My account is a UK account, so I was initially inclined to use the EU forums. However, there are many more topics here and it seems like Jeff Kaplan is also more active here, making me want to use these forums. Which should I use?
Note: I mainly use the EU Overwatch region but that could also change.
You are not restricted to which forums you can use. The U.S. forums are great for leaving feedback for the development team. However if you are looking to group up with local players in team comps, or if you have specific technical issues such as disconnections, I strongly recommend posting in the EU forums for those tasks.
I donât see why you shouldnât use this one.
I should technically be using the south american forums, but theyâre as good as dead. This one is much more active, and devs sometimes comment.
From what Iâve heard, the EU forums are relatively dead. Not to mention, with so many nationalities, the languages can get a bit all over the place, unlike here, where everyone speaks 'Murican.
Though if you want to frequent both, nothing is stopping you.
It depends on what you are looking for. Some people enjoy the slower environment. Myself, I would stay here because I prefer seeing the activity. But, like, I have no idea what you are looking for. If it is just based on Jeff posts, you can follow Reddit or any Youtuber for the low down or just pop in and use the filter. So if that is the only reason, you might prefer to talk to people with more of a shared experience. I dunno.
There are six different language platforms for the EU forums. But yeah sometimes there are communication barriers when there is cross posting.
You see, never knew that.
Figure that wouldnât help keep things active, though, if itâs all spread about like that anyways.
Okay, thanks for the response.
I am not sure it really works out that way.
Blizzards community engagement is pretty Legendary. Or is that Notorious?
You honestly feel like all we have from them.
I am sorry but I am confused by your comments.
eu forums are pretty dead
You are good. We all like you, and you actually engage with the community.
But ask the average person here if they think âthis place is great for leaving feedback for the development teamâ, and I donât think people will agree (to put it politely)
Their community engagement (yourself not included) is⊠lacking?
We have the same basic problems we had on the old forums. Smurfing is still a problem at low ranks for instance.
When we get posts about it day after day after day since the forums were formed, and we get a single line âwe donât think smurfs are a problemâ back, I think I speak for a lot of people saying we donât feel like any kind of feedback is considered.
They feel very disconnected from the community, and a few videos with people at the highest rank the game has doesnât do much to make people think they even care about the problems which mean we canât keep new players.
I know you donât work for them, and all of this is not your fault, but⊠you know?
I donât think this place is a good place to give feedback if you want it taken remotely seriously.
I can understand why they avoid talking on the forums, especially after the Mercy rework, where there was a lot of hostility (which may or may not have been justified, Iâll leave that for now) generated within the community.
Iâd want to avoid it too, but, it doesnât solve the problem.
I guess what I am saying is you are all we have, and we appreciate that, more than you think, but, I think you are literally all we have.
And its easy for me to do so, I am just a player (who does not represent Blizzard) who really loves Overwatch. I post at my own discretion. I am a forum MVP (green text) because Blizzard knows I try provide honest and accurate information to the best of my ability and I help player sort out technical issues ranging from disconnections to earning OWL tokens.
Let me clarify something, I will agree that responses from official Community Managers (blue text) and Developers (orange text) are far and thin, however, the official forums is the official platform to provide feedback about the game. The new forum platform apparently has a lot of cool under-the-hood features to accumulate feedback quickly which helps provide good general feedback to the devs. Community Managers are responsible for this from what I understand. I myself sit back and observe most of these discussions, only chiming in to cite a past developer response if I feel it can positively contribute to the discussion.
Going to derail for a tiny bit here, I would like to point out that âsmurfingâ is a very ambiguous term. To learn the developmentâs team stance on this check this dev post from mid-2018 (click here). Now getting back on track, I do believe the concerns of player behavior and expectations overall, is a huge concern for Blizzard (as a company) however it is often not talked up front. Blizzard likes to keep policy enforcement quiet as much as possible for a more positive community overall. I personally think there could be improvements to certain decisions and be more disclosed, however that is solely my opinion.
Oh trust me, they have been running these crazy Blizzard forums for years, they swim through the rabble faster than the Zerg can swim through the ground. If you think this is bad, sit around the WoW and SCII forums for a bit.
Going to avoid getting into âMercy Debateâ rabble, all I want to see is her getting some ice cream⊠
Once again, prior to the start of Overwatch League (ironically) the devs have been relatively quiet with communication on all fronts. I think that is now changing given the uptick in dev posts in the last week or so, and more importantly⊠juice, fat lore drops. Maybe I am a cat distracted by a laser light on this, but I personally think there is going to be some really good content for Overwatch coming. Are there issues with the core game that need attention? HELL YES, I know what they are and I firmly believe the devs too, but its taking time.
I truly appreciate the comment I really do, but I have to make sure it is very clear for everyone to understand. I DO NOT represent Blizzard. As you may have noticed, this year I finally got green text back which was not a feature in the new forums for quite some time. Before then, my posts only showed up in green in the Overwatch Tech Support forum (because I am in the Blizzard Customer Service & Tech Support forum MVP group). Unlike the World of Warcraft, StarCraft II or Diablo forums (which all of those games are very in-depth in terms of gameplay content such as quests), there is no Overwatch Community MVP group. So any posts I make that exceed outside the realms trying to provide information, should be considered my opinion only.
I also want to make it clear, it is my personal goal to always be a positive influence on the community, not just in the forums but in Overwatch in general. God knows I donât always succeed as some players here hate me because of my opinions and knowledge of Blizzardâs policies often conflict with what they believe or campaign on the forums, and I feel bad for causing any hostility to such players, but I will always speak my opinion. I donât have time to stream or run a YouTube channel so I canât express myself through such platforms. I am a college student, working graphic design professional and an arcade technician with a huge addiction to coffee. Sometimes I donât know why I dedicate so much time into communities of popular medias but in many ways, I see it as a great way to make friends. A while back, I supported the PokĂ©mon community for several years, was even a judge at the 2004 PokĂ©mon Trading Card Game world championships. Good times back then, but a very different game than today.
But yeah, I am glad that at the very least I can be an inspriation to you and others here on the forums, but please donât see me repping Blizzard. That is not my role nor my place to do so. Please continue to provide feedback as much as you see fit. Tell them you agree, tell them you disagree, tell them you hate tofu stuffed spinich puffs. I am always passionate for this game and I encourage everyone who plays Overwatch to be passionate too.
(^^)v
The EU forums are useless and pointless just use the US ones.
I love how helpful you are to players Wyoming.
I have seen you posting over last few months I joined.
And you are one of the best things in the forum because of it.
I built a forum scraper at one point, which pushed all the results into a set of dashboards. It was a prototype for larger project for doing the same for any media scanned by GDELT.
I should dig it up again and update it for the current forums. Iâm not sure if Iâll be breaking any terms of use doing so though.
It was interesting as all hell.
Iâm not sure it is a good policy to not talk about it. I donât mean about policy enforcement, but, just that they are doing things in the background.
I remember that they posted that they were working on new systems a long time ago, and that they wanted people to use the reporting system more so they could get more information.
But we never heard anything more about that initiative. Did it fail? Did they not get useful information? Maybe it worked, and they sometimes enforce stuff which doesnât need reporting up front?
It is all very opaque to their players.
Zerg swim through the ground now? and here I thought just burying a couple where someone would build a base was bad enough 
I think it has been a rough time at Blizzard overall, and with OWL they had their hands full. I donât begrudge them needing some quite time while all that was on.
I would be surprised if they got time to sleep, let alone talk to the community.
Yeah, Iâm in the same space, except, I kinda gave up on the core issues getting attention thing. Maybe Iâm just cynical in my old age.
I know, you donât represent them, but you are also the best representation they could hope for, if that makes sense
This is interesting, any idea why they didnât do this?
Heh, I was an arcade tech who drank FAR too much coffee, as a college student.
Some things donât change even in 25 years. Pinball machines were my favourite things to work on.
Anyway, thanks for the post. I for one, look forward to every post you make.
There have been many things improved in their efforts to support the enforcement of community behavior. Not everything is known to us. There was a really good panel at BlizzCon called âPlay Fair, Play Niceâ which really dove into these details. Unfortunately, it requires the Virtual Ticket to view.
From Stetmannâs Research Log:
One thing to clarify on is that a good portion of Overwatch League development is not in the hands of Team 4, but Blizzardâs Esport division. Now in-game client features which are now implemented was in the dev teamâs ballpark. I think if they focus any more energy into Overwatch League, its to do stuff like this:
Now the devs have been quiet as they promise they are working of âsecretâ stuff. All I can say is make it come faster Big Daddy Jeff!
Community MVPs really answer questions about gameplay for their respective games and each of those games has a lot of different things going on in comparison to Overwatch, which markets itself as a team-based hero shooter.
Glad to always be a part of the community but for now, I think I am unable to stay awake. I only got 3 hours of sleep last night (for reasons totally unrelated to Overwatch) and I need to catch up.
Gânight!
Always go for US Blizzard forums if you want an active forum. EU forums are pretty much dead because no dev visits there which makes people feel their feedback is being ignored.