This post is not a petition or in any respect a call out of the HOTS team.
Now that’s out of the way… Since the extended season, little new content, the Christmas Season going on 5 months, the lack of any news on the offical forums has made many question the direction and the very future of HOTS.
This isn’t a call for the stretched Dev team to personally interact with user posts and threads. I would like to suggest they use something akin to The Blizzard Entertainment Bot to keep us up to date here on the forums regarding upcoming patches/heroes and re-posts of Reddit AMA’s.
The threads could be pinned and locked so they aren’t vandalized or trolled, if that is an issue. Disclaimers can be used if speaking about tentative dates or any dates given. It would also be nice that RCW wouldn’t have to painstakingly re-post all the Reddit AMA’s to the Official Forums.
Perhaps it would be too expensive to use this automation on the forums, but we have it already with the Patch Notes. I’m also not saying people who use the Official Forums are entitled to receive updates, but the almost complete lack of news and slow pace of new content is helping to drive the negative perception with many, that HOTS has been “abandoned.”
I’d love to hear what others suggest. My thought is something automated would be inexpensive and by keeping these threads locked it would perhaps lead to fewer complications.
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Would be good to get such change.
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Or even blog posts, as they used to do, as seen here where things like the skins done last fall, or a look into D Va’s rework, were posted in the past.
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Blog posts, anything, I’m not sure why they stopped. It would IMO be more helpful if they prominently pinned such news to the front page of the forums, so posters don’t miss them.
‘A sad day for HotS’
‘Nothing's happening with this game!’
‘Seriously though, when's the winter chests going to go?’
‘A request for developers to unlock Dark Nexus skins’
‘A new Patch Notes coming?’
All of that above is in top posts. I’m not a pessimistic person by nature, but I understand why many are feeling so about HOTS. News delivered by a Bot, would be far better than radio silence and maybe assuage the worst fears of loyal HOTS fans.
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better than nothin’ why not
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To be fair though, this one is a nonsense thread about “rampant hackers” which is literally impossible due to how HotS’ servers work.
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lol, I linked the wrong one, so many to choose from, thank for pointing that out Murloc. 
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How very dare you sir! Hacking is a super serious issue that’s been plaguing the HotS community for years. >:|
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Yes, that thread is intentionally or unintentionally hilarious. Then you also get people who think Blizzard controls their wins and losses…so…
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I read somewhere here that Reddit is used because it’s a “social media” thing, so more people see it. It sounded like it made sense.
There is no doubt that there is less and less people posting here. It is common for me to see the 3 or 4 threads down from the top to be an hour old. It used to be I’d have to scroll maybe 3-4 screens down to get that.
I have to do this, since Minky said it:
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You know I was just agreeing with you? Sometimes my thoughts come out a big mushed up. 
I still don’t see how a bot that posts some news would cost too much.
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You mean me?
Well, I agree that a bot wouldn’t be hard to implement.
I don’t even care if we get news here. I’m mad that rcw and others don’t get paid for their services.
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No, no… what was said here:
I was just sadly agreeing with you that so many good ideas proposed simply won’t happen with the current funding HOTS gets. 
Yes it’s odd, even the D3 forums have community managers. I’m honestly not sure why they bothered to migrate these forums over to discorce and then not even use them.
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but wouldn’t that be what this is pretty much Heroes of the Storm — Blizzard News
Not really, considering the last news posted there was on the 23rd of November 2020. They never post the AMA’s from Reddit there, or communicate about updates they are working on, etc…
Sure they could use that format, but it would need to be expanded on. The trouble with posting nothing to the offical forums is many casual players will come here, directed from the launcher to seek out news. When they find nothing at all, like the situation we’ve been in since December, I don’t blame them for assuming HOTS might be abandoned.
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If nothing else, having an actual pinned thread for updates would help ward off some of these “Is Game Dead?” threads. Yes, I know some of those people will post regardless. Yet, others may pop up because someone visits the forum and sees no updates, no blue posts, nothing.
They’re not forum frequenters, they don’t know what’s happening, (possibly people that don’t engage in other social media either,) much like myself. It can’t be good for business when your launcher directs them to your game’s abandoned forum.
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Yes this is the problem, most of the playerbase isn’t on either Reddit or the offical forums. I know out of my friends list, the most casual players when looking for information use the link on the launcher and get directed to the offical forums. When they get here it appears like the game is dead, no blue post updates for months. I honestly don’t blame anyone for reaching that conclusion.
I like your suggestion for a simple pinned news comment on the front page. It seems though they don’t want to do this. At this point it would be better for the game and players if they changed the link on the launcher to redirect to the HOTS sub-Reddit.
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