I've been doing my competitive intelligence thing again. By carefully looking at publically available information, one may be able to gain additional insight into a company. ArenaNet was my target. They've been unusually quiet, so what's going on? Well, right now, they're in hiring mode. That's a good sign in determing the strength of a company.

Here's an interesting posting...

Source: http://www.arena.net/jobs/webdeveloper.php

Heh, Drupal... that's cute. For a company that created one of the largest online games in the world, I'm surprised to see Drupal listed in the job description. I mean sure, I'm a big fan of LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL & PHP) websites, but it shows that ArenaNet is developing their website on the cheap. Drupal is Open Source. Expression Engine is $249.95 for a commercial license.

ArenaNet is on the west coast, otherwise I might have to apply for this job and show them how to do it right.

It also shows that Momma company NCsoft isn't taking the lead that they should. A single CMS should be in place, for all NCsoft games. There should be an NCsoft forum too. It's a serious undertaking to complete such a lofty web project, so maybe ArenaNet / NCsoft wants to use their resources elsewhere. But considering that this is about an ONLINE COMMUNITY, reading this job posting made me sad. I think that NCsoft could be doing so much better.

If you're interested in applying for this job, you might want to check the ArenaNet Jobs page to see if it is still available.

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Michael Garofalo
Webmaster - http://photics.com