Moderators report to and are a part of Marketing (MarCom). They are responsible for PR as well as rule enforcement and they use moderation to accomplish goals in both areas.

We've seen moderation used for PR motives here before. "Crackdown Style" moderation ended up being a detriment to the community and the overly strict moderator ended up relieved of their job. With "more boots on the ground" Marketing could attempt this again, except this time it won't be blatantly apparent on the Dev Tracker.

If Cryptic ends up using Player Moderators to white wash general negativity and hand out warnings en masse in attempts to control their image on the forums then this will backfire. We'll just have to see if this ends up being "Moderation to Protect Kids" or "PR Censorship & Image Control."