I have learned to take “improved communications” with a sack of salt. The cycle (to me), looks like the CMs get hyped and want to change things, but then get shut down and told not to talk about nearly anything. CMs get frustrated by it too. There are a ton of topic that would seem like they would be fine to talk about - like “hey we are working on this bug - here is the current status”. Even without an ETA (so they can’t be accused of being late), it is nice to know it is in queue.
As I have said before, the only things they seem to be able to freely talk about are:
Things that have already been publicly released to Live
Asking for player clarifications as they are collecting feedback on the PTR boards
Personal community related chat about games, chars, food, hobbies, etc.
Nearly anything else has to be approved
I have had long convos with CMs in D3 and WoW about this - it starts with “Why don’t you just explain how X tech issue works and why they can change Y in game right now?”. Answer - we want to but MGT won’t let us. It makes little sense to me. Example I am thinking of off the top of my head is the day night cycle for Oceanic servers in WoW.
Customers do not care which part of the organisation is preventing the communication from happening. They only care that the communication is not happening. They get especially annoyed when this happens after the company regularly and earnestly profess that, after every major screw-up, they promise to be better at it.
I’m genuinely at a point where I no longer listen to what Blizzard say they’ll do and only take notice of what they actually do, because they’re long on promises and short on delivery, and have been getting worse at it for a number of years now.
That’s different to how I viewed them years ago, and the reason for my change in attitude to them is entirely their fault. A few years ago, I would have been ready and eager with a credit card to pre-order D4 as soon as that was possible. These days, I’ll never pre-order one of their games, and I’m perfectly willing to wait a couple of weeks after release to see some non-NDA-restricted reviews to see if I’ll even bother with it.
It still does it on PTR and until we know they are trying fixes with decent communication, why would we play it to test? I loaded PTR it did it 10 minutes later and I rage quit, without COMMINICATION that they have released another attempt at fix I wont be able to report back as wasting my time on d3 is over!
And why no blue post to confirm what you are saying is correct? I smell something from the toilet!
Do not know who is in charge of fixing stuff but it is not happening. Some clans and their leaders are stuck and nobody is answering our requests to either disband the Clan or kick the leader out of the clans. They did it in the EU as some clan leaders have mentioned but no responses in the US. Just a wait and see attitude. Keep watching our clans shrivel up as members leave and nobody seems to care. I’m really frustrated since I’ve played this game since the beginning and feel some priority should still be given to D3. Shame on your guys…
DarkAngel#14456 & TLO clan Hope someone eventually will help…
Par for the course in all honesty. Most of quarterly updates had been rather close to the end of the month, If I remember correctly last year’s september blog was released on the 28th or 29th. If anything, I’d be surprised if we get the update before the 25th of this month.
The last soon from PezRadar was June 4 to June 10 (tease of PTR patch notes and then the actual patch notes). I am guessing it will be about that amount of time or less.
I think we’re looking at 28-29th of June or sooner. I was hoping for 25th of June but they said “soon” instead of publishing it after a few hours wait then probably we have a few days ahead.
/cough - Mantras that dind´t work as descriped since Vanilla /cough
We have a full List on them …
All they need is to ask us
Joop
Sadly v.v
Had the same Expiriance with HotS as the Site for the Heroes wasn´t updated for nearly 9 Month with two new released Heroes in between. >.>
Esp. because i was waiting to update the Guide.
But sadly. My CM couldn´t do anything other than sending one Mail after another to the Main-Office.
Same was for nearly every Question we had, that couldn´t be answared with a standard Text.
He had to send it to the higher Up´s and hoping for theyr good will, so he could provide us with the answer.
Quite a frustrating Job.
You want to help out and provide as many Information and keep up the Communication.
But on the other hand you can only do so much, if its not set in stone and green lighted :X
All thats left is to do some Jokes or just beeing themself as a Person (wich isn´t bad either, coz most of them are quite nice Guys), if you can´t do anymore in your function.
Community managers aren’t really setup for success. Wouldn’t be surprised if approval was required from legal team and exec team. Just basing this off some companies I’ve dealt or worked at.
Hiring an executive level lawyer as a community manager might work but that’s not practical. I think just less micromanagement would solve the issue.
You need to have thick skin to be a CM on this forum. I do not know how Brandy put up with some of the people on the forum for so long. She seems to be happy at WoTC. CMs can only say what others tell them to say.
They are really cutting it close with the “end of the month” for this one.
