Excellent question! Even stranger, Pezrader just posted a tweet about his first meet up with Filthy Rich. TheHooley was never mentione!
He has posted on the most recent PTR. So that is presumably part of his job.
Interacting much with players clearly cant be any of the CMs job 
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LawL. Coincidently, I was the one that made the “We require your Feedback as well, Bliz” post and he was the one that closed the thread…Go figure. Thas funny.
Still been over two months since we had a Hooley sighting!
He has visited the forum in the last 3 days even if he has not posted.
That is probably because they really frown on posts that call out Blues or demand Blue replies. Welcome! Please Read
Using the words “Blizzard,” “Blue,” or any community team or development team members’ names in a thread topic is frowned upon.
Everyone would like Blizzard to read and acknowledge their post, and we understand that; however, use of such words in the subject line does not help that come to pass. Please make your thread title relevant to the post subject. Threads violating this guideline are subject to deletion.
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Honestly - kind of true.
They are tasked with a TON of things and most of it is not general chatting with players. Forums are a tiny part of what they do. Mostly for Forums they post notices, collect feedback from here (along with reddit, fan sites, streams, etc.)
A LOT of what they do is not something the average player sees. It involves player engagement campaigns worked out with PR, streamer and influencer engagement or management, setting up dev or other press/engagements (even just dropping in a stream). Tons of other stuff.
They are handling all the Diablo games - not just D3. With D:I alpha going right now and the D2R Alphas afoot, they are a bit busy.
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Yea I know. But yes, it was locked because everyone in the thread was basically bombarding Hooley with negative comments and adding nothing but negative and unproductive criticism. Kinda a shame, the one you, “once ina blue moon”, you get a Blue reply and the public goes ape sht. O well tho.
This, sadly, is one of the reasons they don’t post a lot in most threads.
Blizzard as a whole wants the forums to be a place for players to discuss with other players. Blue posts, no matter how benign, tend to derail the natural discussion between players.
I am not sure how much I agree with that… If they are around all the time in obvious ways would folks get used to that and still have natural convos without appealing to them? Or would it just mean more anger when the Devs or mgt don’t do what the forums posters want. Hard line to walk.
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I hope the smiley made somewhat clear I wasn’t criticizing it. I get that CMs are much more about feedback in the opposite direction, and handling PR broadly.
On the other hand I really do think actual devs should interact more. Stuff like Wyatt showing up for a interview for D:I is great.
At minimum, after each blog post they should spend an hour or two looking at the feedback thread, clarifying or answering questions for example. Or show up for an interview or two with streamers (as much as I dont like those, it is all we get these days).
I know, stuff like that will happen more when D4 is in the state D:I is in, getting close to release. Would be nice to see it much earlier however, and I bet it can give the devs useful feedback that they arent getting merely from CMs collecting feedback. The interaction is missing.
I would love to believe that as well.
And lets be honest, some people will attack and be angry no matter what they do. But communication can hardly hurt imo.
I get why devs cant just randomly participate in threads. I mean, they have actual jobs to do, I hope ^^ But for blog threads, or other official threads made by the CMs, such as after a Blizzcon, it would be nice at least.
The Devs do skim the forums, reddit, etc. They don’t make decisions based on it though - they wait for the reports with the wider scope from the full forums, reddit, streams, etc. They want to make informed decisions - even if it means saying no.
The Devs doing interviews on podcasts, streams, etc is years old. They have been doing it for a LONG time. What they have not ever done is advertise it that I know of.
CMs also show up in streams from time to time - and podcasts.
I don’t think people are aware of it though, esp on the forums where streamers and podcasters can get a lot of negative vibes.
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Yeah, I am not so interested in their decisions (I mean, of course I am), but rather them arguing about their decisions. Why they want to do something, pro’s and con’s etc. Wyatt does some of that in the recent D:I interview, as an example.
Much more interesting than just telling what they are doing. As it gives us a view into what their reasoning is. Which might also allow people to offer better feedback.
I cant remember seeing that happen a single time for D4 outside of the interviews done during Blizzcons. Now I wouldn’t notice if a streamer had an interview, but I am pretty sure people would talk on the forums every single time it happened 
Even for WoW, dev interviews with streamers is a fairly rare thing. They had one recently though.
Back in the days of Blizzard North I remember logging into IRC with a bunches of others to hear Bill Roper talk about D2, the Devs back then were such a bunch of nerdy gamers though, you could hear the excitement as things were explained to us. I worked on Diablo fan sites back then, so having this insider talking to us so freely and answering questions was huge, clearly, it was so different to how things happen now.
The engagement was very real, but we as fans were also in awe of it all and polite, today if a Dev was to drop in here to talk to us in chat they’d just get crucified, it’s sad we’ve lost that close relationship we once shared and I do miss it.
Umm… that still happens. It just does not happen the same ways. Has for years. They transitioned the chat channels through the years, but the same concepts apply. The fan sites still have access to CMs, and through them to Devs - which can result in interviews and such as well as just good chat. Rules, if you remember, are that you can’t publicly talk about anything Blizz has not publicly released.
What was IRC, maybe ICQ, etc. Went to Skype, went to Discord.
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That is why I told each of the new CMs that they needed to have think skin on this forum.
- Some on the forum can be over the top, I would never want to be a CM/DEV on this forum.
I always felt sorry for Brandy the way some of the trolls attacked her, no one should have to deal with that.
- The Diablo community has some great people who try and help. Some on this forum not so much.
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*Eats Hooley*
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I never noticed trolls attacking her, however, I did notice a lot of boot licking.
She caught a lot of flak for the lack of changes in D3. Looks like that was unfair; still no changes being made with three Diablo CMs.
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What’s funny is she had nothing to do with any game changes to D3.
But she acted like it was her game sometimes.
People’s anger at the game was mis-directed at her, and at each other of us players in this forum at times.
Her leaving Blizzard Diablo team was a sign to all of us, the game is in it’s last phase.
D3 will be around for years or as long as the electrical grid is.
People come and people go.
Not sure why this thread was resurrected but…
Hasn’t posted since March 2nd, i.e. four months ago.
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