new features for Tibia and TibiaME at times.

Guido is the lead product manager for Tibia. He is responsible for the running of the game as well as for the continual development of Tibia. He works closely together with Craban, Tibia's product manager. Together they decide the next steps on the exciting way to develop Tibia further. They have the final word on the topic for a new update and decide which new features will be introduced. Moreover, they supervise all bigger projects that are connected to Tibia and schedule the time people need for certain tasks. Surely one of them has his hands in it if a new patch is launched. Craban also plans and supervises the test servers and collects and analyses feedback and bug reports from it. However, those are just a few of the many tasks Guido and Craban have to manage to provide you with a unique and awesome game experience.

Steve is currently in charge of the development of a prototype for a new product idea. Moreover, he is responsible for managing CipSoft's business contacts as well as the company's public relations, thus, he is working closely together with our marketing manager, who some of you might have seen on the boards under the name Mercutio Mercado. He is responsible for things like press releases, advertising, market research or merchandising. He is the one that brought the Tibia marketplace into being. Moreover, he is also involved in the design of our website and ensures that many people find Tibia via search engines. He calls himself the "advocate of our customers" as he is the one who normally takes the side of our players in internal discussions.

Last but not least, there is our adorable team assistant. She is busy organising the complete office. She ensures that we have all needed working materials, she organises business trips when necessary, she keeps a strict calendar where everybody can check who is in the office, on vacation, sick or at some training course. Finally, she also assists Stephan in his work as the head of business administration.

Many people work diligently to maintain and develop your favourite online game Tibia here in our office in Regensburg. Surely, more people will join our team soon and support us in our most important task: to offer you a great and entertaining game in which you can relax from work or school, have fun with your friends or feel the thrill of dangerous hunts or challenging quests.

We wish you a wonderful Christmas season!
Your CipSoft Team