They’ve gone the way of the Bioware lol. They’re stupid enough to think that if they shut down their official forums, they won’t get any negative feedback/reactions anymore.
Bioware were wrong too.
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I am not even sure why people would care enough to post feedback about Blizzard games at all. I have done it for years, and I’ve reached the conclusion, that Blizzard are like the Wishmaster.
You ask for something, and they twist it though their moronic “what does the player really means” and they come up with something, that was not what the player was asking for at all “because we’re smart enough and we understand game design and players and stuff”… if they bother to do anything, that is.
While the reality is, that they are totally disconnected. No need for further proof, that the terrible state of games such as WoW during Legion and BfA on launch.
My personal impression is, that reddit is a cesspool. Might be bad luck on my part, but most of the things I’ve read there, regardless of whether ir comes to gaming subjects or not, seem to have been written from people, that I would describe to be of subhuman intelligence.
I’ve grown to hate forums. I love the medium itself, it allows for coherent discussion and all that… but I’ve reached the conclusion, that if a game causes you to frequent a forum for you to constantly give suggestions and feedback, and complain, that it seems like the devs are disconnected and they don’t understand fundamental things about their own game, or why a franchise was popular in the first place, or how players typically play…
That means, that the game is not good, it’s not going to get better and you should just get out.
Devs either get it or they don’t… there are very few instances, in which you can change someone’s mind… in most cases, if they understand you and they agree with you, they’ve already reached understanding themselves, so it’s not you changing their mind, it’s you being of the same mind.
The same is true for people in general.
And, while I’m still on this pessimistic train of though, I’d also like to mention, that regardless of the platform, most people lack reading comprehension, can’t put two sentences together in a coherent context to save their lives, so does it really matter if people post on a dedicated forum or on some other platform?..
Gaming has become some sort of realm of terror of it’s own. I used to love to play video games. Now I spend a lot of time wondering how people have even managed to install the game, that they are supposedly playing… do I have somehting in common with them and… should I be worried if I do…
Just the other day I read, that in this other game, that I play called Warframe, it took people about a month to beat a freaking boss, that requires you to kite a bit with a bow and use 2 abilities… that have cooldowns, so you don’t even have to spam them all the time…
I couldn’t help, but wonder whether those poor souls have ever played an MMO, where you juggle 30 abilities and coordinate with 24 other people…
I used to say Discord is an extension of Reddit.
But I was wrong.
Discord is an even bigger sewer than Reddit. So of course Blizzard would be attracted to them both…
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This was my first instinct.
Ultimately, having official forums means you have a dedicated path to communicate directly with your customers. This lets you control the messaging going out and gives you a place to centralize feedback coming in about your games. Given that all games go through a long series of patch cycles, balance updates, expansions, and the like, having an official forum in long forum where you can get good, well-articulated thoughts both incoming and outgoing seems like a huge asset to a game developer. It lets the customer know your team actually listens, cares, and responds which builds trust and customer loyalty.
Instead, they’re opting for what? A platform they don’t moderate and over which they don’t have control? A highly politicized platform that basically alienates half of your potential customer base with their censorship regime (Reddit)? A glorified chat channel on Discord where the format encourages short, trite responses and discourages the kind of well formed thoughts and arguments you could actually use to justify game design choices? And it’d all be decentralized so your customers would have to search through a wide range of websites to compile all of the official Blizzard feedback because it’s not in one place?
That seems like an absolutely terrible trade-off to me.
But I’m a customer, not a boss looking at all the salaries I was just forced to raise in the name of equality (and keeping my talent from being poached, and keeping the state of California bloodhounds off my back, and trying to swat discrimination lawsuits before they happen which is why I really paid it), and my lack of latest blockbuster release revenue coming in, etc. That boss is looking to cut costs and cutting the entire team that has to maintain and moderate the forums and outsourcing the entire function to a free service someone else has to manage starts to sound like “low hanging fruit.”
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That was a good overall review. 