What concerns me the greatest, is this -> In a game where the community is so devoted, and so adamant about making this great game franchise to be one of the best ever, there are minimal communication outside of yourself. Period. To be fair:
Since October 2nd of this year, there has been 34 posts from you. You can see this under the (very agreed upon) blizz post tracker. Other than ONE other post from Matthew, THERE IS NOT A SINGLE OTHER PERSON RESPONDING TO ANYTHING!
What I don’t understand is with the HUGE influx of posts, comments, feedback, suggestions, etc. etc. from a VERY active and VERY emotional community, why is the brunt of communication falling onto YOUR back instead of the company actually imposing MORE COMMUNITY MANAGERS??? How the hell has Diablo 3 gotten away with communication thus far? I’ve been an active Admin/Moderator in DOZENS of website forums for MULTIPLE games. I spent hours and hours responding to as many things as I possibly could ALONGSIDE THAT OF AT LEAST 8-10 OTHER MODS/ADMINS.
Why has the community in this amazing franchise been treated and looked down upon as dirt? This is gaming advertising and gaming future 101 here. Very minor stuff. What J. Allen said at the start of Blizzcon was very emotional, very sincere (At least I feel that way) and actually had me glued to the screen because I could SEE and FEEL the emotion behind his words. HOWEVER, with that being said, and moving forward, ALL of the franchises need to get in line with what he said and MAKE. IT. HAPPEN. EVERYDAY. PERIOD.
Enough is enough with this. I know ONE post from me does absolutely NOTHING in the longevity of literally ANYTHING, but it’s one post (and post I don’t normally do often) that I will always stand behind and bring up when it’s necessary.
The community needs more outreach than just you. Period.
Thank you for taking the time in doing everything you do! But, sadly, with the amount of problems the game director, game developers, and engineers created, you alone, are not going to fix it.
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That is not something she is going to be able to address with you. Those decisions are made way above the heads of the Community Managers.
Early this year they laid off many in the Community team, including CMs, marketing, esports, publications, etc. That is why we have one CM left for the franchise.
They said they were going to increase the number of Development type staff overall by 20% and would focus on game Dev. As of Blizzcon this year we saw several new game announcements to that seems to have been true.
Nev had enough on her plate when it was just D3 - such that she had 1 other full time and one half time person assisting with franchise publishing and feedback collection (along with all the other stuff they do that we don’t see).
I don’t honestly see how one person is going to now handle Diablo 3 (even though it is relatively quiet now), Diablo Immortal, and especially Diablo 4. Add in the process it takes to get approvals to publish any of the News Blogs and such, and we have a major bottleneck.
Hopefully they re-evaluate staffing soon and work to resolve this. Burnout and stress suck.
It’s all PR to save face and dupe everyone who decided to vote with their wallet. He just wants your money, and mine, and everyone else’s. And he’ll get it any way he can. He’s not the first to shed a crocodile tear for the mighty dollar.
I beleive its due to the fact that they are a traded company. Investors keep solid eyes on any news developments on their investments.
When an employee speaks, The the chance of those words impacting stock prices is very real. So I imagine the corporate overlords keep all communication to a min to avoid unnecessary loss of $.
To sum it up, we are not worth the risk of unnecessary communication.
Well, you are not wrong. That has a lot to do with why any company has tons of training and policies before they let staff talk to the “public” about anything that might impact public perceptions and sales. Even if it were not on the stock market, nobody wants one person to cause revenue loss that impacts everyone else. Of course, this is ironic to say given the massive PR blunders Blizz has had over the past year!
Some social media accounts get away with being controversial or “spicy”, but those are limited and are kind of a sideline of the main marketing. Wendy’s Twitter would be an example. Funny and a bit edgey, but not the main marketing that reaches most folks.
The CMs are only allowed to talk about game dev stuff after it gets confirmed and after they have permission.
The only stuff they can talk about without limits, is little stuff like what build they are using that season, their favorite armor set. Talking about snacks, or personal touches that build community is also less limited.
I would just like to know where our info for Season 19 is. I was told by a friend that saw Nev say in Bluddshed’s stream that we would hear something on Monday or Tuesday this week. Monday has passed and Tuesday is running along. I am in central time zone though so I know their day is just beginning in Cali. Hopefully we get something.
Yes, I know use of Blizzard, Blue, or Names is frowned upon. But, in all actuality, so is ignoring the whole of the community and leaving it to one person to take care of, so at this point, frowned upon or not, really does not matter.
MissCheetah:
The questions I asked in my post were not meant to be answered by her whatsoever. They are more aimed directly towards Blizzard themself.
I’m also aware of the lay off, and wonder why they would even remotely say they will start communicating more with us when they literally have 1 person to do all the communicating for them with the Diablo Franchise.
Let me state here very fast, I have NOTHING but the upmost amount of respect for Nev and how she handles situations. With that being said, I am very upset that all of the feedback communication and further communicating is falling onto her shoulders and her shoulders alone. It’s completely unfair for the franchise to think she can handle THOUSANDS of outcries, suggestions, feedback etc. all by herself.
The dedication of Nev, even whilst being sick and having a multitude of priorities still in tact is absolutely phenomenal.
IAmIronMan:
Yes, I did believe him. I’m sorry, I do have a little faith in the guy. Meme me or whatever, but I sincerely believed him.
Not anymore. They converted to the CASC file system years ago. These days they can push the patch and have it download via our launcher without bothering to take the game down. They can then just flip a switch when they want it to go live. Quite cool actually. Sometimes they do take things down for Maint, but it is not required for patches anymore.
Just one other thing to maybe keep in mind here: at the time of the layoffs they also said that Acti-Blizz was in the process of a financial restructuring. In a big company, that will be a long, ongoing event for quite a while. I have a secret hope that eventually some of those vacant CM spots will be filled again.
There’s no way D4 will launch with just Nev at the helm of it all, she will have help but till then it’s increasingly unfair to have just her deal with D3 and now DI, which I disagree is at a calm place right now, there’s just as many balance changes taking place right now as there was in season 12.
We already were in a situation where it would have been optimal to have at least 2 CM’s due to Blizzcon being around a PTR phase in D3 which already caused issues.
I am assuming due to her promoted status that she should eventually have some CM’s working with her, we (and she) will just have to be patient. Till then OP it definitely does not help to call her out in a thread as she also is the top moderator. Even though you weren’t directly calling out her, more praising and asking why she doesn’t have more help, but still in the title.
I honestly don’t know how she does it all, so in that regard I agree with the OP…yet sadly there are still players who think she doesn’t do enough. The frustration must certainly be beyond our comprehension.
You focus on the eyes and know anything about body language. Eyes can tell a lot - but he does seem disappointed in the way Blizzard has been acting. The entire situation might be over his head completely and has no control.
Not that I’m saying that I am right, but that’s what I gathered.
Blizzard should just do what Bungie did and get away from Actvision.
